“What?” A strained chuckle didn’t do her empty smile any favors. “I’m not missing. I’d think I’d know if I was.”
Pulling his hand out from under the counter, the boy spun his tablet around. She glanced down and immediately regretted it.
There, plastered across the screen, was a territory-wide alert with her face on it. Her teacher’s certification photo sat beside a dark, grainy picture of her bruised face talking to a tall, helmeted figure in the sitting area of a roadside burger joint.
KIDNAPPED: CECILIA MARCELLA WARREN. ARRANT. BLACK HAIR & BROWN EYES. 5’8”. MID-30s. ABOUT 165 LBS. LAST SEEN IN CAPTIVITY. BELIEVED TO BE IN IMMEDIATE DANGER AND TAKEN ACROSS TERRITORY LINES. IF SEEN, CONTACT PATROL IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT ENGAGE KIDNAPPER AT ANY COST. MUST BE CONSIDERED ARMED AND LETHAL.
Cecilia abandoned her gummies.
An alarm began to whine as she turned and sprinted out of the store. She burst outside into the cold air, the young worker’syells for her to stop completely ignored. Her heart jammed into her mouth as she spotted Sloane far across the lot. He stood military-straight beside the passenger’s side door, waiting for her return just as she’d asked him to.
Glad she’d decided on comfortable running shoes, Cecilia took off in his direction faster than she’d ever run before.
“Sloane!” she screamed. “Get in the damn car! We have to?—”
The world exploded behind her.
Magic, hot and blinding, knocked her off her feet as an m-gate ripped a hole in space and time behind her. She careened forward into the dirt, barely catching herself on her palms, as a flood of black-clad elves in masks, rifles raised, turned everything to shit.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
Sloane blinked bloodout of his eyes. The interrogation room in Solbourne Tower was familiar to him, but for reasons that were momentarily hard to pinpoint, nothing appeared quite as it had before.
That almost certainly had something to do with his head wound.
A dark green trickle of blood ran in sluggish rivulets from his forehead, where an overzealous Patrol officer had slammed the steel butt of his rifle into him. It was a blow that would’ve made a human’s head explode but for Sloane it resulted in a slight concussion and a laceration that would have to be stitched or healed.
If they even bother,he thought, flexing his arms against the restraints they’d clapped on his wrists. His ankles were locked, too, and bolted to the floor. It was a set-up he’d seen and participated in many, many times in his life, though he’d never been on the shackled side of things before.
Not since he was a kid, anyway.
Sloane stared at the blank wall across from the steel interrogation table. A yawning sort of emptiness had hollowedhim out. It left nothing behind — no worry or fear for what was to come.
He’d failed.
He’d failed the most important mission of his life, and now he would pay the consequences for it.
The white door to his left swung open on nearly soundless hinges. Sloane didn’t look. He knew his captain by the feel of the air and the tread of his boots on the smooth floor.
The metal chair across from Sloane’s was pulled back with a terrible screech. Kazimier’s kohl-dark hand seemed huge against the metal seat.
The half orc sat down and laid his forearms on the table. “What the fuck?”
Gaze fixed on a midpoint over his captain’s shoulder, Sloane demanded, “Where’s Cece?”
“You don’t get to ask questions right now,” his captain growled. Snapping his fingers in Sloane’s eye line, he forced his subordinate to turn his focus to him. “You’re gonna explain to me exactly how and why you fucked up so bad, Fortuner, so I can decide what we’re gonna do with you.”
In the midst of the nothingness inside him, an echo of that raw, angry nerve pulsed in his chest. The last he’d seen of Cecilia was when two Patrol officers took her thrashing arms and dragged her kicking and screaming through the m-gate. She’d fought like the fierce little beast she was, but she didn’t stand a chance against two fully grown and trained elves.
To not know where she was or whether she was unharmed was intolerable.
Sloane’s upper lip lifted over his fangs. “You already know what you’re going to do with me. Tell me where Cece is.”
Kazimier scowled at him. His green face was made of an assemblage of sharp geometric shapes that possessed the unique ability to convey disapproval in the most efficient and painfulway possible. “She’s getting treatment for her injuries in a secure location. That’s all you need to know.”
He stared at his captain. An acidic feeling bubbled in his gut, searing all his vital organs in a slow ooze. “Who hurt her?”
