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“I’m here. I need you to come. I knocked one of them unconscious, but it won’t be long—”
“You knocked who unconscious? Calla, I don’t understand.”
“One of the Guides, Michael. They’re in town. There’s one here, but he’s unconscious. I need you to come here.”
“Okay,” he said, breathless. “Okay, I’ll get there.”
“Hurry,” she said. “Before the other one gets back.”
CHAPTER 28
Michael had been sure the fire marshal would stop him from leaving. Too many recent interactions had ended with him in handcuffs.
But he’d turned on his heel and walked away, and no one had stopped him. Tyler and Hunter had hurried after.
Michael knew the old park well. A few acres of land made a narrow peninsula, with a beach on one side and a rundown pier on the other. He’d played there as a child, when the playground had been in good repair and the swing chains had still had all their seats. Now, there were nicer parks in more accessible parts of the county, and this one seemed to have been forgotten. None of the streetlights in the parking lot worked, leaving the entire place bathed in moonlight.
When he got out of Tyler’s truck and put his feet on the pavement, power swelled up to greet him.
A lot of power. Enough to make him hesitate. The Guide had hidden before, and pretty effectively. This was a deliberate display.
“Do you feel that?” he said to Hunter.
“Yes.” Hunter’s gun was already in his hands. He looked focused now that they had a task, as if he’d compartmentalized all the horror of the past few hours.
“Do you think it’s a trap?” said Tyler.
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.
“I’ll stay back here,” said Tyler. He cocked his gun and aimed at the shed. “Cover you both.”
Michael nodded and moved forward, asking the ground for silence. He and Hunter circled the shed, looking for any sign of movement. Tyler followed, going wide to keep them in his line of sight.
On the far side of the shed, Michael stopped short. “Jesus,” he whispered.
Calla was on the ground. Her clothes were torn and filthy and streaked with blood. Her skin was mottled with bruises. Blood stained her lips and trailed out of her mouth, dripping onto the ground.
