What Fire Dragons Treasure - Cristina Rayne Page 0,3

Given the long drive they still had ahead of them, Amber regretted leaving his tablet behind. However, she hadn’t dared to bring anything electronic that could be tracked. She had only dared to activate her prepaid phone once she had left San Antonio and only because she had needed to use a map app to find a route to the city of Temple off the interstate.

Her attention briefly focused once more on the silver car in the rearview mirror that was still four cars back. Had turning on the phone been a major mistake after all? Should she have picked a more obscure route? At this point, she couldn’t afford even a tiny mistake!

Amber had been planning on stopping to pick up lunch from a fast food drive-through in Waco and just eat in the car, but if the silver car continued to follow her while within Waco’s city limits, then she would just try to lose it—hopefully without getting lost herself—before heading north again. The fruit cups, juice boxes, and other snacks she had packed for the long journey would tide Matty over until they reached Dallas.

But what if that silver car does seem to be following you? An invisible hand painfully squeezed her heart. That would mean—

No. She couldn’t even think it.

This is going to work, dammit!

In truth, Amber didn’t want to think about the last, most important requirement for her plan to work. True, if it did work, it would be the best-case scenario in her current situation, the one she wholeheartedly felt was best for Matty, but deep down, she knew it was a longshot. She, of course, had a Plan B and even a Plan C in case her Plan A crashed and burned, but having to go with one of the latter two would be crushing.

There was only one place on Earth that Amber felt Matty would be safe from Garrett and his despicable father, the senator, if all the research she had done was even a quarter true.

Elysia South.

Not even Senator Henry Johnson could penetrate the energy shield that had surrounded Elysia South since the day the dragon kingdoms had appeared across the world seemingly out of thin air.

For over a year, Amber had heard whispers about humans, especially battered women, being granted a form of sanctuary—at least temporarily—by the dragons by pleading their case to one of the dragons’ border guards. Normally, Amber would have scoffed at such a claim, but it was a fact that one of their princesses was a human from Earth. How that had happened was a mystery that no one seemed to have an answer for, not even Garrett’s father who was a powerful US senator.

Amber was extremely curious about the answer herself, but when she had watched that documentary about all things Draknos last year, what had caught her attention was President Mitchell’s praise of Princess Briana’s kindness, diplomacy, and hope that one day humans and dragons could live freely together all over the globe as well as in the four Elysia kingdoms. If that was the dragons’ sincere wish, then the whispers of sanctuary held more weight for her.

“Mommy?” Matty abruptly asked.

“Yes sweetie?”

“When are we going to see the dragons?”

“Soon, sweetie,” Amber promised. “The dragons just live really far away from our house.”

Even if the sanctuary rumor turned out to be false, at the very least, she could keep her promise to her little boy of seeing a real live dragon up close thanks to the handful of dragon-viewing platforms set up just last year around the perimeter of the energy shield that were open to the public.

“Can we get chicken nuggets, too?” he asked.

They were only about five minutes from Waco, and the silver car was still several cars behind them. She hoped to God that the damned car turned out to be a huge nothing burger. Aside from the obvious, Amber hated the thought of making Matty wait for a full meal, especially when he really couldn’t understand why they had to.

“In a bit,” Amber forced herself to say cheerfully.

Seemingly satisfied, Matty’s attention went back to his book, but Amber couldn’t relax. Not until that silver car was gone from her sight.

Her heart was in her throat when she turned off the highway at the Waco exit, praying with everything in her that the silver car wouldn’t follow. It was only when the four cars, as well as the worrisome silver one, passed the exit that Amber noticed that she gripped the steering