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Oh, God.
Rio.
Find me.
The low hum of the road beneath the vehicle's spinning wheels vibrated in her ears. She tried to see where they were heading, but through the bare slit of her lids, all she saw was darkness outside the tinted windows. Treetops rushing by, black against the night sky.
Her face ached from the blow Gordon Fasso had dealt her when she'd fought against her capture. She'd tried to scream, to escape, but he and the bulky guard who accompanied him had proven too strong for her.
Fasso alone would have been far too powerful for her to fight off.
But then, he would be, since he wasn't a man at all, but a vampire.
She had the very real sense that he was not even Gordon Fasso, if that man ever existed.
The monster who had her now was also the one who killed her mother. She didn't have to see her mother's broken body to know that it was Gordon Fasso who murdered her, either by pushing her off that twelfth-floor balcony, or by scaring her so totally that she leapt to her own death to escape him.
Maybe she'd done it for Dylan, a thought that made the loss even harder for Dylan to bear.
But she could grieve for her mother another time, and she would. Right now she had to stay alert and try to find a way out of this horrific situation.
Because if her captor succeeded in bringing her to wherever he intended, Dylan knew that there would be no escaping.
All that awaited her at the end of this path was pain and death.
At some point well into Connecticut, Rio realized that no matter how fast he drove, he stood no chance of finding Dylan. Not in New York, certainly. He was still a couple of hours away, and there was no telling where she was - or even if she was in New York anymore at all.
He was losing her.
Close enough that he could feel her reaching out to him, yet too far to grab hold of her.
"Goddamn it!"
Fear permeated every cell in his body, combined with a sorrow so profound it shredded him from the inside. He was raw, bleeding...racked with futile rage.
His vision swam with the rising pound of his temples. His skull screamed as the blackout started crowding his senses.
"No," he growled, stomping on the accelerator.
He rubbed at his eyes, commanding them to stay focused. He could not let his weakness overtake him now. He could not fail Dylan - not like this.
"No, goddamn it. I have to reach her. Ah, Cristo, " he choked, a broken sob catching in his throat. "I cannot lose her."
Go to the reservoir.
Rio heard the static-filled whisper but at first it didn't register.
Croton Reservoir.
He whipped his head around to the passenger seat and caught a glimpse of dark eyes and sable hair. The image was nearly transparent, and the one face he knew better than to trust.
Eva.
He snarled and cut away from the ghostly hallucination. Until now, he'd only seen Eva in the darkness of his dreams. Her false apologies and tearful insistence that she wanted to help him had just been illusions, tricks of his cracked mind. Maybe this was too.
Dylan's life on the line. He'd be damned before he let his own madness steer him off course now.
Rio, hear me. Let me help you.
