Chapter Five Reed
Chapter Five
Reed
?eské Budějovice, Czech Republic
“This is Delta One. Eyes on the target. She’s in a gray hoodie and black pants. Going eastbound. Appears solo,” Ryder reported over comms.
“Copy that,” I said, weaving through the late-night crowd of people spilling out of a tram station, probably heading to bars and clubs.
Hollis’s tracker had stayed stationary just outside the city at the monastery. Then, ten minutes before we were set to breach, it’d started moving, leading us to where we were now.
Was I relieved to see Hollis alive and mobile? More than I could put into words. But we weren’t out of the woods yet, because she was clearly running from someone, and we had to intercept her before they did.
From my vantage point, though, no one else appeared to be following her. No sign of this mystery half brother of theirs, either.
I moved in carefully, not wanting to startle her or draw eyes from anyone else potentially hunting her, then told my team, “Making contact.”
“This is Delta One, I’ve got you covered.”
“Roger,” I confirmed as I crossed the street to get directly behind her. “Hollis, it’s Reed.”
She didn’t flinch, not even a backward glance. Instead, she kept walking, even shouldering someone so hard she sent their takeout drink flying.
I said her name a little louder as I continued to follow.
No response again, so I set my hand on her shoulder, and she flew around fast.
The nearby streetlamps cast shadows across her face—and was that dirt on her cheeks?
She stared at me, unblinking and breathing hard as if . . . shit, as if she didn’t know who I was, and then she came at me swinging. I had nowhere to go with so many people around, so I was forced to take it in the jaw.
“Dammit.” I caught her next wild punch in front of my face. “I’m here to help.”
She attempted to hit me again with her free hand, forcing me to quickly grab her other wrist, and we stood there in a gridlock.
“Not. Trying. To . . .” I enunciated each word while slowly lowering her arms to her sides the best I could without bruising her. “Hurt. You.”
She went dead still as people knocked into us on the sidewalk, and she narrowed her eyes, slightly angling her head as if something was starting to click.
“I’m going to let go now.” At least she hadn’t kneed me in the balls, but there was still that possibility. “Don’t run, okay?” I gently released her wrists, and she spun around and took off.
I tapped my ear, breathing hard. “Are you seeing this?”
“Affirmative. Keep on her,” Ryder responded in a sharp voice, probably as stunned as I was. “She must be confused.”
“More like she doesn’t know who I am.” I didn’t have time to process what that meant. For now, I had to catch up with her.
I located her in a plaza as she ran between two street performers and vaulted over an open guitar case. I halted when one of her cousins changed the plans without alerting us.
The scene unfolded and went sideways fast. She hit him a hell of a lot harder than she’d hit me, then clocked him with a flying kick to the jaw. After, she looked right at me. For a split second, she hesitated, before running down a lit-up alley flanked by shuttered cafés.
“This is Delta Two,” Alex transmitted. “I’ve got her. She’s heading for the river walk. There’s a parallel alley to cut her off. Delta Three, you see it?”
I scanned and clocked the target location. “Roger. On it.”
“This is Delta Four,” Trevor announced. “I’ll swing wide from the south. We’ll trap her before she gets to the bridge.”
My boots hit the slick stone as I hurried down a narrow street. When I rounded the corner, I nearly collided with Hollis. Her hood slipped back, revealing her tangled and messy hair and those same wide, startled eyes.
I held up my hands, palms out, so she could see I wasn’t armed. “It’s me.”
Her lips parted, like recognition was dawning on her, but before she had a chance to say anything, her cousin, with his poor timing, tackled her. They crashed hard to the pavement, and she twisted around, driving an elbow into his ribs.
I stepped forward, offering my hand as an olive branch to stand, but she jerked around and kneed her cousin in the abdomen, then rose on her own.
Before I had a chance to intervene, Gideon did it for me. He closed in fast, locking his arms around her.
She bared her teeth, fighting to squirm out from the prison of Gideon’s arms, and it took every ounce of my control not to fight him to free her as a crowd swarmed and gathered.
Hollis slammed her head backward, catching Gideon square in the chin. He grunted but didn’t release her.
“She’s in a full adrenaline dump,” I said. That was the only thing that made sense. “I don’t think she recognizes any of us. Must be drugged.”
Gideon kept a tight hold of her. “Sedate her,” he ordered, presumably to his cousin, since I didn’t have anything on me. But wouldn’t that make an already-drugged person worse?
Before I could reject the idea, Foxtrot Three moved in, pulling a field injector from his kit. Hollis was still thrashing, her entire body coiling in panic, as her cousin jabbed the needle into her thigh.
Seconds passed, then her limbs began to sag. She went down in slow motion, and Gideon sank to his knees with her in his arms.
I stepped in front of them, arms open wide, doing my best to block the raised phones recording everything.
“Initiate media scrub,” Gideon ordered over comms. “I want every CCTV, every phone feed, every digital record in a five-block radius gone.”
Julian knew how to do that, too, apparently. Make this all disappear for good, never to be found again. The only problem was, someone else out there who had Hollis before now did, too.
“On it,” Julian answered, his voice crackling in my ear. “But is she, uh, okay?”
Gideon kept his eyes on his sister as her breathing began to slow down. “I don’t know,” he told his brother as Foxtrot Three began offering cash to people for their phones and silence.
“Could be a dissociative drug,” I guessed, taking a knee alongside them.
“A compound of some kind. God knows what. But . . .” My voice trailed off as something darker settled in my gut.
I lifted her hand to get a better look, discovering dirt beneath her fingernails.
“What if she was buried in that monastery and she had to dig her way out?”
Gideon gestured with his head, signaling me to help. “I don’t know what to think, but we have to get her somewhere safe.”
“And where might that be?” I lifted her while standing tall. Her head lolled to the side as I cradled her between my forearms.
Gideon scanned the crowd, squinting with the streetlamps in his face.
“I’ll have a medical team meet us at my plane.
We’ll fly her to my parents’ place in Surrey.
” He stepped forward to take his sister, but part of me wasn’t ready to let her go.
“We need to find who did this to her,” he said in a strained voice as I finally handed her over to him.
“And figure out why the hell she didn’t recognize any of us. ”