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ERIC PAUSED BENEATH the Chinatown archway and looked back. He shouldn’t have let her go off on her own, gun or no gun, pride or no pride.
He pulled out his cell phone. They had GPS trackers installed on their phones. If she was sitting at an outdoor café in North Beach enjoying a gelato, he’d be able to tell pretty quickly.
He pulled up the GPS app and tapped in Christina’s number. The map popped up, and a red pinpoint located Christina’s phone.
He shaded the display with his hand and swore.
She’d come out on the other side of North Beach, through the seedy part, and looked to be heading up to Coit Tower. What the hell was she doing?
Holding the phone in front of him like some sort of beacon, he made his way back through the streets of Chinatown, shouldering through the crowds. He kept glancing at the phone to make sure he was heading in the right direction.
The tourists thinned and his heart hammered. Either the GPS locater wasn’t all that accurate, or she hadn’t moved since he first located her.
He panted as he pumped his legs uphill, and then stopped at the top. Relief flooded his bones as he spotted Christina sitting on a stone wall. As he made his way toward her, the relief evaporated.
“Christina!”
She turned a blank, pale face to him from her crouched position on the wall. Her eyes were pools of black coffee.
He jogged toward her and kneeled at her feet, running his hands down her arms. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I...” She closed her mouth and her tongue swept across her lips. She tried again. “My father.”
Dread pounded against his temples. Was her father the next victim? “Is he hurt? Did your sister call you?”
Her dark brows collided over her nose. “No.”
“What is it, Christina?” He took both of her hands in his. “What happened to your father?”
“N-nothing happened to him.” She closed her eyes and her lashes fluttered against her cheeks. “He was here.”
He cranked his head around, peering at the empty street, except for a car pulling into a driveway. “Here? Where is he?”
Tilting her head back, her eyelids flew open, and she scanned the sky. “He appeared in front of me, Eric.”
He swallowed as a chill crept over his flesh. “Appeared?”
“Like a...an apparition.”
He fell back on his heels. Great. Christina was seeing ghosts. “You mean he wasn’t physically here?”
“Not physically. He appeared to me. It was him and it wasn’t. It was his face and form. I don’t know how else to explain it. I’ve never seen anything like it before. He’s never appeared to me like that before.”
He liked it better when Christina joked about this stuff. “Did he do or say anything?”
“Not really. No words, but he was warning me.”
“Could it have just been your imagination?”
“In a way, it was my imagination, but he willed it. I didn’t conjure him up.”
“What was the warning?”
“He didn’t speak. It was a feeling, a sense.”
His breathing slowed down. He could make sense of this. “Obviously, you’d think he was warning you, he and your sister. The warning manifested itself in this vision.”
“You’re trying to explain it away in practical terms, but it was more than that. His warning chilled me, much more than my sister’s words over the phone.”
“If someone appeared to me out of thin air, I’d be freaked out, too.”
“It was different than that.” She uncurled her body and raised her arms to the sky as if trying to bring him back. “It was something about our legacy, our heritage.”
“You know that already, Christina. This is your father’s coven that’s being hunted down, your coven.”
She shook her head. “They’re coming for me. They must be coming for me.”
He took her trembling frame in his arms, to hell with her deception. “We know that. If we didn’t know that after the car aiming for you two nights ago, we knew it after the attack on you last night, which is why you shouldn’t be wandering the streets by yourself—even if you are a big bad FBI agent with a big bad weapon. I should’ve never allowed it.”
She heaved a sigh and spoke into his shoulder, her words muffled. “That would’ve gone over real well with me.”
“I should’ve gone with you.”
“How’d you find me?”
He reached into his pocket for his phone and held it up. “Remember the GPS trackers?”
“I’m glad we have those, even though I wasn’t in any danger from my father.”
“Let’s get you back to the hotel. You’re in no condition to walk back. Your body hasn’t stopped shaking since I found you.”
