I’ve sat quietly in the briefing room of the police station, watching Agent Becket and the captain, along with his team, plan to catch the Apparitions red-handed. I’ve thought it wise to leave the police work to the police, but this was all wrong.
“They’re going to get away, Becket. You won’t be able to catch him like this.”
The captain narrowed his eyes at me. “Do you think my men are not capable?”
I stood, making my way to their table, lifting my chin as the captain continued to stare at me. “That’s right, they’renotcapable.” A huff of indignation travelled through the men in the room. “And neither would a full taskforce of the finest trained FBI agents.” I pointed to the map on the table. “Do you want a demonstration of how Grayson thinks? These roads you want to block off? You’re wasting your time and resources. If I know him, and I fucking do, he’s not going to even use the roads. They’ll fall from thesky, get what they want and disappear into this river, never to be seen again. And don’t think he doesn’t have twenty other escape routes planned out. Don’t think youhave the element of surprise here. He already saw you coming and planned six ways out of it.”
The captain scoffed. “Then what doyoupropose we do?”
I lifted my chin higher as the captain stared down his nose at me. But I saw the brief flicker of doubt creeping in. “Nothing. We wait.”
“Wait?” Agent Becket questioned. The captain shook his head in disbelief.
“We wait,” I insisted. “We let them steal the watch. We let them think they got away with it. We give Grayson the chance to drop his guard because there is no way you’ll be able to catch him while it’s still up. You willnevercatch him in the act.”
“This is insanity,” the captain laughed. But Owen held my gaze, his icy blue eyes calculating. He knew I was right. He knew this was our only way, our only real shot.
“I suggest you take her seriously, Captain. This woman is the only person who’s gotten close to these people and lived to tell their sins. She’s the only reason I’ve been able to prove their existence in the first place. And she’s the only one who’s been able to track them down.” Owen stared the captain down. “If she says we can’t catch them this way, then we can’t catch them this way."
The captain turned his gaze on me, appraising me with new eyes. “Then let me hear your plan, girl. How can we catch them?”
A week later, I sat in an unmarked van with Owen, watching the monitors, feeling like my heart was about to bust out of my ribs. Owen was just as nervous, his knee rapidly bouncing up and down.
“They better not fuck this up,” Owen whispered to himself.
We were sitting outside another one of the Apparitions’ houses. A remote farmhouse, with only a shabby barn in the middle of nowhere Mexico. The house sat atop a hill, completely surrounded by the Mexican Police Force, but it was unnervingly quiet, except for the whispered responses of the officers on the comms. The captain had let me and Agent Becket plan the takedown, but we weren’t allowed to participate, banished to the control van, forced to watch it unfold on the bodycams of the officers.
“Shit!” One of the officers whispered, panicked over the comms, “There’s a perimeter alarm. We triggered it!”
Before the ice could shoot all the way through my body, the captain responded, “Move in! Now! Now! Now!”
It was now or never. We couldn’t give them a chance to think or act. Owen and I held our breath as we watched the officers reach the house. They busted through the front door but were unable to get through the back kitchen door. It was somehow reinforced.
That was a bad sign.
I gasped as I watched an officer chase Gemma through the living room. The moment he laid hands on her he went down. But the officer wasn’t alone. I flinched as they swarmed her. Another officer went down. Then another. But there were too many. A sob escaped me as I watched them tackle her to the ground with too much force.
“Gemma!” Hunter’s gut-piercing scream echoed over multiple comms.
I searched through the screens for him, finally finding him. He roared his defiance as he fought to get to Gem. But it was no use. It took five officers to finally get him on the ground.
“Where is he?” Owen whispered, scanning the screens.
I knew who he was searching for. Where the hell was Grayson?
A loud bang had me jumping up from my seat. I searched the body cams. It was a truck, crashing through a garage door. It roared loudly as it leaped away from the house, racing across the open fields.
“Varon’s in the truck!” Owen screamed over the comms for the officers. Police officers started darting out of the house and into the field, after the truck. There was utter chaos as everyone screamed over the comms. Vehicles and officers ploughing over the fields, shooting at the truck, trying to stop it.
“He’s going to get away!” Owen screamed, frustrated.
I watched in frozen horror as the truck took bullet after bullet.
Gods,Grayson.
No. My breathing picked up again. No, something wasn’t right. “He won’t leave them,” I whispered.
Owen’s head snapped to me. Then back at the screens. The body cams of the remaining officers in the house, started going dark. I saw a flash of Grayson’s hand before another went dark.
