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“Damn it, Becca! That’s why I left. She swore to leave you alone if I did—and she kept that promise. I couldn’t take the chance of someone else finding out. I didn’t want this for you. The pain of having to destroy others, the regret—” His eyes flicked up, to Hunter, hardening for an instant. “I didn’t want you to be another teenager trained to kill. But then I got called for the family again—only to find out their parents had died in a fire. Now another Guide has been killed—apparently they’re terrorizing the other families in town—”
o;No.” His voice was sharp again, and he caught her hand and pulled her into a jog as Casper rounded a corner into the strip mall parking lot. “I knew you couldn’t have done it. I figured that out right away. But I thought maybe the Merricks were using you. And you trusted me. You were an easy link to follow.”
“God.” She shook her head. “And I thought all those rocks were so special. I’m such an idiot—”
“They are,” he said. “They are.” He pulled her to a stop, looking down at her in the middle of the blacktop. The breeze lifted hair from her neck, wrapping around her body and urging her close to him.
“Just the quartz tracked you,” he said. “Everything else did exactly what I said it did.” He paused. “Do you trust me, Becca?”
She licked her lips, uncertain. He’d lied about so much. Was he lying now?
Casper barked again, halfway across the parking lot. He was heading for the grocery store area, where dozens of cars were parked in a big colorful mass, drawing sunlight like gems.
“Shit,” said Hunter. He took off after his dog.
She took off after him.
Casper was dodging between cars, leaping onto hoods and down, probably reliving his good ol’ days as a police dog.
“Casper!” Hunter called. “Hier! Fuss!”
Casper didn’t hier. Or fuss.
He dove down another row, and Hunter and Becca almost caught up to him. The dog stopped on the far side of a green pickup truck, and she heard a man yelling. It sounded like groceries hit the pavement.
Becca had almost forgotten who they were tracking. She’d succumbed to the more immediate worry that Casper was going after someone who had a bag full of hot dogs or something. So though her brain registered the logo on the side of the truck, though her mind registered the familiarity of the voice, she didn’t put two and two together until she skidded around the side of the bumper.
And there was Casper, snarling viciously at his prey, the man Hunter had ordered him to track.
Becca’s father.
CHAPTER 39
Chris had found a crack in the concrete floor. He was spitting at it.
“This is kind of a stretch,” said Nick.
Chris spit again, running his finger along the four-inch crack, making sure he wouldn’t lose it in the darkness, coaxing his saliva into the opening. “What else do we have to do?”
“That crack would have to go all the way through the concrete. Like, through the foundation. And Michael would have to be within ... what, fifty feet? A hundred?”
“Again, what else do we have to do?”
Silence for a while, during which Chris silently agreed with Nick. His spit was evaporating before it could travel too far. He didn’t have enough power to force it more quickly.
“Pee on it,” said Nick.
Always practical. He could probably feel Chris’s frustration.
Chris had thought of that anyway. “I’m worried if I stand up, I’ll lose the crack.”
He kept thinking of the power on the bridge, how he’d drawn such strength from the water. He’d saved Becca’s life. She hadn’t been breathing. He’d never felt such a strong connection to his element.
Why couldn’t he do that now?
There’d been the car accident. The fire. Becca had been trapped. He’d pounded on her window, desperate.
He had no shortage of desperation now.
