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Michael hadn’t considered that. “Maybe you two should stay here.”
Tyler snorted. “Fuck that. I don’t work that way, Merrick.”
“We’re safer together,” said Hunter. “Not . . ” He hesitated, as if unsure he wanted to finish that sentence. He swallowed. “Not apart.”
They’d be safest with all five elements represented. That’s what Hunter wasn’t saying.
They didn’t have all the elements anymore.
He couldn’t start thinking about any of it or he’d never be able to move again. He needed to do something, to act.
“Come on,” Michael said. “The storage shed is by the old playing fields.”
As they crept across the park, Michael kept his focus on the earth, feeling for signs of anyone nearby, whether friend or enemy. Trees here were few and far between, and the moon cast a silver glow on the baseball diamond and the two soccer fields. A storage shed sat between them. At one point, it had been a bright, sunny yellow, but now it looked gray in the moonlight, and some of the wood from the sides had broken and fallen off.
Silence hung over everything, broken only by the water hitting the rocky breakers on the east side of the peninsula.
They stopped as a unit.
Hunter kept his voice low. “Are you sure this is where she said she was hiding?”
“Yeah.” Michael hesitated. Maybe his sense of self-preservation had kicked in since the numbness at the bombed house had worn off, but he didn’t want to walk into a bullet if he could help it.
o;Good,” said Michael. The rage he’d felt earlier was nothing compared to this. His power was already reaching for the earth below the truck, ready to lay waste to the entire county if that was what it took. “I’m going to find him and kill him.”
“Not if I get to him first,” said Hunter. Metal clicked in his hands. Light glinted off his gun.
“Jesus,” said Tyler. He reached over and unlocked his glove box.
When he pulled out a gun of his own, Michael turned wide eyes his way. “You had a gun when we faced that guy in the woods?”
“I didn’t have it on me. I didn’t think I’d need to be armed to board up your front windows.”
Michael’s cell phone chimed, and he pulled it out of his pocket, expecting a text from Hannah. His heart leapt, hoping for good news.
But this text wasn’t from Hannah. It was from a new unknown number.
Did you honestly think I was working alone?
Michael didn’t hesitate. He typed back.
I’m going to find you and kill you.
The response appeared almost immediately.
Go ahead and try. Save me some time.
Michael started to reply, but another message appeared below that one.
I already took care of your brothers.
Michael stared at that sentence until it burned itself into his eyeballs.
I already took care of your brothers.
The letters blazed and blurred until he couldn’t make sense of them anymore. To think, earlier he’d thought he’d lost everything.
He hadn’t felt this kind of despair since his parents had been trapped in that fire.
