Redemption (18 page)

“Then it’s working. Let’s go.”

“Emma.” He reached a hand toward her but she took a step back.

“How did Raphael get Jake?” She hated that her voice broke. She couldn’t fall apart. She had to be strong.

“You don’t know that Raphael has him.”

“Yes. I
do
.” Did he really think she was an idiot? “Do you think Aiden handed him over? Did they have a fight? I can’t see Aiden just giving Jake up.” She choked on her frustration and fear. “
How did this happen
?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know.” He reached for her arm again and pulled her to him.

She leaned into his chest. Fear swept through her, washing away all thought. “Raphael is angry with me. What if he’s taking it out on Jake? What if he’s hurting him?”

“Don’t do this to yourself, Emma.”

How could she not do this to herself? That psycho had her son. Did he have the power over Jake that he’d had over her? Had he forced Jake to join with him? A gasp of horror escaped her, then she squared her shoulders. “We have to go to Little Rock. We have to get him from Raphael.” Before it was too late.

Will’s face hardened. “He won’t be there and you know it.”

“But what if he is?”

“Raphael’s not going to stick around with Jake and all that media. He seems more like a hit-and-run kind of guy. So if he’s not there, where do we go?”

She tried to think like Raphael, what little she knew, but her mind was lost in a fog. Why hadn’t she paid closer attention when she was with him? “I don’t know. Tennessee? He took me there after you lost your mark.” Her panic bled into her words.

“What if he’s not there? What if he’s gone west? Then we’ve just traveled farther away from him, Emma. I know you’re upset. I know this is killing you, but we can’t find Raphael or Jake if we don’t know where they are.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Her voice rose from her anguish. Raphael hated her now that she’d joined with Will. Raphael might hurt Jake just to make her suffer.

Lowering his face to hers, Will spoke softly. “Let’s just go after Alex first. Raphael needs Alex more than ever. There’s a good chance Alex might know where he is.”

Every part of her screamed no. Once again, she was abandoning her son. But as hard as it was to admit, Will was right. She had no real choice. What if Alex knew where Jake was? What if he was part of it? For the first time since Will came up with his plan to confront Alex, Emma was completely on board. Fighting back tears, she nodded.

She’d torture Alex herself if it meant finding her son.

Chapter Thirteen

Will was amazed that they’d made good time getting to St. Louis. Construction was always an issue on I-70, but it was as if the gods were favoring them today. Will almost snorted at the thought. The manipulative elemental men controlling their lives were the only gods he knew, and they were definitely not favoring him or Emma.

If Raphael really had taken Jake from Aiden and forced him to destroy a city to upset his mother, it was not only effective, but a move Will admired as a military leader. Emma was distracted and distraught—two things neither of them could afford at the moment. It not only weakened their bond but also their defenses. The move was the perfect sabotage, not that he’d confess such a thing to Emma. He’d rather that she continue focusing her anger on something else. Or in this case, someone else.

Jake’s possible change of captors was the perfect excuse for her to see Alex. She was more than eager to talk to him now. While Will was grateful he didn’t have to worry about her forcing an excuse to see Alex, at the moment, he was more worried that she’d cause a scene. He doubted that killing Alex would be easy, but he’d hoped to use Emma’s energy control over the Air element to subdue him until Will could complete the job. He hadn’t told Emma that part of the plan yet, unsure she’d go along with it. But now he wouldn’t put it past her to subdue Alex and kill him herself.

Will had no problem with that, but it needed to be done as quietly as possible so they’d have time to escape. Emma’s emotions could be a double-edged sword.

He checked them into a hotel several blocks from where Alex was staying. It was nicer than their usual accommodations, but it was close to Alex. If it came to a chase, Will hoped they’d be able to lose their pursuers on foot without having to resort to guns or using their powers. He planned to make his move in the middle of the night, his goal to have only one fatality. But if it came to a chase, he wanted as few people as possible in the line of fire.

In South Dakota, it had been easy to avoid civilian casualties. The compound they broke into was in the middle of nowhere. But Albuquerque was proof of what happened when elements were let loose to fight, and apparently Little Rock too. He didn’t want a repeat in St. Louis. He was sure Emma couldn’t handle the guilt, and he wasn’t sure he could either. The memories of the fire in the Iraqi school still lurked at the edges of his mind.

For the first time since coming up with his plan to kill Alex, Will began to question his decision. Not the death sentence for Alex, but where to carry it out. St. Louis was far from ideal, but it was the least populated area Alex would be in for the next few days, as well as the closest. He had to look at it from a military perspective. If he didn’t kill Alex now, the death count could rise much higher. And killing Alex would put Jake into the final four.

What if the final battle happened in a densely populated area like Atlanta? Or New York City? Or even Hong Kong? Who was to say they’d stay on the North American continent? Every military operation figured in the possibility of collateral damage. This was no different.

As soon as she entered the hotel room, Emma turned on the television and sat on the edge of the bed. It only took a couple of clicks of the remote for her to find news coverage of the Little Rock disaster. Reports flooded all the major networks.

Will sat next to her and wrapped an arm around her back, relieved that she didn’t shrug it off.

The footage showed more of the same destruction, news crews filming as everyone speculated about what had happened.

The camera cut to an older man behind a desk. “While seismologists are attributing the quake to the New Madrid fault line, no one can explain how a 7.6 magnitude quake could be isolated to a four-block-square area. For answers we turn to Dr. Renee Sever with The Simmons Institute.”

The camera cut to a woman standing in front of a geological map.

“Dr. Sever, can you explain what happened in Little Rock?”

A grim smile tightened her mouth. “This is unprecedented. We have no scientific explanation for this occurrence. It goes against the laws of physics for a quake of this magnitude to be restricted to such a localized area.”

“But there was damage and additional quakes miles away from the epicenter.”

“True, but we would have expected the ripples of a quake this size to be larger in both intensity and distance. It’s as though very specific energy was centralized in one area.”

The camera cut to the news anchor. He leaned forward on his desk, toward the camera, resting his weight on his arm. “But how do you explain the storm?”

The doctor’s eyes widened. “I’m a seismologist, not a meteorologist, but I would say this was a once-in-a-trillion incident. It was purely coincidence, plain and simple. Call it bad timing or extremely bad luck.”

“Doctor, you call this a one-in-a-trillion incident, but this same thing happened in Albuquerque a week ago.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Both locations are known to be close to fault lines. It’s not uncommon for quakes to occur on multiple faults.”

“Some experts are suggesting terrorist warfare was used to create the devastation in Albuquerque. Surveillance footage taken from a bank shows a man and a woman standing still in the middle of the destruction while everyone else is running away.”

They didn’t show the footage, and Will wondered how clear the images were. Did the authorities know it was Emma? Did they have a clear image of her face?

“There is no technology in existence capable of creating such devastation.”

“How do you explain the storms in both locations at the same time?”

“Conspiracy theorists are having a field day with this, but I assure you that this is a fluke. It’s Albuquerque’s monsoon season. Sporadic storms are a common occurrence in August.”

The coverage continued, with reporters interviewing credentialed experts, all offering different theories. The news team cut to images of groups standing on street corners with signs reading “The End is Near” and “Sinners Repent. Judgment Day is Here.” Some attributed the disasters to the devastation predicted by the ancient Mayan calendar. Others cited aliens.

Emma’s back was rigid as she watched with a glazed look. Will took the remote from her clenched hand and turned off the TV. He expected some protest from her, but she sat still for several moments. He would have preferred an emotional outburst to the icy silence.

She stood. “What do we need to do to see Alex?”

“Do you want to talk about what happened in Little Rock?”

Lifting an eyebrow, she stared at him. “What the fuck is there to talk about? Raphael not only had my son but forced him to help kill hundreds of people. I need to find Jake, and Alex might know where he is. Tell me what we have to do to get to him, and what I need to do once we find him.”

Will heaved a sigh and grabbed the laptop. “Ideally, we would have gotten here at least a day earlier and checked out the physical location. I’ve tried to find some schematics online but haven’t been able to find anything yet. If James were here…” He cleared his throat. “He might have been able to find them. We could consider calling James to see if he could help.”

“No James.”

He didn’t blame her. The last time they were together, James had wanted to hand her over to the Vinco Potentia, but Will knew James had tried to keep him safe. In fact, James had put his life on the line to help Will and Emma escape from the parking garage. He’d dragged James into this mess back in July when he’d shown up on his driveway with broken ribs, but James was far from an innocent victim. He’d been working with the Vinco Potentia the entire time to hand Emma over. Nevertheless, Will couldn’t ignore the only reason James had done any of it.

To save Will.

He didn’t want to involve James, but Will and Emma were facing threats from lots of fronts and there were only two of them. Granted, they hadn’t seen the Vinco Potentia in over a week, but he wasn’t naïve enough to stop considering them a threat. He hoped to get more information about them from Alex too. “No James for now.”

Anger flashed in her eyes.

He was prepared for another fight, but she waited in silence.
Choose your battles
. It looked like Emma had chosen hers.

“I’d like to examine the property in person, but I’m concerned they will be watching for us and know what we look like. For all we know, they have footage of you from Albuquerque with Raphael. But I need to know the weak points in Alex’s security team, and you and I can’t go together. One of us in a disguise could likely get away with it, but Alex is sure to have given our physical descriptions and photos to his men. If we’re together, they’re bound to discover us, but if we split up, we might be able to pull it off.”

“So then we split up.”

He hesitated.

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t you pull that macho caveman shit on me now. I’ve pulled your ass out of more than one frying pan, and you know it. I can take care of myself.”

Emma was right, but the thought of letting her walk alone into a potentially dangerous situation scared the shit out of him.

“What do we need to do?”

He made himself ignore his fear and treat this like any other mission. Booting up the computer, he loaded the page with a rough diagram of the hotel layout. “The dinner is going to be in the grand ballroom. We obviously don’t want to try anything then. I need to find out what room Alex is staying in, and for security reasons that’s going to be a closely guarded secret. The best way to find that out is for one or both of us to dress up as hotel employees.”

“But I thought you wanted me to contact Alex and tell him I want to talk. Why don’t I get him to tell me his hotel room?”

“For one thing, I’m not sure he’ll tell you. He won’t exactly trust your motives. Second, it would alert him to our presence. If he’s smart, he’ll put out extra security. I suggest we get some information on his room first, then you call him.”

“So you want us both to dress up and sneak around the hotel first?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you just pull out the Will charisma and charm the pants off some female employee?”

His jaw dropped. “You can’t be serious.”

“I don’t want you to literally charm her pants
off
, but yes. Why not channel that power?”

He processed her suggestion for several seconds. It might work. “You don’t care?”

“You’re coming back to me, right? I have a mark on my back that says you are. Just don’t take it too far.”