Chapter 32
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
The plan seemed simple enough, but something about breaking into a high security facility still didn’t sit right with her.
Maybe it was all the guns. Maybe it was the fact that her conspirators were all extremely scary elves. Or maybe it was the fact that they had no plan to get her out.
Whatever it was, Cecilia’s nerves jangled like a sack of forks and broken porcelain.
It was decided, with very little input from her, that Vesta and Arjun — who she’d learned was the bearded elf — would be her escorts.
They drove her in a blacked out SUV across the city and over the gray expanse of the Bay Bridge.
She’d crossed it dozens of times, but she’d never had a reason to take the heavily guarded exit onto Treasure Island.
Cold sweat gathered beneath the collar of her puffy jacket when they rolled up to the checkpoint. Two massive guards carrying bolt rifles stepped out of a small building by the gate to examine their vehicle. Waving a hand, they demanded the windows be rolled down.
Cecilia tried to act normal in the backseat, but that was a useless endeavor, because what even constituted normal under the circumstance?
They’d agreed that when asked, they’d say she was being brought in for questioning. Did that mean she ought to act worried? Relieved to have been rescued? Annoyed that she was being bothered by all this fanfare?
In the end, she settled on a mix of all of the above, which mostly involved sitting rigidly in her seat and looking exactly as nervous as she felt.
Vesta lowered her window to greet the guards. One of the guards peered closely at her while the other slowly circled the vehicle.
Nodding, the officer at the window demanded, “State your business, soldier.”
“Witness transfer for questioning,” she informed them in that flat robotic voice.
The guard tilted his head to peer into the backseat. Cecilia stiffened but still met the guard’s eye. A dark purple elf in sunglasses stared back at her, his lips pressed into a grim line. After a brief pause, he asked, “Is this the arrant who kicked Stafford in the back of the head?”
Cecilia rolled her lips between her teeth.
“Yes,” Vesta answered. “That’s why we’re here.”
Apparently done with his car inspection, the other officer, a deep green woman in a matching pair of sunglasses, joined her partner at the window. “Is this the arrant who bit Dex?”
Vesta took a second to reply. “…Yes.”
“Should she be unrestrained?” the blue guard asked, a brow arching over his sunglasses.
Cecilia glanced at the backs of Vesta and Arjun’s helmets. A small part of her found it hilarious that elves, of all people, were worried about her attacking them, but a much larger part of her was completely horrified.
What kind of teacher has a rep like that?
Arjun canted his head toward the guards. “Are you afraid of an arrant, Gwon?”
“No.” Gwon sniffed. Stepping back, he gestured sharply with the end of his rifle toward the gate. “Move along.”
Vesta took her sweet time rolling the window back up. The gate lifted and she pulled forward slowly, as cool as a cucumber.
As they rolled down a long, guarded road toward Solbourne Tower, Arjun asked, “Did you bite someone?”
Cecilia coughed into her fist. “Might’ve.”
Not that it did much good, she silently added. You elvish motherfuckers have tough skin.
The elves currently helping her commit some sort of crime were quiet for a moment. She wondered what impression she made on two hardened soldiers who’d probably taken more lives than she’d ever met.
Did she seem foolish to them? Her face flushed at the thought. She was used to not being taken seriously, but it was a different sort of discomfort to know a bunch of predators saw her as little more than a buzzing gnat.
Sloane called her his doe because he saw her as soft and harmless, which was true. As hard as she fought to get back to him, it hadn’t made a damn difference. She would’ve had better luck fist-fighting a wall.
“Not many arrants would try to fight an elf,” Vesta noted.
Cecilia shrugged stiffly. “Yeah, well, if I can hit Sloane in the head with a lamp, I can bite the sonuvabitch who thinks he can drag me into the back of a van.”
Arjun swiveled in his seat to look at her. “You hit Fortuner with a lamp?”
Miming the whack she’d given her elf, she answered, “Cracked his helmet and everything.”
Arjun sat back in his seat. “Excellent.”
“Very impressive,” Vesta concurred.
The other elf replied, “I understand his disappearance better now. I didn’t know they made consorts like her.”
Cecilia looked down at her hands in her lap.
It didn’t feel right to smile, but it was also…
nice to feel accepted. She’d only ever gotten that kind of easy camaraderie from Dahlia and the students she’d taught during her courses.
To be so readily accepted by these fearsome people was special in its own right not just because they were Sloane’s family but because they were hers now, too.
It was a warm shot of comfort she desperately needed as they pulled into an underground garage beneath the Tower.
Vesta drove past rows and rows of expensive vehicles, through another gate, and down a dark tunnel. Whatever normalcy was found in what could’ve been any other underground garage in a rich neighborhood vanished as they entered what could only be Patrol’s territory.
The hair rose on the back of her sweaty neck as they passed lines of parked Patrol and military-looking vehicles. Vesta parked in an empty spot near a heavily armored and brightly lit entrance in the concrete wall, and almost as soon as the engine cut, both elves were out of the SUV.
Arjun opened Cecilia’s door. Taking a deep breath of cool air, she prayed her legs would hold her weight as she slid out.
Dipping his head, he explained, “You don’t need to do anything. Just walk and do as we say.”
She swallowed hard. “Heard.”
Adrenaline pumped through her veins like liquid lightning with every step they took. A buzz filled her ears, and the world became a narrow pinprick focused on Vesta’s back as she escorted Cecilia through the armored doors and into a maze of underground tunnels.
She’d heard of the tunnels beneath Solbourne Tower. Everyone had. That was where Mad Thad took his enemies and his political prisoners and anyone who happened to look at him wrong. Myths and harrowing true stories about what went on in those tunnels still traveled through the EVP.
It hadn’t occurred to her to be afraid before, but as she walked down those bare, white halls, a chill permeated her bones — like the shadow of a beast loomed over her, blocking out the sun.
Doesn’t matter, she thought, clenching her jaw. Sloane’s here. He busted through a window to get to me. I’ll walk through this nightmare fuel to get to him.
Every time they passed a group of officers or soldiers, she tensed. But no one stopped them. If anything, they gave Vesta and Arjun a wide berth.
It all felt too easy, but she didn’t dare question it. She barely breathed, afraid that any small noise or movement would ruin it. She was so focused that she was almost separate from herself, from the cool air on her skin and the sounds echoing off the bare walls.
She nearly came out of her skin when Arjun leaned close to her back to murmur, “Almost there.”
All at once, she was back in her body, in the terrifying hallway, with an elf at her back. Trying to speak without moving her lips, she breathed, “Is he in a cell?”
“We received a report that he’s in interrogation room three,” he answered.
Her stomach dropped. “He’s being interrogated? Is he— Are they torturing him?”
“Unlikely.”
But not impossible, she realized, blood curdling.
“Get me there,” she ordered. “Get me there now, guys.”
Vesta’s helmet tilted ever-so-slightly in her direction. “Heard.”
Their pace increased just enough to make her feel like they were really moving. Her cold fingers curled and uncurled reflexively by her sides as they approached a corner. Somewhere up ahead around the blind corner, the sound of a heavy door opening and closing echoed off the walls.
Cecilia just caught a fluttering of soft green fabric disappearing into a stairwell as they stepped into a hallway lined with reinforced metal doors.
She’d never seen an interrogation room before, but she didn’t need to. Cecilia knew exactly what she was looking at. The air in the hallway was different. The shapes of the doors were different. The glare of the lights was different.
It was sinister. And she would be damned if she left Sloane by himself in a place like that.
It wasn’t necessary for one of her escort to point out what room he was in. The two guards stationed in front of it were a neon sign.
Her heartbeat slowed. Her fear eased. Even the armed guards standing outside the door didn’t worry her. They were just obstacles to getting what she wanted, and if she had to get through them, she would.
One way or another, she would.