Lost (3 page)

I was in so
much pain by the end that it was all I could do to keep walking
normally. My bandages were starting to soak through by the time that
we finally ducked into another parking garage. Ash found a black SUV
with a 'for sale' sign in it, and then convinced an early
twentysomething to let him borrow her phone for a couple of minutes
so that he could dial the number on the sign.

Twenty minutes
after that we pulled out of the parking garage fifteen thousand
dollars poorer, but driving the SUV.

Ash shook his
head when I offered to drive.

"You need
to replace your bandages and get some sleep. Kristin too, that's part
of the reason I picked this set of wheels. We need space so we can
spread out and rest without having to sleep on top of each other."

Kristin didn't
argue, she just reclined the passenger seat back as she closed her
eyes.

"You took
some damage too, you can't be much better off than me."

Ash shrugged.
"Yeah, I've got some broken ribs and a ton of internal bruising,
but that isn't anything compared to the amount of blood loss that
you've experienced. You're tougher than me, there isn't any disputing
that, but you took some nasty blows in that fight."

My beast
bristled a little bit at the implication that I couldn't continue to
function despite everything I'd just been through, but Ash
had
pointed out that I had more staying power than him.

"Okay,
I'll catch some sleep. Can we pull through a drive-through on our way
out of town though? We never finished up lunch and I'm going to burn
through a lot of reserves healing back from what that enforcer did to
me."

"Sure. Let
me keep an eye on our back trail for another five or ten minutes and
then if it looks like we made a clean getaway I'll stop somewhere and
we can pick up dinner for both of us."

"What
about Kristin?"

Ash's smile was
part proud teacher and part worried boyfriend. "She's out
already and she won't be waking up for at least four or five hours.
We can stop for something later if she's hungry."

I started to
nod before I realized what was bothering me about the situation.
Kristin had fallen asleep far too quickly. Any good soldier deployed
to the front lines for an extended period of time learned to get
sleep wherever they could find it.

By that
yardstick, it was entirely reasonable for Kristin to have dropped off
quickly, but Kristin hadn't spent months in that kind of danger
recently. She'd spent a few days on the run with Ash, but the last
little while had been spent at the estate with the rest of the pack.
It was hard to get much safer than that.

"How long
has she been dropping off instantly like that?"

"A week or
two maybe. I first noticed when I stayed late in her room to watch a
movie with her. She fell asleep before the opening credits had even
finished rolling."

He wasn't
telling me everything, that went without saying, but this was
potentially even more serious than I'd realized. Now that she was
asleep, Kristin smelled
wrong
somehow.

I didn't figure
it out until Ash exited the interstate and pulled up to the
drive-through window. Kristin had been stressed out while we'd been
running from the cops, but she'd kept it under control. If I hadn't
been able to smell the adrenaline coming out of her pores I probably
wouldn't have been able to tell that she was rattled at all.

She was more
freaked out now than she'd been then. I'd never seen anything like
that; I would have said that it wasn't possible for someone to remain
asleep with that much adrenaline in their system. She'd fallen asleep
without ever calming down.

My suspicions
were confirmed when she started thrashing around and screaming as we
pulled back onto the main road.

"She's
being attacked by Dream Stealer."

For a second I
thought Ash was going to pretend that he hadn't heard me.

"Yeah.
He's got his hooks pretty deep into her. She's not getting any real
sleep most nights. She tried to go without sleep, but eventually she
got to the point where the exhaustion was stronger than even the
terror of what he'd do next."

"She needs
to be locked up! It's only a matter of time before he breaks her, and
when that happens there isn't anything that she won't do."

"No. We
aren't locking her up. We'll keep her in the dark so she can't pass
anything important on; she's already started cutting herself out of
the loop when it comes to operational stuff."

"That
isn't good enough, Ash, and you know it. Even if we can keep her in
the dark when it comes to Alec and the others, that won't protect the
three of us. It's for her safety as much as it is for ours. For all
you know she was the reason that we got jumped earlier today."

"She
wasn't. I've been careful not to tell her where we are headed on any
given day."

"That
explains why you've been so evasive lately, but you did tell me and I
might have told her."

"When? The
three of us have hardly been out of sight of each other since we left
Nevada."

My beast should
have been ready to rip Ash's head off, but I couldn't seem to muster
the energy for real anger. Maybe it was all of the blood that I'd
lost, that or maybe I was just tired.

I wasn't mad, I
just wanted to go somewhere I wouldn't have to deal with the inherent
messiness of pack life. My life had turned into some kind of federal
disaster area and I was ready to be done with it.

"I don't
know, Ash. Maybe you're right and I never had a chance to tell her
where we were headed, but I can't guarantee that, which means that we
may have just broken radio silence for no reason. I can't believe
that you've kept this to yourself. You're not usually this reckless."

"I didn't
keep it to myself, at least not completely. Alec knows. That's why he
wanted you to come along with Kristin and me. My plan was to just
take her away somewhere safe, somewhere she couldn't do any harm if
he manages to break her, but Alec ordered me to bring you along."

"I wish he
would have told me the score for a change, but it makes sense. By
yourself it would just be a matter of time before you ended up dead.
Once Dream Stealer turned her, she'd just have to wait until you fell
asleep and then you'd be a sitting duck. This way we can watch each
other's backs at least."

I would have
been happy to just leave things there, but Ash was apparently made of
sterner stuff even than I'd realized.

"That
isn't the only reason Alec wanted you to come with us."

"I know,
Ash. He's hoping that I'll be able to put her down if she becomes too
dangerous to allow for any other option."

"I'm not
just going to stand by and let you kill her, Isaac. I'll fight you if
it comes to that."

Ash had both of
his hands on the steering wheel, there wasn't ever going to be a
better time to deal with him than right now. The temptation was
overwhelming. If I waited, then I was eventually going to have to
fight him on his terms, and that was a fight I might not be able to
win.

I sighed and
leaned back in my tan leather seat. "Why did you even agree to
have me come along then, Ash? I get not wanting to see Kristin get
hurt, I would have done almost anything to protect Jess, but you
could have just saved both of us a lot of headache and gone off by
yourself like you were planning."

"I wanted
you along because I'll need your help if I'm going to have any chance
of hunting Dream Stealer down."

It was too
fantastical to believe. A guy like Alec could talk about hunting down
and killing someone like Dream Stealer or Puppeteer, but that was
because he was in the same league as them. Alec could mow down normal
hybrids like pawns on a chessboard simply by unleashing his ability
on them and draining them dry.

These days the
only hybrid who could hope to consistently beat Alec was Puppeteer,
and even that wasn't guaranteed. Ash and I didn't have those kinds of
advantages. Even if we could find Dream Stealer he'd be surrounded by
enforcers like the one who had just wiped the floor with me. There
was no way that the two of us could hope to bring down a member of
the Coun'hij by ourselves. It was something worse than a suicide
mission—we would die without any hope of succeeding.

"That's
never going to happen, Ash, and you know it. Maybe if we could find
Dream Stealer then Alec could put together a strike force capable of
bringing him down, but there is literally zero chance of the two of
us finding him. He's got more than two hundred years of practice at
staying hidden."

"I have a
plan. It's a long shot, but I think it could work. The only question
is whether you're in."

I rubbed my
forehead, trying to buy myself time to think. "Tell me again why
you picked me instead of someone else? There were a lot of hybrids
back at the estate you could have asked Alec to send in my place."

"I picked
you because you were the best option. You're no enforcer, but you've
got more combat experience than most hybrids four or five times your
age. You know your way around the technology side of things, so you
can help run a stable of hackers if it comes to that."

"That kind
of talent doesn't come cheap."

"I know,
but money isn't an issue. I made off with plenty when I left home. I
can fund any conceivable spend for at least a few months. I just need
someone who can talk the talk well enough to keep whatever talent I
bring onboard honest. Besides, Alec trusts you, probably even more
than you realize. He's not going to be willing to send a strike force
of his best and brightest into danger on the word of just anyone."

"He trusts
you too, Ash."

"Yeah, but
I don't know if he trusts me that much. If he sends a force that size
into a trap it will be the end of the rebellion. It's a big ask. With
the two of us to confirm each other's story he'll be more likely to
believe that it's a real opportunity. Alec knows that you aren't
particularly fond of Kristin or me. You won't buy off on an attack op
unless you believe it's the real deal—not just to save
Kristin."

I couldn't help
myself. I laughed, loud enough that it should have woken Kristin up,
but she didn't even stir.

"So I got
signed up for a suicide mission because I don't like you. That's
karma if I've ever heard of it."

"That's
not the only reason, Isaac. I wanted you because I knew you would
understand what I was going through. You may not like us, but you'd
do the same thing for Jess if our positions were reversed. More than
any of the others, you understand me."

"Yeah, I
guess you're right there. I know what it feels like to worry that
you've lost the single most important person in your life."

Isaac Nazir
I-30
Western Arkansas

We made it
through the night without any problems. I got a full three hours of
sleep, and then once Ash was satisfied that I wasn't going to pass
out at the drop of a hat he finally resigned the wheel and let me
drive until almost dawn while he slept.

Kristin slept
the entire time without waking up, but it wasn't a peaceful slumber
by any stretch of the imagination. She thrashed around almost
constantly while Ash was asleep in the back of the SUV, and a few
times she yelled loud enough that she woke up Ash.

It was one of
the more disturbing experiences that I'd had to endure. It felt like
I was sitting next to a bomb. Dream Stealer had a long history of
driving people insane, he just usually worked with a finer touch than
this. Most of the time his victims didn't even realize what was going
on until it was too late.

From the
outside, most people never even saw it coming. You woke up one
morning and met a friend for breakfast. Maybe it was your girlfriend,
maybe it was a buddy you'd known since before you could walk.

Sometimes you
knew that they'd been struggling with insomnia, sometimes you didn't.
Maybe they weren't there when you arrived at
the restaurant, maybe they arrived late, maybe they never arrived at
all and you didn't know what had happened until you saw the special
report on the news later that day.

Sometimes
they snapped and drove a fuel truck into an elementary school. Other
times they walked up to you and stabbed you in the chest before you
could get out of your seat. There was no telling how one of Dream
Stealer's victims would go off of the rails, but they all went off of
the deep end eventually and they usually took someone else with them
when it happened.

Ash
seemed confident that Kristin still had things under control, but I
wasn't so sure. Dream Stealer had turned two-hundred-year-old shape
shifters. A teenage girl who occasionally had visions of the future
didn't stand a chance against him no matter how spunky she was.

I
spent the entire time I was driving worried Kristin was going to wake
up and try to stick a knife in the side of my neck. It wasn't exactly
conducive to recovering from nearly being disemboweled, so I
protested a lot less than normal when Ash offered to relieve me
behind the wheel.

We
made the switch at the next gas station and then hit another
drive-through for a fatty breakfast of sausage and biscuits that had
plenty of calories to stoke bodies that had all been pushed to
their limits in one way or another.

The
smell of the food was enough to finally wake Kristin, but she was so
groggy that I was done with my food before she'd done much more than
start picking at hers. I made a mental note to ask Ash if the
lethargy was a new development as I pulled out my tablet and plugged
it into the keyboard that turned it into the equivalent of a laptop.