Crux (The Aurora Lockette Series) (6 page)

“Why have you taken me?” I asked.

He crossed his legs in
an almost feminine gesture. “Because you are desired.”

I pulled one of the pillows close, holding it to my chest. I really didn’t want him to know I was smuggling sharp objects in my bra.
“Okay. Why am I desired?”

“
I am not allowed tell you yet. I will not harm you. I will keep you safe until you are summoned by Asag. “

I squeezed my pillow tighter.
“What is Asag? What are you?” I asked. “Shyama?”

He laughed in his creepy staccato way.
“Is that what you call us? Then what do you call you?”

“
I don’t understand,” I said.

“
You don’t need to understand now.

“
Um, understand what?”

He walked back to the door. Unexpectedly, he stumbled. He paused, staring at his feet. He looked at me again, a smile spreading across his face.
“This body is not cooperating anymore. Guess I’ll need a new one soon.”

Cold dread punched me in the stomach.
Oh, God. He was using a human body.
The horror must have been evident on my face because he laughed again before leaving.

As the door swung open, the hallway was not empty. Mr. X was pushing a stumbling male into the bathroom. I recognized the mass of auburn hair.

It was Keith.

Oh, no
. I struggled to assimilate the new information. Keith was a blocker from Houston who’d helped me back in New Orleans when we were battling the Shyama there. He was kind and good. After Gavyn came back into the picture, he backed off, never flirting with me again. He was respectful like that.

When
I heard the shower running, I was glad they were letting him get cleaned up, too. I used the sounds of the pipes carrying the water to cover my noise while I scooted the bed away from the edge of the wall. The molding near the floor was loose, but still hiding my knife. I added the razor and scissors, and pushed it back to cover it all, then scooted the bed back.

Once I was done, I turned my attention to the sealed window. It was boarded
over with bright cracks of daylight leaking in. The glass was old, but thick. Probably easily breakable. It was the boards that would cause me trouble...

Footsteps shuffled outside my door. I turned as Mr. X swung the door open.

In his hand, he had a burrito on a paper plate. He put it on the ground along with a couple bottles of water. “Come and get it.” He stared at me while I did.

I limped towards him, groaning as I bent
over to get the food. I panted as if the movement was tiring me out.

The burrito was cool in my hand.
“This is still frozen,” I stated.

“
It will thaw eventually.”

He left, shutting the door behind him, locks
clicking in place.

I put the burrito on the nightstand, then chugged all three bottles of water.

I finished the last bottle, remembering how Gavyn used to push me to drink more water when we arrived in Vegas.

We’d been laughing then, as we checked into our room
our first night in Vegas. The valet had given us bottles of water as we parked.

“
You’ll need it,” Gavyn had said, pushing the door to our room open. “This is literally the desert. Your body needs more water than normal.”

“
Yes, sir.” I’d mock saluted him. Then I’d drank the water, thrown it to the side, and pushed him down on the bed.

I came back to the present, tears crushing against the back of my eyes. I brought my hand to face while the pain came, licking and lapping at my
self-control. I couldn’t do this now. I couldn’t think about him. I had to survive. My fingers toyed with the metal band of my engagement ring. They hadn’t taken it from me, but even if they did, they couldn’t take Gavyn from me. He was burned into my heart and mind, forever.

O
nly strong thoughts crossed my mind now: I would heal, I would escape, and I would take Keith with me.

GAVYN

The dark roads rolled under the car as we drove through street after street. It was night again. A full day had gone by without her.

No word, no clues.

Carmen flicked on the turn signal.
“Let’s try some of these dirt roads out here.”

“
Sure,” I said flatly. I checked my phone screen, like I was going to magically find a text or an e-mail from her.

Carmen got on 160, heading west. The city was falling behind us and flat brushy desert stretched all around us.

I had an icy, weird feeling, like a wave of cold nausea. “Stop!”

She did, just short of an unmarked dirt road that crossed the highway feeder road.

“You feel that, too?” she asked quietly.

“
Yes.” I wiped my sweaty hands on my lap and tried to process the strange feelings. “It’s dark, strange, but I feel…”

“
Like she might be here.” She turned the wheel sharply, pointing the headlights down the barely visible dirt road.

“
What are you waiting for…go!”

“
We can’t.” She pulled away, merging onto feeder road, then the highway.

“
What are you doing?” I yelled. “Go back!”

“
We’re being followed.”

“
What?” I twisted around in my seat, staring at the cars trickling by. “By whom?”

“
Please look forward and act normal. I can’t tell which car it is, I can just sense it. The last thing we need to do is tip them off.”

I shook my head.
“No. We can drive down there and just see.” I clenched my fingers into a tight fist.

“
We can’t risk it. Not like this. They’ll move her, or worse,” she said.

She was right, damn it.
“Blast it!” I shrank back into my seat, but my eyes moved over the darkening horizon. She was out there somewhere. I could feel her.

I texted Konstantin to give him the coordinates of our location and
to let him know we were working our way back.

“
We have to stop,” Carmen said. She squeezed the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white.

“
Are we still being followed?” I said.

“
Yes.”

“
Bloody hell.” I shoved my phone back in my pocket.

She found a cheap pancake house
off the interstate, miles away from our safe house. “This will work.”

I leaned sideways so I could see the restaurant through the window.
“If you say so.”

“
We call it a greasy spoon.” A smile flitted across her face, but it was gone in seconds. She was too mired in tragedy to truly laugh, as was I.

I followed her
inside, and we slid into a cheap, scratched-up booth. I stared at the few patrons scattered about the restaurant.

“
Act normal. You can do this,” she said.

I flipped open the plastic menu and managed a fake smile while an overweight waitress with heavy eyeliner took our order.

She returned a moment later to pour our decaf. Mid-pour, I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. My head begged to crane in the direction of the parking lot. Carmen was still fake smiling for the waitress, but I could see the strain around the edge of her lips.

The waitress finished pouring the coffee and finally left.
“Don’t look. They’re in a red minivan out in the parking lot, right behind you.”

“
Damn,” I said. “What are they doing?”

“
Watching us. A couple have gotten out. They’re probably seeing if there are more of us.” She dumped a sugar packet into her coffee.

“
Or they are surrounding us,” I said.

“
Or that.”

“
What do we do?” I asked. I wasn’t into the fighter bit.

“
We eat our waffles.” She cut a big chunk of hers off, dipped it into the whipped butter in the small tin, and then put it in her mouth. “Oh, that is good.” Her words were muffled by the food in her mouth.

“
You Americans and your love of butter.” Nonetheless, I followed her lead, slicing off a big piece of my waffle and giving it a good soak in syrup. As we ate, the weirdness ebbed and then it was gone.

She polished off her waffle first, then waited for me to finish mine.
“They’re gone,” she whispered.

“
Good,” I threw the fork down onto my syrupy plate.

“
That was probably the best thing we could have done,” she said.

“
What’s that?”

“
Eat. Neither one of us has eaten since she went missing, and we can’t be of much help to her if we are unable to take care of ourselves.” She pushed her plate to the edge of the table.

I stared down at my plate.
“Is she alive, Carmen? Can you tell?”

She put a twenty down on the table to cover our meal.
“You know the answer to that.”

She stood, pulling her sweater over
her thin shoulders. As we walked to the car together, I stared out into the very dark desert that surrounded us. I could feel her out there. I knew she was alive. She had to be alive.

The drive back to the safe house was quick, dark and tense. Carmen was resting her elbow on the door of the car, rubbing her temples. I
knew she was hurting, and I knew she could sense what I was feeling, too. I fought the crushing pain the best I could.
Aurora will be my wife, the mother of my children. It will all still happen. We will be together again.

Once inside the door, a flurry of activity greeted us. Several men and women
were milling about the living room. Dennis had a map spread out on the kitchen table. He jerked his head up when we walked in. “Good timing,” he said. “Glad you guys made it back okay.”

“
What’s the plan?” I asked him.

He leaned back to address the crowd of people behind me.
“Gather round.”

They all
did, settling into a loose circle around him. I’d seen some of them before on various missions I’d been on with Aurora. The reminder that she was a fighter eased my tension a bit.

Dennis pointed to a spot on the map where he’d drawn a star in magic marker.
“This is the starting point of the dirt road that Gavyn and Carmen found. It dead ends here, about ten miles in.” He made another dot with his marker. “There’s a good chance Aurora and Keith are somewhere in between these two dots.”

“
What’s out there?” Carmen asked.

“
We looked at some satellite pictures,” Dennis said. “Several houses, some trailers, and some small commercial buildings. It’s an unincorporated township.”

“
What are we waiting for?” I asked.

“
We need to find her first. If we tip them off that we know where to look, they’ll move them, or worse.”

Fear and anger pulled at my soul. I knew what the
“or worse” was—death—an end to Aurora.

Dennis continued.
“We need to survey it first, find out where they are. Then we’ll go in and get them. “Where are my Flyers?”

Two girls stepped forward.
They both looked young, just shy of twenty maybe. They were identical twins with big brown eyes and long black hair. They were dressed in form fitting clothes, all black.

“
Here,” one of them answered. Something about the way she curved up one side of her lip in an eager, dangerous smile made me realize she was probably older than twenty, and deadly. I was glad she was on our team.

“
Can you two cover this alone, or do you need help?”

“
We got it,” she answered with a glance at her twin.

“
Good,” Dennis said. “Take the thermal cams and don’t get too close. They can’t know you’re there.”

“
We’re mere shadows in the night.” She pulled back her jacket to tuck the camera into her pocket, revealing double holsters with very large guns secured to her hips.

He rounded up the rest of the group, ordering them to sneak into place on the entrances and exits of the dirt road. If they tried to run with Aurora, they’d be caught.

I shrugged on a light jacket as we all prepared to leave.

“
Where are you going?” Dennis asked.

“
Out there. I need to be close.”

He said nothing,
staring out a window off to the side. “Fine.”

“
I’m going to rest. I wish you would, too.” Carmen was beside me again, Konstantin hovering nearby.