She was in the back, staring out of the heavily tinted window. Noah was up front beside Gabe, Zoey was on the other side, and Eve had insisted on coming. She was in the middle, as the smallest.
“Where are we?” Eve asked, brushing back a stray curl of her auburn hair.
“City Point,” Gabe answered grimly.
They pulled into the Castle Island parking lot, and Gabe killed the engine. Cally opened her door and got out, not waiting for the others. It was overcast, the clouds angry and lit with the yellows and reds of sunrise, and the wind whipped at her hair. Ahead, Fort Independence sat on its small hill, but she followedHarbor Walk around the side, down onto the fishing pier that extended into the water.
Their bond still tugged east, out over the ocean. There were harbor islands, but Cally was under no illusion. She knew, now, where they’d put him.
The others caught her up. Noah leaned on the rusted barrier beside her, staring off into the distance.
“He could still be on one of the islands,” Eve tentatively ventured, but no one responded.
“Can you reach him?” Cally asked Noah.
“No,” he said, his voice quiet. “I’ve been trying since we left the house.”
She nodded; he’d have told her if he could. She turned to Gabriel. “Can he breathe underwater?”
“No.” Gabe winced, adjusting his sunglasses, and then turned his back on the horizon where the sun peeked over. “He won’t drown. Well, technically, I guess he will. But it won’t kill him.”
“He’salivedown there?” Eve’s hazel eyes were round with horror.
“How do we get him back?” Cally asked of no one in particular.
“It depends how deep he is.” Noah kicked the chain fence, and it rippled along the pier with a rattle of protest.
“He’ll be deep.” Zoey stated what they all knew.
“I have a yacht,” Gabe said slowly. “Some of my thralls have naval experience.”
Noah glanced at him. “And the equipment?”
Gabe shook his head. “Not for anything beneath a hundred and fifty feet.”
“How deep is it?” Cally asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Zoey?” Noah prompted.
“Five hundred to a thousand feet,” Zoey answered. “Depending on how far out they took him.” She grimaced. “If they went far enough and dropped him off the edge of the continental shelf, you could add a zero to that. I don’t think they would though,” she added hastily as she saw Cally’s expression. “It’s a hell of a long way to go when the water here’s deep enough already.”
“Aren’t you an encyclopedia of surprise?” Gabe drawled.
Zoey shrugged. “Six years on subs out of Groton, Connecticut.”
It served to emphasize how little Cally knew of Antoine’s thralls. Zoey and Noah weren’t here of their own free will; how could she have forgotten that? The discomfort that had somehow faded returned with a vengeance.
“Yay, we have a submarine expert,” Eve said. “Finally, some good news.”
“I won’t be any use,” Zoey demurred. “I mostly did security with some routine maintenance.”
Cally stared out over the ocean, watching the sun rise; the deep reds stained the clouds like blood. She tightened her arms around herself. “How the hell do we pull Antoine out of a watery grave a thousand feet down?”
No one had an answer.
Two
