Chapter 320
“He messaged me, too, like a hundred million times,” Brandon said, and I knew he was talking about Christian. “I told him you were sleeping, and he could wait, but he is relentless.”
“Sorry about that,” I said between bites.
“No, not your fault. Just….” He shook his head, and I agreed he probably shouldn’t finish that sentence.
I also had IAC messages from Tara and Dax, who had gotten his IAC implanted while I was out, so I checked in with them while I finished eating. It was cool to see Tara in the gym. She was with Aurora, Ashley, and Meagan, and they were preparing for a possible attack, one I was sure wasn’t coming. But she was so fast and so strong. I was a little jealous. However, I was also glad because I was pretty sure that meant she’d get to stay on our team, which meant I could pursue my friendship with her without worrying she’d be gone soon. I couldn’t imagine Aaron sending her away now that she had extra-special powers.
To me, the two hours seemed to fly by, though the Guardians who had been up the whole time were more than a little glad when the wheels touched down on terra firma. With the time change, it was close to the time that we had left—only a day later—and I had a little bit of trouble wrapping my mind around that. Because we’d stopped for fuel and all of that, by the time we got to the hotel, it was so late, I had to fight the idea that I should be getting ready for bed. But we wouldn’t be staying long. We needed to drop off our stuff and then head over to the Melbourne headquarters so that we could start working on finding Paul. I didn’t dare do any searching for him yet, though, thinking about what Brandon said about Holland knowing I was there. I didn’t want to tip her off until the last moment.
We took an SUV across town to the campus. My mom had started working as Aaron and Cadence’s secretary recently, to replace my grandma, and she’d made the reservations, but that wasn’t why the hotel was so far away. Aaron never liked to have us staying close to the locations where we’d be working because there was a better chance something might follow us home. So the hotel was not only far away from the headquarters, it was also far away from the movie theater where Paul had gone missing.
I knew more about what had happened now. I’d watched the footage in those couple of hours I was awake on the plane. It was crazy to see everyone reacting to their IACs messing up. We couldn’t record what they were actually seeing, but I had the reports from the six members of Paul’s team that were with him, and all of them had seen some really odd things happening to their teammates while on the hunt. I could only imagine what Paul had been looking at. I needed to get to the location where he was abducted, which was the top of a building in a rundown neighborhood near the movie theater they had been investigating.
Of course, the likelihood that my sister was going to let me do that was pretty slim. She’d say there was no way I would be going out there where someone had recently been abducted. If she wanted me to find him, though, she needed to understand that that was the fastest and easiest way for me to get a location on him.
It might draw Holland and Carter out, too, which is something I’d rather avoid for now since Aaron said we weren’t ready for a full-fledged war yet, but I would do what I needed to do to find Paul and deal with the consequences later.
Elliott pulled the SUV to a stop in front of a gated building that looked a lot like a dentist’s office to me. It wasn’t very large and only one story tall. But the building itself was back away from the road a little bit, and the Guardians out front meant business. We got out, and they checked all of our IDs before they let us through, even Aaron and Cadence, which was kinda funny. I pulled my LIGHTS badge out of my pocket and handed it over, glad I’d kept it on me. I don’t usually carry it, but I thought it might be a good idea in a foreign country.
The inside wasn’t any bigger than it appeared from the outside. A woman named Sue walked us down a long hall toward an office space in the back. I thought she was a human, but I wasn’t certain. We passed a few other people who were running around doing paperwork or cleaning, and I thought they were all human. I wondered how big this operation really was.
In the back of the building, there was a conference room. Sue stepped out of the way and told us to have a good evening, and I followed Cadence and Aaron into the space. There was a long table with several people sitting around it. I saw Becky sitting at the head of the table looking completely out of place and nervous. I also recognized the other members of the Melbourne team who had been with Paul. There was Tanner, Steph, Jeb, Patsy, and Derrick. None of them looked remotely happy, and the Hunters were exhausted.
The only person in the room who looked the least bit excited was Margie. Despite her new peacock blue hair, I recognized her instantly. She doesn’t look much like Jamie, but there’s a bit of resemblance around the eyes. I was happy to finally get a chance to meet her.
