“Maybe we should get out of here before they end up crashing on us,” Karissa said, turning and darting into the heavier part of the woods, where the helicopter wouldn’t be able to see them.
Hale followed, finding himself wondering what it would have felt like if she’d actually touched him.
Chapter 14
“Is there any more sausage and pepperoni left?” one of the big, brawny SWAT officers asked from the far end of the row of tables where Karissa was sitting with Hale and several other members of the Dallas SWAT team.
Hale had introduced her to everyone, but there were so many that the names had started to blur after the first three or four. Karissa knew that the guy sitting on her right was Trey, and that the dark-haired guy across from her was Mike. Then there was Carter, who was sitting slightly off by himself near the back of the training classroom they were currently in for this late-night pizza party.
She’d come to the SWAT compound with Hale because he said that their STAT contact was supposed to call in with some information on the hit man trying to kill Patterson. But so far, all she’d seen were a lot of really muscular cops—and even more pizza.
“Sausage and pepperoni coming your way,” someone said, passing two boxes down the table toward that side of the room.
Karissa watched as the big guy who’d asked for the double meat opened the top box and practicallyinhaled the first slice. A second slice followed just as fast. She tried not to gawk, but she couldn’t help it. Hale and his SWAT teammates were serious about eating. They’d already gone through about twenty boxes of pizza along with enough soda and beer to fill a small swimming pool.
“So,” Hale said from beside her. “Were you planning to tell me how you managed to show up in the middle of that forest just in time to save my bacon? Again?”
Karissa took a few seconds to finish chewing her bite of cheese pizza, taking the opportunity to glance over at Hale, trying not to gawk at him. When they’d left the hunting preserve, Hale’s nose was broken, and he had cuts on his face and what had looked like a serious gunshot wound to the stomach. Now, a few hours later, everything looked completely healed.
She looked at the other SWAT officers around them, laughing and eating, talking about what had happened earlier that day, none of them the least bit shocked that Hale had already healed from wounds that should have put him in a hospital for a few days at least. While Karissa had already accepted Hale was supernatural, she couldn’t help but wonder whatkindof supernatural could possibly heal that fast. How many other members of the SWAT team were like him? All of them? Was that even possible?
“Remember those instincts we talked about?”she said, turning her attention back to him. “Well, I had just gotten out of a meeting with Patterson and his chief of security when I got this sense that something terrible was about to happen. I immediately jumped in my rental car and followed my instincts until I ended up at a hunting preserve outside of a tiny town I’d never heard of. Then I got out of my car and ran until I found you.”
“Well, I guess I owe my life to those instincts,” Hale said with an expression that turned Karissa’s insides all gooey. “Because if you hadn’t shown up when you did, I’m not sure I would have made it out of those woods.”
And just that fast, the warm sensation she’d been experiencing disappeared in a flash, an ice-cold wave of worry taking its place. The idea that Hale could have been killed threatened to steal every bit of breath from her lungs and she had to fight not to hyperventilate.
“Hey, you okay?” Hale asked softly, his blue eyes clouded with concern.
“What?” she mumbled, lifting her hand to tuck the few strands of hair that had escaped from her ponytail behind her ear. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Hale didn’t look like he believed that, but before he could press her on the subject, Trey spoke.
“Is it true that you have a sword that glows like a lightsaber?” he asked in a lighthearted tone, almost as if he could somehow tell there was somethingwrong. “Hale mentioned it, but none of us were really sure what he meant.”
“Oh,” Karissa said. “Um, yeah.”
Reaching over her shoulder, she pulled her sword out of the air close to her back. She could have pulled it from anywhere but decided it looked cooler when she did it like that. Kind of like it was in an invisible sheath.
“I’ve always thought of it as more like Sting fromLord of the Ringsthan a lightsaber,” she said, tilting the glowing sword this way and that.
“No, it’s definitely more like the Darksaber fromThe Mandalorian,” Carter said, perking up a little at the sight of the short sword. “Do you know where the light comes from? What the power source is, I mean?”
Karissa considered that as she finished her pizza. “I’m pretty sure it’s powered by dork magic. I’ve never seen it this bright, though.” She grinned. “That must mean there are a lot of dorks in this room.”
“Very funny,” Hale said dryly, putting a fresh slice on her plate.
“What happens if someone else holds the sword?” Mike asked. “Does it stay lit up like that?”
Karissa flipped the short sword around, holding it by the blade and offering the leather-wrapped hilt to Hale’s teammate. The moment Mike took the sword, it disappeared with a barely audible pop, making nearly everyone in the room jump a little.She reached behind her back and pulled the blade out again before letting it disappear into thin air.
“I’m the only one who can touch the sword,” she explained, picking up her bottle of water and taking a sip. “Anyone else tries and…well…you saw the results.”
“Hey, guys, y’all are going to want to see this,” Rachel, Hale’s tall, blond teammate, said with a slight Southern accent as she walked in the door, interrupting whatever anyone was about to say next about Karissa’s disappearing sword.
Picking up the remote control on the table, Rachel turned on the room’s overhead projector. She pushed a few more buttons and a moment later, the local news popped up on the screen, a broad expanse of a pine forest visible behind a solemn-faced reporter.
“Oh crud,” Hale whispered. “I was hoping to have at least one night of peace before this footage hit the air.”
