Home > Boundary Broken (Boundary Magic #4)(10)

Boundary Broken (Boundary Magic #4)(10)
Author: Melissa F. Olson

I barely managed to set the phone on the nightstand before I sank gratefully into sleep.

My dreams were filled with sand.

I should have expected it, really. I had spent all morning wandering around a desert landscape trying to avoid thoughts of my time in Iraq; of course I would have the Iraq nightmare.

I had done two tours overseas and I had seen—and, occasionally, been responsible for—all kinds of terrible things, but my nightmares tended to be about those last two days, and this time was no different.

My team and I climbed into the Humvee and started along the road. About fifteen miles into our route, the first IED blew under the truck.

I had just gotten to the part where I dragged myself away from the crumpled Humvee and turned back to see a severed left arm when I heard my name being called.

“Lex! Lex!”

My eyes flew open, but the room around me was dark. Before I could register where I was, or who was speaking, my fists thrashed out—right at Simon’s face.

Simon, to his credit, was ready for it. He had one palm up, and as my right fist was about to connect with his nose, I felt it glance off something. His shield.

Panting, I went still. My eyes were adjusting to the near darkness, and I could make out the ruins of sheets and blankets around me. Sweat had soaked through my T-shirt and glued it to my chest.

“Shit,” I whispered. I sat up and pressed my back against the headboard, pulling my knees in.

The lamp on Simon’s side of the bed clicked on, and my friend reached for his glasses, jamming them on his face. His clothes and hair were rumpled, and there was a reddish mark on one cheek.

Shit.

“Did I hurt you?” I asked.

Simon blinked. “What? No.”

“Your cheek is red.”

“That’s just where I was sleeping on it,” he said, probably a lie. “You were, um, having a bad dream.”

I choked on a laugh. “I guess you could say that.”

“I’ve read about soldiers with PTSD,” he said uncomfortably, “but I guess I never realized . . . Lex . . .”

I shook my head tightly. Simon, who had three sisters, recognized this as Let’s talk about literally anything else. “What time is it?” I asked. The drapes were tightly closed, so I couldn’t even tell if it was still light out.

He turned around to check the alarm clock behind him. “About five thirty,” he reported.

Well after sunset. “We might as well get moving. I’ll call Quinn on the way and check in.”

“Okay.” Simon shifted to stand up, but I didn’t move. I didn’t trust my legs yet, not when my head was still swimming with memories. Simon glanced back at me and seemed to realize this. “I’ll, um, go use the bathroom first,” he suggested. I nodded, but I didn’t relax until I heard the door close behind him. Then I let the air out of my lungs with a great whoosh and scrubbed my face with my hands. That had been a bad one.

You’re okay, though. I heard Sam’s voice in my thoughts. You’re safe.

I felt a rush of relief when my cell phone rang on the bedside table. I reached for the phone expecting to see Quinn’s name on the screen, but the number was unfamiliar.

I answered it. “This is Lex.”

“It’s Mary.” Her voice shook with tension.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I’m almost back to Cheyenne, but I’ve been calling Ryan to check in and he’s not answering.”

I blinked hard, trying to force myself into the present. “He probably just doesn’t have cell phone service,” I said. “It’s really spotty in—”

“You don’t understand. I’ve been calling every twenty minutes for the last three hours. I just got off the phone with the pack’s tech guy, and he says Ryan’s phone GPS is just . . . gone.”

“Maybe he lost it,” I reasoned, but I was already standing up, starting to collect my few possessions from the room. “Or he could have dropped it.”

Mary let out an aggrieved sigh. “Ryan is way too careful for that,” she said, clearly at the limits of her patience. “Especially considering his cargo?”

Right. I had somehow forgotten about the two dead bodies Dunn was hauling up north. “Maybe he was in a fender bender? The phone might have gotten trashed.”

“That’s what I’m worried about. We can survive most car crashes, but if the cops searched the car and arrested him . . . I don’t know if he’d get to make a phone call to us. I have no idea how that works. Jail, I mean. No one in the pack has been arrested before and I don’t know how I would find him—”

She was babbling, so I broke in. “Okay, hang on. Where are you now?”

“I pulled over at a gas station near the state line. I’m trying to figure out if I should turn around and come back down there.”

I thought that over. Mary was not supposed to be in Maven’s territory. Every minute she was in Colorado without an Old World escort was another minute when she might be noticed by a witch or vampire, who might spread the word and create a political catastrophe.

Then again . . . “Mary,” I said carefully. “I want you to go back to Boulder. You can hang out at my place, if you don’t mind dogs and cats, or go to a hotel, but I don’t think you should return to Cheyenne yet.”

“Why not?”

Simon came out of the bathroom, a question on his face. I mouthed “Mary” to him.

“Lex? Why shouldn’t I go home?”

Tell her the truth, or soften it with a lie? I decided to rip off the Band-Aid. “Because there are a limited number of people who knew where Dunn was going to be today. And I’m guessing most of them are in your pack.”

Next to me, Simon’s eyes widened, and there was a long silence on the phone. Finally, I said, “Mary? Are you still there?”

Her voice was a low rumbling growl, like she was struggling to control herself enough to speak. “You think one of us—”

“I’m saying I don’t know,” I interrupted, “and neither do you, not for sure. But it shouldn’t hurt anything if you camp out for a few more hours while we find your alpha.”

There was a long silence. “You have no idea what you’re saying,” she spat.

“Maybe not.” I sighed. “Look, I’m not going to argue with you over the phone. But if you trust me even a little bit, please don’t go back to Cheyenne until we find Dunn.”

Another silence, then: “Where are you now?”

“We’re just leaving Alamosa; we can retrace his route.” Pinning the phone to my ear with my shoulder, I shoved my dirty clothes into my backpack and zipped it shut. Simon took the hint and began cramming stuff into his bag.

“All right,” Mary said at last. “I’ll go to your place.”

“Thank you,” I said with relief. “Can you tell me exactly where Dunn’s signal disappeared?”

Chapter 9

Ten minutes later, Simon and I were back on the road, heading north toward Rio Norte, Colorado, where Dunn’s cell phone had last pinged. It was less than thirty miles north of Alamosa, which worried me. When I’d talked to Mary, I’d assumed Dunn had gone off-grid hours away from here, maybe even in Wyoming. Rio Norte was too close.

Maven didn’t answer her phone, but that was typical for this early in the evening—she was probably feeding. I called Quinn and filled him in instead, keeping to a brief account of what we knew. He promised to find Maven in person and update her. If Dunn had actually been arrested, I was going to need her help. I’d never covered up anything as big as someone getting arrested with dead bodies in the car. It was way above my pay grade, and would require vampire intervention.

“How are we going to find him once we get to Rio Norte?” Simon asked when I’d hung up the phone.

It was a reasonable question. I glanced over at Simon. “I don’t suppose you have any magic that will help us find him.”

Simon shook his head. “I could, but I’d need something that belongs to him. The idea behind locating magic is—”

“Simon?” I interrupted, sensing him moving into teacher mode. “We’re almost to Rio Norte. Can I get the short version?”

He cleared his throat. “Right. Umm . . . the best bet would be spare keys to his car.”

I thought that over for a moment. Mary would probably be able to get those for us, but it would require her to go back to Cheyenne, which would be time-consuming and possibly dangerous.

Then I had another idea. “What about Cammie and Matt?” I asked, pointing my thumb toward the back of the Jeep, where I’d stashed the duffel bag. “Cammie has a hairbrush in there. If you can find their bodies, that’s where Dunn should be.”

“Huh.” Simon tapped his chin for a second, thinking. He had his scientist face on, and for a second I forgot my worry and had to smile. “That could work. I’ve never tried to find a dead body, but the body is human now, so the principle is sound.” When vampires or werewolves died, the magic that had clung to them left their bodies as it had found them . . . which was why Matt’s body had been human and nude when we’d uncovered it.

“Can you try it right now?”

“Better not. As you know, the most stable way for most witches to use magic is inside a circle. A moving car isn’t ideal.”

I nodded. Ahead of us, I saw a sign informing me that the Rio Norte exit was two miles away. “Okay, well, I don’t want to pull over right here, since someone might stop to see if we need help or a ride. Let’s get to Rio Norte and find an alley or deserted road or something.”

“Sounds good . . .” His voice drifted off as he leaned forward, squinting through the windshield. You could see a long way in this flat, unpopulated area. “Lex . . . Are those what I think they are?”

The bright red and blue lights of police cars were flashing just to the right of the Rio Norte exit. A lot of them. “Yeah,” I said, though my voice came out grim. “It’s probably not connected to us, though,” I added, sounding unconvincing even to myself.

I checked the speedometer and slowed to just under the speed limit, taking the exit off the highway. Just after we exited, I spotted a short metal bridge spanning the town’s namesake, the Rio Norte River. The bridge obviously led straight into the small downtown area, but it was currently blocked off by a cluster of four police vehicles. Just past them, on the bridge itself, there was a massive tow truck, its orange and white lights blinking somberly. I couldn’t see what the tow truck was actually doing, but a small crowd of onlookers was being contained on the far side of the bridge.

We reached the last intersection before the police cars, which was blocked off with sawhorses. A uniformed officer was standing in the road in a puffy, police-issue winter coat, trying to wave us along the detour with his big flashlight. Instead, I pulled up to him and rolled down my window. He automatically came over and bent his head to look in at us.

   
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