Chapter 519
“Why isn’t this all over the news?” Jamie asked.
“I honestly don’t know.” That was a phrase Aaron didn’t say very often. He was looking at me, and I wished he wasn’t. “Cassidy mentioned that a lot of these people may be invisible—homeless, no families, no jobs. But not all of them.”
“Could Christian have been controlling the media somehow?” Hannah asked. Again, I wondered why she wouldn’t know the answer to that question. What had she been doing the last two weeks? “Does he have that authority?”
“To some degree, but I don’t think he would’ve been doing that. Why would he?” Aaron asked.
“Maybe to keep things under wraps until you got back and we could handle it?” Hannah guessed.
I almost laughed. She had no idea.... No one else had any idea either, so I asked a question I’d been pondering for days. “Is it possible Daunator is doing that? Maybe he doesn’t want people to be afraid to go out because then he’ll have more trouble snatching them up.”
“If I said I had any idea what Daunator was capable of, I’d be lying,” Aaron said, shifting his weight as he pondered my question. “I guess that’s a possibility.”
“Does Mila have any idea why the media isn’t reporting it?” my sister asked Hannah. Why she thought Hannah would know that when she didn’t know anything else was beyond me.
“I didn’t realize it was this many people,” Hannah reiterated. I wondered why 400 hadn’t been too many. “When I asked Mila about the people who had gone missing recently, she said that it’s getting a lot more local coverage than it is out of the region. Some are saying it’s the second coming of Jesus, while others have other religious explanations. Still others are blaming the economy and saying people are going to other countries. Or they blame the government, saying these people are enemies of the state. For the most part, no one has an explanation. In the places where these people are disappearing, they don’t have cameras on every door and every street corner like we do here. And I’m sure the little footage they may have gotten, Christian has taken care of.”
I tried not to shake my head. Not recently....
“Who would be doing that now that he’s gone?” Aurora asked.
No one, I thought to myself, but Hannah thought she had an answer. “I think he may have spoken to Fannie about it. I’ll check in with him and see.”
Again, a giggle wanted to escape. She couldn’t do that. I bit into my cheek.
“Have you talked to him since he left?” Aaron sounded hopeful, like maybe it was just his IAC acting up that kept him—and Cadence—from getting the other Guardian. His illusions were about to be shattered.
“No, not since he left,” Hannah replied, a tone of concern in her voice now.
Aaron’s face scrunched up slightly with disappointment. “I wasn’t able to get him a few minutes ago when I tried. Neither was Cadence.”
“Why didn’t you just force him on?” Elliott’s question was legitimate, assuming he thought Aaron was just trying to be polite and not interrupt Christian’s vacation.
My sister answered. “We tried. Couldn’t get him.” She looked around at all of us, and I tried to match the disbelief and concern I saw on my teammates faces, but I had an idea that my nervousness was also apparent, especially when my sister’s eyes came back to me. I was really hoping she didn’t ask me to try to contact him, not yet anyway.
For now, they were still trying other methods. “I sent him a text, but who knows if he even took his phone.” Aaron sighed and looked at his own iPhone sitting on the table. Of course, it didn’t light up with a text from Christian because I already knew the answer to the Leader’s inquiry.
Aurora didn’t. “Surely, he took his phone with him. Who goes on vacation and doesn’t take their phone?”
“I hope he did, but until he gets in touch, I’ll be a little concerned about him.” Aaron’s face was still troubled. His reaction wasn’t making a whole lot of sense to me.
“Why? He just threw you in a portal.” Sometimes my mouth starts moving before I remember that I’m trying to keep attention off of myself. This was one of those times. Still, how could Aaron be so forgiving?
“I’ve known Christian a really long time,” he explained, looking a little too intently at me. I didn’t look away, though. “He doesn’t always make good decisions. In fact, he makes a lot of really horrible, dangerous decisions, but that doesn’t mean I want him to get hurt—or worse.”
Somehow, I could identify with that sentiment—the not wanting Christian to get hurt part, not the part about having known him so long. I’d known him long enough to agree that he makes poor decisions, though.
Nevertheless, I reminded our Leader, “I don’t think he’d say the same thing about you.” I mean, Christian had practically admitted to me that he’d wanted Aaron dead. And what he hadn’t said was in his thoughts. Why Christian didn’t want Aaron—his friend for so many years—in the picture anymore, I didn’t know, but I had an idea. My eyes flickered to my sister, and the look she was giving me was borderline parental. She wanted me to shut my trap.
“Well,” Elliott began, clearing the tension in the room with the tone of his voice, “I for one could care less if he fell off the face of the earth.” He had no idea how close he was to that being the case.
Aurora made a weird sound from down the table. “Couldn’t care less. If you could care less, it means you care a lot.”
“Want me to list the other things I couldn’t care less about?” Elliott glared at her, and I hoped they didn’t get into another argument. One was enough for one meeting.
