Текст книги "Taken by Midnight"
Автор книги: Lara Adrian
Соавторы: Lara Adrian
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 22 страниц)
“I want to know,” Jenna said. “Damn it, I need to know. Please, Alex, as my friend. Tell me the truth.”
Alex stared at her, let out a long exhalation as she slowly shook her head. “Oh, Jen. There’s so much you don’t know. Things I didn’t know myself until just a couple of weeks ago, after Kade showed up in Harmony.”
Jenna stood there, watching her normally frank and forthright friend struggle for words. “Tell me, Alex. What is this all about?”
“Vampires, Jen.” The word was whispered, but Alex’s gaze didn’t waver. “You know they’re real now. You saw that for yourself. But what you don’t know is that they’re not like we’ve been taught to believe from movies and horror novels.”
Jenna scoffed. “That thing that attacked me was pretty horrific.”
“I know,” Alex continued, imploring now. “I can’t excuse what the Ancient did to you. But hear me out. There are others of his kind that are not so different from us, Jen. On the surface, of course, we aren’t quite the same. They have different needs for survival, but deep down, there is a core of humanity inside them. They have families and friends. They are capable of incredible love and kindness and honor. Just like us, there is good and bad among them, too.”
It wasn’t that long ago—a mere week, in fact—that Jenna would have burst out laughing at hearing something so outlandish as what Alex was telling her now.
But everything had changed since then. A week ago felt like a century from where she was standing now. Jenna couldn’t laugh, couldn’t even muster a word of denial as Alex went on, explaining how the Breed, as they preferred to be called, had come to exist and then thrive for thousands of years in the shadows of the human world.
Jenna could only listen as Alex told her how the Order had been founded centuries ago by Lucan and a handful of others, most of whom were long dead. The men headquartered in this compound were all warriors, including Kade and Brock, even the charmingly geekish Gideon. They were Breed, preternatural and deadly. They were something other, just as Jenna’s instincts had told her.
To a man, the Order’s members, then as now, had pledged themselves to provide protection for both the human race and the Breed, their mission hunting down blood-addicted vampires called Rogues.
Jenna held her breath when Alex softly confessed that when she was a child in Florida, her mother and younger brother were attacked and killed by Rogues. Alex and her father had narrowly escaped with their lives. “The story we told everyone about my mom and Richie when we moved to Harmony was just that, Jen. A story. It was a lie we both wanted to believe. I think Dad eventually did, and then the Alzheimer’s took care of the rest. I almost could have believed our lie, too, until the killings began up in Alaska. Then I knew. I couldn’t run from the truth anymore. I had to face it.”
Jenna closed her eyes, letting all of these incredible realizations settle on her shoulders like a heavy cloak. She could hardly dismiss what she’d been through, no more than she could dismiss the raw pain of her best friend’s experience as a child. Alex’s ordeal was in her past, thankfully. She had carried on. She had found happiness finally, perhaps ironically, with Kade.
Jenna hoped she might be able to move beyond the nightmare she’d endured, but she felt the cold touch of a shackle when she thought about the bit of unknown material floating beneath the base of her skull.
“What about me?” she heard herself murmur. Her voice rose with the spike of anxiety that flooded her bloodstream. “What about the thing that’s inside me, Alex? What is it? How am I going to get rid of it?”
“We don’t have those answers yet, Jenna.” Alex moved closer, concern creasing her brow. “We don’t know, but I promise you, we’ll find a way to help you. Kade and the rest of the Order will do everything in their power to figure this out. In the meantime, they will protect you and make sure you’re well cared for.”
“No.” Jenna wrapped her arms around herself. “All I need is to be back home. I want to go back to Harmony.”
“Oh, Jen.” Alex slowly shook her head. “The life you knew in Alaska is gone now. Everything in Harmony is changed. Precautions had to be taken.”
She didn’t like the sound of that at all. “What are you talking about? What precautions? What’s changed?”
“The Order had to make sure that word of the Ancient and the strange happenings around town didn’t leak out to the rest of the population.” Alex’s gaze stayed steady on hers. “Jenna, they scrubbed everyone’s memories of the week surrounding the killings in the bush and the other deaths around Harmony. As far as anyone up there is concerned, you and I have both been gone from Harmony for months already. You can’t go back and raise a lot of questions. It would all come crashing down around us if you do.”
Jenna forced herself to hold it together as she processed everything she was hearing. Vampires and covert headquarters. An alternate world that had existed alongside her own reality for thousands of years. Her best friend of the past two decades having barely survived a vampire attack as a child.
And then the part that brought back a fresh wave of grief: the recent multiple homicides in Harmony, which apparently included her brother. “Tell me what happened to Zach.”
Alex’s face was full of regret. “He had secrets, Jen. A lot of them. Maybe it’s better if you don’t know everything—”
“Tell me,” Jenna said, hating the gentle treatment she was getting, particularly from Alex. “We’ve never let bullshit stand between us, and I sure as hell don’t want to start now.”
Alex nodded. “Zach was dealing drugs and alcohol to the Native populations. He and Skeeter Arnold had been working together for some time. I didn’t figure it out until just before Zach …” She exhaled softly. “When I confronted Zach about what I knew, he got violent, Jen. He pulled a gun on me.”
Jenna closed her eyes, sick to think that her older brother—the decorated cop she strived to emulate practically all her life—was, in fact, corrupt. Granted, they had never been truly close, siblings or not, and they’d been drifting apart more and more in recent years.
God, how many times had she pressed Zach to look into Skeeter Arnold’s questionable activities around Harmony? Now Zach’s reluctance to do so made a lot of sense. He didn’t really care about what was going on in town. He was more concerned with protecting himself. How far would he have gone to protect his dirty little secret?
“Did he hurt you, Alex?”
“No,” she said. “But he would have, Jen. I took off on my snowmachine, out to your place. He followed me. When we got there, he fired off a shot—to scare me, more than anything. Everything happened so fast after that. The next thing I knew, the Ancient had crashed out of your cabin and took him down. After the initial strike, it was over very quickly for him.”
Jenna stared then, for a long moment, utterly at a loss for words. “Jesus Christ, Alex. Everything you’re telling me here … it’s all true? All of it?”
“Yes. You said you wanted to know. I couldn’t withhold it from you, and I think it’s better that you understand.”
Jenna stepped backward, stumbling a bit. She was suddenly awash in confusion. Suddenly swamped in emotion that shortened her breath and put a tight squeeze on her chest. “I have to … need some time alone …”
Alex nodded. “I know how hard this must be for you, Jenna. Believe me, I know.”
She drifted toward the adjoining bathroom, Alex moving across the floor with her, sticking close as though she thought Jenna might collapse. But Jenna’s legs weren’t about to give out on her. She was stunned and shaken by what she’d just heard, but her body and mind were far from weak.
Adrenaline coursed through her, flooding her senses and putting her fight-or-flight instinct on high alert. She forced a calmness into her expression as she looked at Alex now, while inside she felt anything but calm. “I think I’ll take that shower now. I just … I want to be alone for a little while. I need to think …”
“All right,” Alex agreed, ushering her inside the enormous bathroom. “Take whatever time you need. I’ll get you some clothes and shoes, then I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
Jenna nodded, her eyes following Alex to the door and waiting for it to close behind her. Only then did the tears begin to fall. She wiped at them as they streamed down her cheeks, hot as acid, even while the rest of her felt chilled to the core.
She felt lost and scared, as desperate as an animal caught in a trap. She had to get out of this place, even if it meant chewing off her own limb to escape. Even if it meant using a friend.
Jenna cranked the hot water in the massive two-person shower. As the steam began to fill the room, she thought about the elevator that had carried the other women and the young girl down from the outside.
She thought about freedom, and what it might take for her to taste it.
“Still another two bloody hours to sundown,” Brock said, glancing at the clock on the tech lab wall as if he could will the night to come. He pushed off the conference table he’d been leaning against, his legs antsy, his body needing to move. “The days may be short this time of year in New England, but damn, do they crawl sometimes.”
He felt eyes on him as he began a tight prowl of the room. It was only himself, Kade, and Gideon in the tech lab now; Lucan had gone to find Gabrielle, and Hunter and Rio had both left to join Renata, Nikolai, and Tegan in the weapons room for a bit of sparring before the start of the night’s patrols in the city. He should have gone with them. Instead he’d stayed behind in the lab, curious to see the results of Gideon’s latest blood work on Jenna.
He paused behind the computer screen and watched a set of stats scroll on the display. “How much longer is it going to take, Gid?”
For a few seconds, the clatter of fingers racing over a keyboard was the only reply. “I’m just running one last DNA analysis, then we should have some data.”
Brock grunted. Impatient, he crossed his arms over his chest and continued wearing a track in the floor.
“You feeling all right?”
When he pivoted his head, he met Kade’s narrowed, assessing look. He scowled back at the warrior. “Yeah, why?”
Kade shrugged. “I don’t know, man. I’m not used to seeing you so twitchy.”
“Twitchy?” Brock repeated the word like it had been an insult. “Shit. I don’t know what you mean. I’m not twitchy.”
“You’re twitchy,” Gideon put in over the clickety-clack of his work at the computer. “In fact, you’ve been visibly distracted for the past few hours. Ever since Alex’s human friend woke up today.”
Brock felt his scowl deepen even as his pace across the floor grew more agitated. Hell, maybe he was on edge, but only because he was eager for darkness to fall so he could hit the pavement on patrol and do what he’d been trained to do. That was all. It had nothing to do with anything—or anyone—else.
If he was distracted by Jenna Darrow, it was because her presence in the compound was a breach of Order rules. They had never permitted a human inside their headquarters. All of the warriors were acutely aware of that fact, a point made obvious when she and Alex had walked past the tech lab a short time ago. And that this human woman carried something alien inside her—something undetermined, which may or may not prove detrimental to the Order and its mission against Dragos—made her presence there all the more disturbing.
Jenna had everyone on edge to a certain degree. Brock was no different. At least, that’s what he told himself as he paced one final time behind Gideon’s workstation, then exhaled a rough curse.
“Fuck it, I’m outta here. If anything interesting comes in on that blood work before nightfall, I’ll be in the weapons room.”
He strode to the tech lab’s door and paused as the wide glass panel slid open in front of him. No sooner had he stepped across the threshold than Alex came rushing toward the lab from the direction of her and Kade’s quarters.
“She’s gone,” Alex blurted as she entered the room, clearly upset. “It’s Jenna … she’s gone!”
Brock didn’t know why the news should hit his gut like a physical blow. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” Alex replied, misery in her eyes.
Kade was at his mate’s side in less than half a second. “What happened?”
Alex shook her head. “She took a shower and got dressed. When she came out of the bathroom she said she was tired. She asked me if she could lie down for a while on the sofa. When I turned around to get her a pillow and spare blanket from the closet, she was just … gone. Our apartment door was wide open into the corridor, but there was no sign of Jenna. I’ve been looking for the last few minutes, but I can’t find her anywhere. I’m worried about her. And I’m sorry, Kade. I should have been more careful. I should have—”
“It’s okay,” he said, gently stroking Alex’s arm. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Maybe I did. I told her about the Breed and about the Order. I told her everything about Zach, and about how we left things back in Harmony. She had so many questions, and I thought she had a right to know.”
Brock stifled the curse that was riding at the tip of his tongue. He knew damn well that he would have been hard-pressed to lie to Jenna, too.
Kade nodded, sober as he dropped a kiss on Alex’s brow. “It’s okay. You did the right thing. It’s better that she knows the truth up front.”
“I’m just afraid that the truth has sent her into a panic.”
“Ah, Christ,” Gideon muttered from his position in front of the compound’s computer banks. On one of the panels that monitored the estate’s motion detectors, lights started blinking like a Christmas tree. “She’s in the mansion at ground level. Or, rather, she was in the mansion. We’ve got a security breach on an exterior door.”
“I thought all topside points of entry were locked as procedure,” Brock said, not meaning it to come out as the accusation it sounded like.
“Have a look for yourself,” Gideon said, pivoting the monitor as he clipped on a hands-free headset and punched a speed-dial number. “Lucan, we have a situation.”
While the Order’s leader got a quick rundown, Brock stalked over to the computer command center, Kade and Alex following. On the security camera feed from the estate above the compound, one of the mansion’s steel-reinforced lock bars was twisted off its mountings like a piece of taffy. The door was flung open to the daylight outside, the glare of solar rays on the snow-filled yard nearly blinding, even on-screen.
“Holy hell,” Brock muttered.
Beside him, Alex gasped in disbelief. Kade was silent, his gaze as grim as it was stunned when his eyes slid to Brock. On the phone, Gideon was now giving urgent orders to one of the Order’s more formidable females in residence, namely Renata, to head topside on the double and bring Jenna back in.
“I’ve got her location on camera now,” he told Renata. “She’s on the east side of the property, heading southeast on foot. If you take the south service door, you should be able to head her off before she reaches the perimeter fence.”
“The perimeter fence,” Brock murmured. “Jesus Christ, that thing is juiced with more than fourteen thousand volts of electricity.”
Gideon kept talking, advising Renata of Jenna’s progress and position.
“Cut the power,” Brock said. “You have to cut the power to the fence.”
Gideon swiveled a dubious look on him. “And let her waltz right off the property? No can do, my man.”
Brock knew the warrior was right. He knew the smartest, best thing to do for the Order was to ensure that the human woman stayed contained within the compound. But the thought of Jenna coming into contact with a potentially lethal dose of electricity was too much. It was, in a word, unacceptable.
He glanced at the security camera feed and saw Jenna, clad in a white sweater and jeans, her loose brown hair flying behind her as she raced across the snowy yard at a blind clip toward the edge of the property. Straight for the ten-foot-tall fence that hemmed the estate in from all sides.
“Gideon,” he growled, as Jenna’s fleeing form grew smaller on the monitor. “Cut the goddamn power.”
Brock didn’t wait for the other warrior to comply. He stalked over and slammed his hand down on the control panel. Lights blinked on, and a persistent beeping kicked up in warning of the disabled power grid.
A long silence filled the room.
“I see her.” Renata’s voice came over the speaker in the lab. “I’m right behind her.”
They watched on-screen as Nikolai’s mate sped on foot in the direction of Jenna’s trail in the snow. Moments ticked by as they waited for further word.
Finally, Renata spoke, but the curse she hissed into her mouthpiece wasn’t what anyone in the room had hoped to hear. “Goddamn it. No …”
Brock’s veins went cold with dread. “What’s happened?”
“Talk to me,” Gideon said. “What’s going on, Renata?”
“Too late,” she replied, her voice oddly wooden. “I was too late—she got away. She’s gone.”
Gideon leaned in, cocking his head toward Brock. “She climbed the bloody fence, didn’t she?”
“Climbed it?” Renata’s answering laugh was more of a sharp exhalation. “No, she didn’t climb it. She … ah, shit. Believe it or not, I just watched her jump over it.”
CHAPTER
Four
The road hummed beneath Jenna’s jeans-clad backside and the soles of her snow-sodden shoes, the smell of smoked meat and male sweat wafting at her from all directions inside the unlit confines of the delivery van. She sat on the floor among stacked crates and cardboard cartons, jostling with every bump. Her stomach roiled, though whether from the adrenaline that was pouring through her or the cloying mix of processed meat and body odor that hammered her nostrils, she couldn’t be sure.
How she’d managed to get off the compound’s property was a blur. Her head was still swimming with the disturbing revelations of the past few hours, and her senses had been on overdrive from the moment she made the decision to attempt escape. Even now, sights and sounds and motion—every bit of sensory input—seemed to be flying at her in a chaotic blur.
Up in front of the van, the driver and his passenger chattered animatedly in a thick, Slavic-sounding foreign language. They had known enough English to agree to take her into the city when she’d flagged them down on the street outside the estate grounds, and at the moment that had been good enough for her. Except now that they had gone a few miles, she couldn’t help but notice they had stopped smiling at her and trying to talk to her in broken English.
Now the driver cast furtive glances at her in the rearview mirror, and she didn’t like the sound of the low-voiced, chuckling exchanges the two men shared as she bounced around in back of the darkened van.
“How far to downtown?” she asked, holding on to a crate of hard salami as the van took a left through a caution light. Her stomach pitched with the motion, her ears ringing, head pounding. She squinted through the windshield at the front of the vehicle as it headed toward the late-afternoon glow of the city in the distance. “The bus station, yes? That’s where you said you’d take me. How far is it?”
For a second, she wondered if either of them could hear her over the loud rumble of the van’s engine as the driver gave it more gas. The sound seemed deafening to her. But then the passenger pivoted around and said something to her in his own language.
Something that seemed to amuse his lead-footed friend behind the wheel.
A knot of dread formed in Jenna’s gut. “You know what? I’ve changed my mind. No bus station. Take me to the police. Po-lice,” she said, dragging out the word so there could be no misunderstanding. She gestured to herself as the driver flicked a scowling glance at her in the mirror. “I’m a cop. I am police.”
She spoke with the no-bullshit edge that came to her like second nature, even all these years since she’d been in uniform. But if the pair of jokers up front picked up on her tone or what she was telling them, they didn’t seem moved to believe her.
“Police?” The driver chuckled as he looked over at his companion. “Nassi, nuk duken si ajo e policisë për ju?”
“No,” the one apparently named Nassi replied, shaking his head, thin lips pulling back from crooked teeth. His thick-browed gaze traveled in a slow crawl over Jenna’s body. “Për mua, ajo duket si një copë e shijshme e gomarit.”
She looks like a tasty piece of ass to me.
Jenna thought the dark leer that Nassi sent her must have been enough to tell her what he’d said, but the words seemed so clear to her. Impossibly clear. She stared at the two men as they began a private conversation in their native tongue. She watched their lips, studied the sounds that should have been entirely foreign to her—words that she couldn’t possibly understand yet, somehow, did.
“I don’t know about you, Gresa, my friend, but I could do with a bit of prime American tail,” Nassi added, so confident that his foreign speech would slip right past her, he had the balls to look Jenna square in the eye as he spoke. “Take this bitch back to the office and let’s you and me have a little fun with her.”
“Sounds good to me.” Gresa laughed and dropped his foot down on the gas pedal, sending the delivery van speeding under a highway overpass and into the throng of busy traffic.
Oh, God.
Jenna’s feeling of dread from a few minutes ago went as cold as ice in her belly now.
The sudden jolt of acceleration threw her back on her ass. She scrambled to hold on to the crates around her, knowing her chances of escaping the fast-moving vehicle were nil. If the fall out of the van didn’t kill her, the roaring cars and trucks flying by on both lanes beside them certainly would.
Making everything worse, her head was beginning to spin with the barrage of lights and noise from outside the van. Automobile exhaust fumes, coupled with the stench inside the vehicle, formed a nauseating olfactory stew that had her stomach turning on itself, threatening to rise up on her. All of her surroundings seemed amplified and too intense, as though the world had somehow gotten more vivid, more choked with detail.
Was she losing her mind?
After all that she’d been through recently, after all she’d seen and heard, she shouldn’t be surprised if she was cracking up.
And as she sat back, miserable against the crates and cartons, listening to the two men discuss their ideas for her in eager, violent detail, she got the feeling that her sanity wasn’t the only thing at risk right now. Nassi and his friend Gresa had some rather nasty plans for her back at their office. Plans that included knives and chains and soundproof walls so no one would hear her screams, if Jenna could trust her sudden newfound fluency in their language.
They were arguing over which of them would get to enjoy her first, as they wheeled the van off the main road and into a ratty section of the city. The pavement narrowed, streetlights growing more sparse the deeper they traveled into what looked to be an industrial area. Warehouses and long, red-brick buildings crowded the street and alleyways.
The delivery van bounced over large potholes and uneven asphalt, the tires crunching in the iced-over brown slush that bunched on both sides of the pavement.
“Home sweet home,” Nassi said, in English this time, grinning at her from around his passenger seat. “Ride is over. Time to collect our fare.”
The two men laughed as the driver put the van in park and cut the engine. Nassi came out of his seat and started to head back inside the van. Jenna knew she would have only a few seconds to act—precious seconds to disable one or both of the men and bolt.
She inched into a stable position, preparing for the moment she knew was coming.
Nassi smiled broadly as he walked farther into the vehicle. “What do you have to offer us, hmm? Let me see.”
“No,” Jenna said, shaking her head and feigning the helpless female. “No, please.”
He chuckled wolfishly. “I like a woman who will beg. A woman who knows her place.”
“Please, don’t,” Jenna said as he stepped ever closer. The stink of him nearly made her retch, but she kept her eyes fixed on him. When he got within arm’s length of her, she thrust out her left hand, palm forward, as though to physically hold him off.
She knew he would grab her.
She counted on it, and could barely contain the answering jolt of triumph that surged through her veins as he snatched her by the wrist and hauled her up off the floor of the van.
She put her weight into the movement, using his own brute force to launch herself at him. With the heel of her free hand, she smashed him hard under the nose, driving soft cartilage up into his septum with a bone-crunching pop.
“Aaghh!” Nassi howled in agony. “Putanë! Bitch, you will pay for that!”
Blood gushed from his face and onto her as he thrust his hands out and roared toward her. Jenna feinted left, dodging his grasp. Up in front of the van, she heard the other man scrambling around, moving out of the driver’s seat to fumble with the console between the seats.
She didn’t have time to worry about him right now. Nassi was furious, and in order to get out of the van, she’d have to get through him first.
Jenna locked her hands together and brought her elbows down on her attacker’s spine. He shouted in pain, coughing as he made another sloppy grab for her. She eluded him again, dancing out of his reach as though he were standing still.
“Puthje topa tuaj lamtumirë, ju copille skëmtuar!” she whispered to him tightly, a threat she made good on when she then brought her knee up between his legs and nailed him with a sharp blow to the groin.
Nassi went down like a ton of bricks.
Jenna spun on a scream of her own, ready to do battle with his friend Gresa now.
She didn’t see the gun in the other man’s hand until the flare of the shot burned as bright as lightning. The sudden crack of the bullet as it exploded toward her was deafening. She blinked, dazed and oddly detached, as the searing fire of its impact slammed into her.
“Have we got anything?”
Lucan strode into the tech lab where Brock, Kade, Alex, Renata, and Nikolai were all gathered around Gideon’s workstation.
Brock had his hands braced on the desk, staring over Gideon’s shoulder at the monitor. He gave Lucan a grim shake of his head. “Nothing solid yet. Still searching DMV records for possible matches.”
Jenna had been gone more than an hour. Their best lead on where she might have fled was a couple seconds of surveillance footage captured by a mounted security camera on the south perimeter of the estate.
At roughly the same time that Renata saw Jenna leap the fence and disappear off the grounds, an unmarked white delivery van drove by on the street adjacent to the property. Gideon had only been able to get a partial reading on the van’s Massachusetts commercial plates before it rounded a corner and disappeared out of range. In the time since, he’d hacked into the Boston DMV and had been running plate number combinations, trying to narrow down whom the van was registered to and where it might be found.
Brock was sure that if they located that van, Jenna couldn’t be far behind.
“Whether we’ve got solid leads or not, as soon as the sun sets in the next hour and a half, we’re gonna need patrols scouring the city,” Lucan said. “We cannot afford to lose this woman before we understand what she might mean to our operations.”
“And I can’t afford to let anything happen to my dearest friend,” Alex said, pointing out the emotional wrinkle in the whole situation with Jenna. “She’s upset and hurting. What if something bad happens to her out there? She’s a good person. She doesn’t deserve any of this.”
“We’ll find her,” Brock said firmly. “I promise you, we will.”
Kade met his gaze and gave a solemn nod. After the stunning circumstances of Jenna’s escape from the compound, finding the human woman with the bit of alien material inside her body was a mission none of the warriors would shirk. Jenna Darrow had to be retrieved, no matter what it took.
“Hang on, hang on,” Gideon murmured. “This could prove interesting. I just got a couple of new hits on the latest sequence. One of them is registered to an auto garage in Quincy.”
“The other one?” Brock asked, leaning in to get a closer look.
“Meat-packing plant in Southie,” Gideon said. “Outfit called Butcher’s Best. Says they specialize in personal cuts and catering.”
“No shit,” Renata said, her chin-length dark hair swinging as she pivoted her head to look at the others gathered in the lab. “The banking exec who lives a couple of miles up the road is hosting his Christmas house party next weekend. Makes sense that a catering van might be up this way.”
“Yeah, it does,” Lucan agreed. “Gideon, let’s get an address for this place.”
“Coming right up.” He hit a few keys and both the street listing and a satellite map appeared on-screen. “There it is, down in the underbelly of Southie.”
Brock’s eyes fixed on the location, burning as hot as laser beams. He pivoted around and stalked out of the tech lab, determination in every hard clip of his boot heels on the marble floor.
Behind him, Kade dashed out of the lab into the corridor. “What the fuck, man? The sun won’t be setting for a good while. Where are you going?”
Brock kept walking. “I’m gonna bring her back.”
