“Got it.”
Tense quiet settled back in as the minutes ticked by and asphalt unspooled under the tires. She was doing her damnedest not to get lost in her mind, but it was hard. The feeling of time slipping through her fingers beat at her. She tried to console herself by remembering that her mother was a force to be reckoned with, but it wasn’t helping. Rhea had been gone hours, and images of her father, beaten and bloody, mocked her.
How hurt is she? Is she even alive?
That last question shredded her heart. Despite their contentious relationship, losing her mom would damage her in a way she wasn’t sure she’d recover from. How many times could you fail to save those you loved before the losses destroyed you? She didn’t want to learn the answer.
“They stopped,” Grayson said.
She flexed her fingers on the wheel, feeling the blood rush back in. “Where?”
Light flicked against the windshield as he activated his phone and checked the paper location against the real-time map. “Looks like one of those new-construction home developments.”
“In the middle of nowhere?”
“Maybe that’s why they chose it.”
Her headlights swept over the green sign spanning the road. “Exit’s in three miles.” She pressed her foot down on the accelerator, watching the speedometer tick past ninety-five.
“We need to get there in one piece,” Grayson reminded her gently.
“I know.” She leveled off at ninety-eight and only started to slow as the exit approached.
“Go right, follow it down, then take the fourth left.”
When they hit the surface streets, she dropped her speed to a more respectable forty-something and continued to follow Grayson’s directions. They drove along a wide road split by a median filled with shrubs and the occasional overgrown tree. Every now and then, they saw a battered, overflowing dumpster squatting off to the side. More than half the streetlights were dark, and those that worked were dim, barely illuminating the area around them. For a long time, that was all there was. Eventually, cracked sidewalks appeared, edging the road. An occasional street sign would interrupt them. Then a cement wall appeared, the gray rock decorated in graffiti.
“Go down another block and make a left.” Grayson picked up the paper map and checked the tracking spell. “They haven’t moved in the last few minutes.”
“So wherever they are in here, they’ve holed up?”
“That’s my guess.” He leaned forward, peering through the windshield. “When you hit the stop sign, turn off your lights.”
She got to the four-way stop, hit the lights, and made the left, slowing even more. Without her headlights, she could only see a few feet ahead of her. “There’s no way they’re not going to hear us coming.”
“Got an idea on that,” Grayson said. “Just need a spot to pull over.”
On the other side of the cement walls, the pale wood of partially built homes took shape. They continued down the unmarked road of what looked like an abandoned planned community. The tattered Now Selling banner hanging from one of the working lights was one clue. The fact there had been no lights, cars, or signs of life since they’d turned in added to that impression.
“There.” He pointed to her left. “Pull in there.”
She turned into what was meant to be the entrance to one of the smaller neighborhoods. They passed darkened homes that looked finished, but when they rolled under a streetlight, Cass realized the houses had been left at that near-completion stage. Some were missing stonework facades, while others sported broken windows and missing doors. One house had a garage door that looked as if it had been rammed with a truck, and another wore an elaborate piece of graffiti with an anatomically incorrect suggestion. She drove by a long orange dumpster and rolled to a stop next to an empty lot.
Grayson was on his phone, his fingers flying over the screen, then came the swoosh of a text being sent.
“Zane?” she asked.
“Sending him our location.” Grayson slipped his phone into his pocket. “We can leave the car here.” He rechecked the tracking spell. “The map has Dana one street over and down.”
She undid her seat belt and watched him pull his gun out of the glove compartment. “Do you have one for me?”
“No, but pop the trunk. I’ve got some things we can use in the back.”
They met at the trunk, where Grayson put the gun in his waistband at his back and then lifted the liner. “Hold this for me…” he muttered.
She held the liner up as he brushed his fingers over a small rune etched in the metal near the wheel well. There was a flash of crimson followed by the soft thud of a lock releasing, then a portion of the trunk popped up, revealing a compartment with multiple filled cubbies. Grayson picked up a stoppered bottle from one and a stone threaded with a cord from another.
“Put this on.” He handed her the corded stone.
