The Decaying Empire (The Vanishing Girl Series Book 2) (14 page)

Crap. He was telling me the truth.

I blew out a breath, refocusing on the stone in Adrian’s hand and trying to distract myself from the fact that some third party had sent me on a mission.

“So,” I said, “what does a lodestone have to do with teleporters?”

Adrian rolled the stone between his fingers. “It’s a magnet that interacts with imprints. It can pull you to a destination, or conversely, it can repel you from one.”

“Does each stone belong to a certain teleporter?” If so, I would be hunting down the ones that belonged to Caden and me and smashing them to smithereens.

“The lodestones?” Adrian laughed. “Naw, at the end of the day they’re just rocks.”

“Then how do they work?” I asked.

“Short answer? A lodestone tampers with how a teleporter interacts with the earth’s natural magnetic field. It’s like erasing the lane markings from a street and drawing new ones. But we’re not talking in absolutes here—merely probabilities. Software can enhance this—”

I held my hand up, palm out, and signaled for him to stop. Already this was making my head hurt. “So that’s why I keep visiting you?”

A shadow of a smile appeared on Adrian’s face. “You could just think about me all the time as you fall asleep.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t let that get to your head.”

“Point is”—and now Adrian got really excited—“Stonehawk Enterprises has the ability to manipulate these stones. Do you know what that means?”

“Hit me with it.”

“This,” he said, holding up the stone, “is how we stop the Prometheus Project from sending you on missions.”

Sometime in the middle of the night, the bed dipped and an arm wrapped around my torso. Caden hadn’t come back to my room after this morning’s argument, and falling asleep without him bothered me. It made me feel guilty and apologetic, which then only served to tick me off. Like being here, in this bed, was an act of forgiveness that Caden had rejected.

I felt the brush of his breath against my neck, and then the press of his lips against the skin of my shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed.

I flipped over and faced him.

He reached out and brushed my hair behind my ear. His fingers lingered, trailing down my cheekbones. “Angel, I’m never going to be on board with trusting Adrian.”

I wanted to groan. “Did you really have to wake me up to continue arguing with me?”

Caden’s arm tightened around my waist. “I’m leaving with you,” he said, as though I hadn’t interrupted him, “either on my terms or on yours. So if you really want to do it this way”—Caden blew out a breath—“then I’m in.

“However, before we do this, we need to figure out how we prevent the Project from finding us just like they did once you turned eighteen.”

I flashed him a wry smile, remembering my conversation with Adrian. “Funny you should mention that . . .”

“There’s a toolshed at the back of the facility, near one of the warehouses we train in for Close Combat,” Caden said the next morning at our meeting place. Last night I filled him in on my visits with Adrian, so he was aware of—although definitely not pleased with—my efforts to extricate us from the Project’s control.

I nodded, not quite knowing where he was going with this.

“Only the groundskeeper and Dane have a set of keys.” Caden flashed me a sly look. “As far as they know, at least.”

“What’s in the shed?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. I had to trust that Caden knew where the Project’s secret cameras were hidden. Otherwise I’d be screwed a second time.

“Shears.”

He didn’t need to say more. He wanted us to cut our way out of the facility.

“Are they strong enough to cut through metal?” I asked.

He nodded once, and I whistled. He’d done his homework.

Caden gave me a sad, tender look. “All that was ever missing from the plan was you,” he said, following my thoughts.

Caden’s efforts illuminated just how impossible it was to contain and control people with altered intelligence. No wonder the Project had to coerce the uncooperative. If a teleporter put their mind to it, they could find a way to escape.

“During the graveyard shift, one of the guards who mans the tower near the back right corner of the property sleeps on the job. That’s where we’ll cut through the fence.”

I nodded.

“Military personnel drive by every fifteen minutes, which means that we’ll need to time our escape between their rounds.”

We’d been training for years on escaping unusual scenarios in under ten minutes. This should be comparatively easy.

“I have our money and supplies stored in a PO box roughly fifteen miles from here. Once we escape we need to stop there first.”

“How
did
you manage to coordinate that?” We weren’t let out of the facility—except on our missions. So to acquire money and IDs and store them in a nearby location seemed impossible.

“Some people owed me favors.” His eyes got a cold edge to them. Like he’d done some very bad things to call in these favors. Things he didn’t regret.

“Before we do this, we need to get rid of that tracker,” he said, nodding toward my upper arm.

I touched the place he referred to. The hard device pressed against my skin. I hadn’t realized Caden noticed it.

“You know what that means.”

I swallowed and nodded. It meant we’d have to cut me open, something I was not looking forward to. “I’m prepared to do what needs to be done.”

Caden grimaced at the thought.

“Lastly”—his gaze fell heavily on mine—“I won’t be willing to do any of this until we know you won’t teleport at random.”

“Caden.” I couldn’t say more.

He shook his head. “I’m willing to set aside my distrust for Adrian because of you. But if you want my help leaving the facility, then you got to play by my rules, angel.”

Big surprise. One of the first things I’d learned about Caden was that he was the king of calculated risks.

“I might be like this permanently.” It hurt to utter this very real fear of mine. For a teleporter this was a life-threatening handicap.

Caden’s face clouded. When he refocused on me, his expression softened. “We’ll deal with that when—and if—it comes.”

“The longer we wait, the higher the risk we’ll get caught.” Restlessness stirred within me. The wait would kill me.

“I’m not asking for forever. Give me two weeks,” Caden said. “That’s all I ask.” His eyes implored me.

Two weeks seemed like an eternity. But there was a good chance that teleporting during the day
was
temporary, and if that was the case, I could escape without worrying about teleporting while on the move.

Finally I nodded. “Two weeks.”

The following day, as I chewed on a pencil and glared at Desiree in our profiling class, a knock sounded on the door.

I sat up straighter when the door opened a moment later and Dane walked in. He didn’t apologize for interrupting class, didn’t even bother addressing Debbie. Instead he searched the room.

“Ember,” he said, his eyes finding mine, “come with me.”

Caden pushed out of the chair next to me.

“Just Ember.” I noted the warning tone in Dane’s voice. Usually the man had nothing but doting affection for Caden. Interesting.

As I rose from my seat, I noticed Caden’s clenched jaw. Ah. Trouble in paradise with these two.

Caden glanced at me, and he must’ve seen something in my expression, because he didn’t back down. “Anything that concerns her concerns me too,” he said.

We now had the attention of everyone in the room.

“Charming,” Dane the Dick said. “But that doesn’t change my answer.

When Caden stepped to my side and took my hand, Richards gave Debbie a loaded look. She grabbed the phone from the wall next to her desk and began dialing someone.

Caden noticed too. “That’s not going to stop me from coming along.”

People around us began to whisper.

“Don’t make this unnecessarily difficult,” Richards said, his voice deceptively smooth.

Caden walked up the aisle ahead of me. “I’m her pair,” he said, like that explained things. “We do things as a team.”

Richards’s mouth thinned. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

A shiver raced down my spine. As much as I hated the idea of being alone with Richards, I’d rather his displeasure be focused on me and me alone.

I reached out and touched Caden’s arm. He glanced back at me, the hard edge to his features softening. That look almost undid me. I gave a slight shake of my head.
Back down on this one.

He gleaned the unspoken message from my body language. He worked his jaw, his hands fisting once, twice. “Fine. Call off your muscle, Debbie,” Caden said, not looking at her. “I’m sitting down.”

“Your actions will not go unpunished,” Richards said to Caden’s back.

My nostrils flared. I understood why Richards said it. Caden had resisted orders in a room full of other teleporters. Insubordination—no matter how small—bred more insubordination if it wasn’t dealt with. Still, it pissed me off.

Caden waved away the order as he walked back to his seat.

It wasn’t until I’d almost reached Richards’s office that I realized the weight of Caden’s resistance. A year ago Caden would’ve sat back down the moment he’d been told to. In fact, he had.

But this Caden hadn’t.

“Ember,” Dane said, gesturing to one of the guest seats in his office.

My lips drew down as I stared at the familiar accolades that lined Dane’s office. Praise for heroic actions in combat. For making hard decisions. Now he was doing little more than trafficking teleporters.

“How is it going so far?”

That wasn’t his real question. Not by a long shot.

“Why don’t you ask Caden?” I replied.

Richards leaned back in his chair, his way of signaling that he had all day. “I’m asking you.”

“Classes have been a blast.”

“I heard that you had to be escorted to counseling the other day.”

“Why would I complain about my problems to the very people that created them?” I asked.

Dane leaned forward abruptly. “You make the mistake of thinking that this is for your benefit, Ms. Pierce. It’s not. The only reason you’re here is because I don’t want to see our best teleporter killed in action.”