Heedless (The Hellbound Brotherhood #4) - Shannon McKenna Page 0,56

finish Clemens. I’ll rent a place here for her to wait for us, around the halfway point between Shaw’s Crossing and this Bailey Ridge, where they’re holding Josh. Someplace defensible.”

“Can it wait at all?” Mace asked. “Our forces are depleted. Eric’s gone, Anton and Fi not up to speed, plus we’re missing the guys who are out covering Eric and Demi at the island.”

“According to Josh, Clemens took half his staff to Shaw’s Crossing,” Nate said. “It’s a real opportunity. I think we should hit them right now. Once we get the kid out, we have all kinds of options. Until then, he’s a knife to Elisa’s throat.”

“Okay,” Mace mused. “Anton and Fi are at the day hospital at Granger Valley tomorrow, getting followed up. I have two men covering them. That leaves me, Jim and Mitch. Not enough, since you’re going to need someone to cover Elisa. Anton and I could get good people in place pretty quickly, but probably not by tomorrow. Which is more crucial? The timing? Or the numbers?”

Nate pondered it for a moment, then made the call. “Timing,” he said. “I say we go tomorrow. I want Jim for the mission, and Mitch to cover Elisa.”

“Done,” Mace said. “We’ll bring firepower, body armor, infrared goggles and thermal cloaking. Send me coordinates for the staging area, and the extraction point. Jim and I will get right to work.”

“Will do. I’ll message you ASAP.”

Nate went back into the other room, where Elisa was still typing furiously. “Hey,” he said to her gently. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“Huh?” She looked up at him, distracted. Her eyes were streaming with tears.

Nate squeezed her shoulder. “Would you mark for me the exact location of your dad’s ski place? I need to pin down a satellite image.”

“Oh. Yeah, sure.” She squinted down at the tablet, rubbing her eyes. “You take this road south from Amity Springs, head up to Lewis Butte Road, and then you turn right up on Bailey Ridge Road,” she said, tracing the route with her finger on the map. “It’s 1.3 miles after the turn-off, on the north side of the road, and there’s a little cluster of buildings. Right here.” She pointed at it.

Nate marked the spot. “You guys got enough juice to keep talking, or do I need to open another vein?”

“We both have a half a tank,” she said. “I think we’re good for a while.”

“Great. Carry on. Remember to take notes.”

“Yeah.” She sniffed hard, grabbing another tissue. “Absolutely. I’m on it.”

He left her to it, the tapping on the keyboard fading as he went back into the bedroom and sat down to study satellite photos of the site.

He’d memorize every tree, stone and twig before tomorrow.

17

Elisa hadn’t expected to sleep, not after twelve hours of laborious gaming, followed by that long, intense conversation with Josh. But once her brother had been forced by his captors to stop playing, she’d gone down like a ton of bricks and slept for…she checked the digital clock by the bed. Four hours. It was now seven AM.

Nate reached out. “Where are you going?” His voice was groggy.

“I just want to check the Obelisk,” she said. “I want the lines of communication between us open at all times. What if he needs to tell us something?”

“It’s early, babe. They shut him down at 3 AM, and they won’t let him get going again this soon. Like he said, he can’t afford to draw attention to himself. And he told you already that they usually don’t even unlock the door to his room until eleven.”

“Just in case,” she said stubbornly. “I should be watching whenever I can. He said when Gil’s there they make him stop gaming earlier. When Gil is gone, they’re looser with the rules. They let him play until three or four in the morning.”

Nate nodded, rubbing his eyes. “Good to know. Let’s go fire it up.”

She was being irrational, but that point of connection seemed so delicate and improbable to her. Like a spark in danger of going out. She wanted to cradle it, feed it.

Nate was a good sport. He opened up the saved game and promptly got her back onto the Obelisk, which only had thirteen players writing on it at that hour of the day. None of them were GeekwadX1000. She would just have to be patient.

Nate was talking on the phone. “….don’t want to travel far,” he said. “Secluded, but near town, and with excellent internet connection…yeah.” He listened for a while. Elisa