“Hard doesn’t scare me. But this kind of mission should be well planned or it’s suicide. We walk in that place via our own two feet or other means, it may very well lead to our own capture.”
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take.” She ate more noodles. “I assume you didn’t have any luck.”
“You assume right. My head is all over the place right now. I’ll try again later.”
Her eyes flared gold for just a moment before returning to normal. “My father is counting on you, Gage. So am I.”
“I know it. I won’t let you down, Embry.”
Much later, after night had long since fallen and the sounds of other hotel patrons had faded, after Embry had finally drifted off into an uneasy sleep, Gage climbed out of bed and tried again in the full dark. But no matter how hard he tried, the shadows refused to bend to his will. He was still trying when the sun began to rise, causing his quarry to flee.
Exhausted, he fell into bed and admitted defeat.
Chapter 6
I made a mistake.
The suspicion stole through her body like a virus. Embry flexed her clammy hands on the steering wheel and glanced over at the passenger seat where Gage was sleeping, head tipped against the window. He looked terrible in the dying sun, the shadows under his eyes and the mottled bruising from the fight adding years to his face.
Embry knew he’d been up all night. She’d awakened twice to see him still standing in the dark, meditating. Not that it had done more than exhaust him. He’d been sleeping off and on all the way across Kansas and Colorado.
He couldn’t Walk.
Embry hadn’t expected that it would take this long. She’d gone into this expecting that giving him the antidote would be like lifting a curtain and all his memories would simply be there, as if they’d never been gone. She’d been naïve and foolish and selfish for thinking only of how he could help her. And now she was dragging him into a danger that he might not survive unless he could remember his skills as a Walker. They all might die if his memories didn’t fully return.
And what kind of life had she condemned him to if they did survive? Giving him back memories of the Mirus world eradicated any hope he had of going back to the life he’d built for himself.
It had never occurred to her that he would have built a nice life without her. She found herself unreasonably pissed off that he’d managed it so well.
He would be hunted. And it would be her fault. Again.
What have I done?
Gage jerked in his seat, bolting upright with fists curled at the ready.
“Bad dreams?” she asked quietly.
He relaxed his hands and scrubbed them over his face. “Where are we?”
“Middle of Wyoming somewhere. I forget the last town we passed. Wasn’t much to it other than a gas station and a post office.”
He settled back in his seat and lapsed into the relative silence of the road. It was one of those highways where something in the road made the tires go tha-dunk… tha-dunk. There was about 6 seconds from one tha-dunk to another. She figured that meant, what, 600 tha-dunks per hour?
She was at 438. Tha-dunk, 439.
“What did they threaten you with?” asked Gage.
Startled, Embry looked over at him, but she couldn’t read his face behind the mirrored sunglasses he’d fished out of the glove box. “What did who threaten me with?”
“The Council. Or the other Walkers. What did they threaten you and Adan with to keep you from coming after me? I figure it must have been pretty damn bad to keep you away this long.”
Potential lies tumbled through her mind. She was IED. No one but the Council knew the laws better than she did. It would be easy to spin a tale of threatened punishments to ease his mind. But it was the truth that fell from her lips. “They didn’t have to threaten us.”
In her periphery, she saw him glance at her.
“Did you think I’d be better off in my own world?”
Was he trying to give her some kind of out? Some way of proving that they’d had his best interests at heart? That they hadn’t just abandoned him, without family, without memory, in a world that didn’t give a damn about him?