The girl was a pain in the neck.
She kept asking Tiernan where they were going. How he knew which direction to turn. Why he kept sticking his head out the window. He didn’t have time to explain. Not that he could, really, even if he wanted to. His tracking ability was something as natural to him as recognizing the smell of apple pie, or the taste of peppermint. It was part of him. He just knew. He could sense Caleb, as long as they weren’t too far behind him.
The problem was they were falling farther behind him every hour. It was her fault, of course. She couldn’t match his running speed, so they had to use a car, which meant sticking to the roads while Caleb could go cross-country. And Caleb knew he was being tracked. He kept doubling back, shifting one direction then running another to throw them off. Tiernan was left to trail after him like an awkward puppy, stumbling over his own feet. He didn’t really see an alternative, though.
He glanced at Ava sitting innocently in the passenger seat.
Innocent. Right.
The girl slammed him up against that wall as if he was nothing more than an annoying fly. It was humiliating. Irritating. But he had to hand it to her, she had guts. She stood right up to him and glared unblinkingly into his mismatched eyes. Not many—human or Race—would dare such a thing. Still, it was unnerving to have someone like that sitting next to him. He felt at a disadvantage, which was decidedly where Tiernan preferred not to be.
He came to a crossroads and stopped to scan the horizon. The homes were farther apart—not quite farms, but with generous lawns out front and well-tended gardens in the back—and he could spot a town in the distance off to the right.
“What is it?” Ava asked.
“Give me a minute.” He rolled down the window and turned to scent the air, listening . . . searching with all of his senses.
Ava’s stomach growled, and he turned on her with a frown.
“What?” she asked. “I can’t help it.”
“Well, try,” he snapped. “I can’t hear with you making all that noise.”
“It’s a biological function! In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been at this for hours. Not that I’m complaining, but I can hardly be blamed for my empty stomach’s reactions.”
He glared at her, and she set her jaw stubbornly. Her stomach growled again and her cheeks flushed, but she didn’t look away.
With an irritated grumble, Tiernan reached over the seat to where he’d tossed his bag in the back, and fumbled inside it. He threw a slightly smashed protein bar into her lap and snagged one for himself, ripping the plastic with his teeth and eating half in one bite.
“Thanks,” she said quietly, pulling off a piece of her own bar. “You might have mentioned you had these before.”
“I was a little busy,” he replied through a mouthful of granola and chocolate. Ava grimaced slightly, but said nothing. He turned back to the window and tried to seek out Caleb again.
“It’s no use,” he said after a few moments, wadding up the wrapper and tossing it into the backseat. “I’m getting a faint sense of a trail, but I can’t tell which direction, other than a vague—that way.” He waved his hand toward the town. “You getting anything?”
Ava shook her head. “I’ve been trying, but he’s beyond my reach, I think.”
With a sigh, Tiernan stepped on the gas and turned right. “We’ll need to ditch this car. Find a place to hole up until I can get some backup,” he said.
Ava stiffened. “You can’t call for backup. They’ll know he ran.”
Tiernan shot her a sideways glance. “I have a contact in the Council. He’s the one who put me on Caleb in the first place, and he’s made it pretty clear that he wants to talk to him—not kill him.” He spotted a grove of trees off to the side of the road and pulled behind them. “I think he’ll give me the resources I need to find him, without alerting the rest of the Council.” He grabbed his bag and got out of the car, slamming the door behind him.
“You think?” Ava followed him anxiously. “That isn’t very reassuring.”
“Look.” He stopped and turned to face her, trying not to smile in satisfaction when she faltered back a step as he loomed over her. “I know you’re worried about Caleb, but this is all I’ve got right now. Unless you have a better idea?” When she said nothing, he nodded. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”
Ava grumbled something under her breath, but he ignored it and headed toward town, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. It was difficult without the Veil, but that was something Tiernan had sworn off long ago, along with the ridiculous contact lenses that the majority of his people favored. They wanted to fit in with humans. He had no such desire.
Still, when they approached a motel set back off the highway outside of town, he figured it wouldn’t hurt to be a little less intimidating. He was a bit out of practice, but managed to pull the Veil over him a bit—just enough to smooth his scar and make him seem a little smaller, a little more forgettable. In that moment, he envied Katherine’s gift of near-invisibility but figured this was better than nothing.
“Whoa,” Ava murmured.
“Shut up.”
“You look kind of like Michael Cera.”
“I said, shut up.” He peered at her sidelong. “Is that the guy from Zombieland?”
“No, that’s Jesse Eisenberg,” she said, tilting her head. “Although, now that you mention it, you kind of look a little like him, too.” Her eyes widened. “Wait a second. You saw Zombieland?” She seemed stunned that he would ever watch a movie.
“I do have a day off once in a while, you know.” He strode toward the motel office without looking back.
“But Zombieland? It’s not very, well . . . you, is it?”
He stopped in his tracks. “Not me? Who doesn’t like zombies?”
“Oh.” Ava blinked at him. “Of course you’d root for the zombies. Makes perfect sense now.”
“It’s not their fault they’re zombies.”
“And trying to eat Jesse Eisenberg’s brain.”
Tiernan couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. “We don’t have time to discuss film choices,” he said, starting toward the hotel again. “You coming?”
She trailed after him, and they managed to secure a motel room with minimal fuss.
Once they were inside, Tiernan pulled out his phone to call Andreas.
“Andreas? Really?” she whispered as he waited for the call to connect. “I figured it would be Naomi.” The woman had shown favor to Ava when she’d appeared before the Council, so it was no surprise Ava would suspect it was her.
Before he could respond, Andreas answered the phone with a curt, “Yes?”
“I have a bit of a situation.”
“What kind of situation?” He heard a door close in the background and assumed Andreas had moved to a more private setting. “Foster?”
“He’s on the run.”
Andreas cursed under his breath, and Tiernan ignored the fact that Ava was practically bouncing on the bed, wondering what was going on.
“Can you track him?” Andreas asked.
Tiernan flicked his gaze up to Ava. “That’s proven a bit of a challenge. He knows I’m on his trail, so he’s been shifting steadily since he disappeared. He must have a stash of R-cubes. I can’t keep up by traditional means. I need someone who can track shifts.”
He heard Andreas inhale deeply on the other end of the phone. “This is disappointing, Ross. Caleb Foster has detailed knowledge about the Council and the Protectors. If he’s turned his back on us . . .”
He was silent for a long moment, and Tiernan waited, ignoring Ava’s anxious expression.
“Still, I think it best that we keep this between ourselves for now,” Andreas said.
“I thought you might feel that way.” Tiernan nodded at Ava in a reassuring manner. “How would you like to proceed?”
“Well, fortunately, I’ve recently come across a young man with the specific talents necessary to address your . . . predicament
.”
“A sensor?” Tiernan waited as he heard some papers being shuffled.
Andreas didn’t answer his question but after a moment, asked one of his own. “What is your current location?”
“Motel in a town called Matlock, near the Nebraska border.”
“Stay put,” Andreas ordered. “Stay out of sight. I’ll be in touch.” The call disconnected, and Tiernan drew a deep breath.
“Well?” Ava was apparently irritated she had to ask.
“He’s getting someone to help us.” He stood and stretched, then crossed to the windows and peered out at the empty parking lot.
“So what do we do in the meantime?”
“We wait.” Ava’s stomach rumbled, and he shot her a wry grin. “And maybe order a pizza.”
Chapter 6
Waiting was not Ava’s favorite thing to do. She paced. She flipped through channels on the television. She checked her cell phone for missed calls or texts from Caleb—there were none, by the way—and she pretty much drove Tiernan insane. Not that you could really tell. The man gave new meaning to the word stoic, simply sitting by the window and peering through a gap in the curtains. He did his best to ignore her, but every time she got up, she saw a muscle twitch in his jaw and knew he was annoyed.
“Pizza’s here,” he said a moment before a knock sounded at the door.
Tiernan stayed in the shadows, letting Ava handle the interaction with the pizza delivery guy. They settled in around the cardboard box, and Ava downed two slices before taking a long drink of her Coke.
“So, this sensor,” she said and wiped her mouth. “What exactly can he do?”
Tiernan shrugged. “Track shifters.”
“How far?”
He shrugged again.
“Well, you’re just a fount of information, aren’t you?” she snapped, taking up another piece of pizza and pointing it at him. “If we’re going to work together, you’ll need to be more forthcoming with information.”
“We’re not working together.”
“What do you call it, then?”
He curled his lip. “Barely perceptible tolerance borne out of distrust and blackmail?”
She snorted. “So sensitive.” Ava took another bite of pizza before asking, “So is this sensor coming here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, how else is he—”
“I said, I don’t know!” Tiernan glowered at her. “We’re just supposed to wait.”
“Wow, is that how you operate?” she asked. “No questions? Just following orders?”
“It’s my duty. You wouldn’t understand.” His tone was the slightest bit mocking, and Ava, of course, took offense.
“I understand duty,” she said. “I just don’t understand how you can do your job if you’re kept in the dark all the time.”
“They tell me what I need to know.” Tiernan looked out through the window again, effectively shutting down the conversation.
Ava rolled her eyes and flipped the channel on the television, settling on the local news as she finished her pizza. She stared at the screen but let her mind wander, wondering about where Caleb was and what he was doing. She surreptitiously checked her phone again, and footage of a familiar house flashing on the television caught her eye. She reached for the remote to turn up the volume.
“. . . body was found early this morning by his wife, Beth Simmons. She told police she hadn’t seen her husband since Saturday evening, when the two had an argument . . .”
“Oh no,” Ava whispered. “No. It can’t be.”
“What?” Tiernan turned his attention to the television as Officer Simmons’ photograph filled the screen.
“. . . witnesses testify that a young woman visited the victim’s home late Saturday night and was possibly the last to see him alive . . .”
“No. Oh no, no, no . . .” Ava chanted, her eyes wide and frightened as her own picture appeared.
“Police are calling this woman, Ava Michaels, a person of interest in the case. They stop short of calling her a suspect, but our sources say there is strong evidence linking Michaels to the murder of Officer Simmons. Mrs. Simmons herself says Michaels is the reason she left home on Saturday.”
A crying woman appeared on the screen, apparently Mrs. Simmons. “I’d suspected he was having an affair for some time. And when I found out it was with a student at the college, I confronted him about it. He admitted to being involved with that woman, and I was so angry.” She wiped at her eyes with a tissue. “He was going to break it off. He promised me. But I never thought . . .”
The woman dissolved into sobs, and Tiernan reached over to take the remote and click the television off.
Silence hung in the air, punctuated by Ava’s ragged breaths. “I can’t believe it,” she murmured.
“So.” Tiernan cleared his throat. “You knew him?”
“He . . . he helped me,” she said, still in a daze. “When you . . . when you came after me. He helped protect me.”
“And you . . .” Tiernan rubbed a hand over his shaved head. “You . . . and he . . . uh . . .”
“No!” Ava shot to her feet. “No, of course not! I don’t know what’s going on, but I didn’t have an affair with him. And I definitely didn’t kill—” She choked on a sob and sat down heavily on the bed. “Oh God, he’s dead. They think I killed him. What in the world is happening?”
Tiernan stared at her for a long moment. “It looks like someone’s trying to set you up.”
Ava swiped at her eyes. “But who? Why? I don’t understand any of this.”
He stood and paced across the room and back again. “Well, if none of this is true—”
“It’s not!” Her hands clenched into fists. “None of it.”
Tiernan nodded. “If that’s the case, whoever it is would need to manipulate the witnesses—”
“Someone saw me,” Ava said, half to herself as she remembered the neighbor peeking through the blinds. “I was there Saturday night, but it was dark. I didn’t think . . .” She rubbed at her temples and tried to think back.
“You were there?”
“I saw him,” Ava said quietly. “I talked to him.” She looked up at Tiernan, eyes bright with tears. “I had a dream. I thought someone was going to hurt him.”
Tiernan’s jaw tightened. “Looks like you were right.”
She laughed humorlessly. “Yeah . . . yeah. Good to know.” She stood, tangling her hands in her hair. “What am I going to do? I have to go back. Turn myself in, right? Try and clear my name?”
“I really don’t think that’s the best option.”
“But if I don’t, they’ll think I’m guilty.” She threw her hands in the air in frustration.
“I’ve got news for you. They already think you’re guilty.” At her irritated glare, he huffed and rolled his eyes. “Look, you shouldn’t do anything until we figure out what we’re dealing with here. Whoever’s behind this isn’t putting all his hope in one witness who happened to see you at that house. Someone pushed his wife, maybe even pushed Simmons, too.”
“Pushed? You think it’s Race?”
“Well, something made her think her husband was having an affair that never happened.”
Even in her panic, Ava felt a trace of relief that Tiernan seemed to believe her without question. “Who?” she asked, her mind whirling with possibilities. “The Council? Or maybe Rogues?”
“No way to know for sure. At least, not yet.”
“But why?” She looked up at Tiernan but he had no answers. Her gaze fell to her twisting fingers. “It’s got to be the Council.”
Tiernan frowned. “Think about it. The Council has no reason to do this. Why would they frame you for murder?”
“To get me to go to them for protection? Keep me locked up nice and tight in New Elysia?”
“Not really their style. To harm an innocent human violates Race Law.”
“You think that would stop the Council?”
Tiernan fixe
d her with a steady look. “The Council isn’t perfect, but it is dedicated to upholding the Law.”
Ava slumped back down onto the bed, her eyes fixed unseeing at the blank television screen. “So it has to be a Rogue.”
“That would be my guess,” Tiernan said. “And if that’s the case, this is only the beginning.” He pulled a chair over and sat down to face her. “What do they want with you?”
Ava sighed. The Council had asked her the same question endless times—she’d asked it herself—but she’d yet to come up with an answer. “I don’t know. Arthur, the Rogue who took me, he ranted about me having some higher purpose, being one of them. It didn’t make any sense. None of this makes any sense.”
Tiernan considered that for a long moment. “It’s possible some of the Rogues are joining forces. Maybe they hope you can help them.”
“Help them what?”
“Do what they do best. Cause trouble.” He sat back, crossing his arms over his chest. “At any rate, there’s nothing you can do right now. Not until we figure all of this out.”
She raised a brow. “ ‘We’?”
He shrugged. “The Rogues are a threat to the Race. Protecting the Race is my job. So . . . you just became my job.”
“Lucky me.”
“Look on the bright side,” he said, standing and crossing the room again to peer out the window. “You wanted to find Caleb. Now you know I won’t let you out of my sight until we do.”
“I repeat,” Ava said wryly. “Lucky me.”
Despite her anxiety, exhaustion won out, and Ava ended up curled up on the bed half-dozing as they waited for instructions from Andreas. The sun had just set when the call finally came, and Tiernan snapped his phone up off the table to answer it before Ava even realized it was ringing.
The call was brief, peppered by a couple of “Yes, sirs” from Tiernan, and Ava was wide awake when he finally hung up.
“Well?” she said as he stood up, shrugged on his jacket, and grabbed his bag.
“We go west.”
“West? That’s it?” She crammed her feet into her shoes and swept up her backpack, following him out the door, only to slam into his back. He shoved her back into the room unceremoniously and whipped the door shut, leaving barely a crack to peek out.
The Guardians (MORE Trilogy) Page 8
