When Giovani and Zabrina had run out of new places to hit along the Caribbean coast and the Mexican shoreline, they had returned to Cabo San Lucas, Jack in tow. They had long since given up on counting the number of victims. No one could touch them--the authorities thought they were chasing some sort of terrorist group. Every night, they took multiple victims, no longer caring about the possibility of being detected by either witnesses or recording devices. In fact, they were getting a little sloppy, and Jack was the only reasonable voice amongst them. He continued to caution that they needed to wrap it up and get back to the states so he could see Cadence, but by mid-January, Giovani was on such a high, Jack wasn't sure he was ever going to come back down.
It wasn't until they saw themselves on amateur video on the news one morning that they realized they needed to get back to the states before it was too late. On the particular video, there were no clear views of their facial features. Basically, the recording showed Zabrina dancing with a man in a bar. She lures him to the back of the building, into a shadowy section and the three of them pounce on him. After a few minutes of sporadic movement, the three "suspects" walk away, and the victim, later identified as Lynn Pitts, twenty-seven of San Diego, California, is left lying in a shallow pool of his own blood. The footage was collected via the cellphone of a stealthy yet-to-be-identified witness.
While the media was begging the witness to come forward, LIGHTS was assuring there was no need for that. The same young Vampire Hunter who had observed the trio on their first trip had taken this footage as well. The girl, Priscilla, was not old enough to legally gain entry into the bar, but when Aaron had asked her to see if she could get some footage, she had done whatever she could. At seventeen and untrained, she was too terrified to confront the trio on her own but wanted to contribute as much as she could. She was shocked to see that Giovani and his siblings had even returned to her hometown. She took it to be fate when she spotted them in the market one afternoon and decided to stop at nothing to get the requested video. She wasn't sure why Aaron needed it, but if he asked for it, she was going to get it for him.
"I do believe it is time to get out of Dodge--wherever the hell that is," Giovani said, clicking off the remote to the television.
"I agree," Jack said. The sight of seeing himself on the news sucking the blood out of an innocent human being was pulling at what was left of his conscience. "Sooner rather than later. Just in case they try to take our passports or something."
Zabrina snorted. "Who? Do you really think there's any government that is more powerful than us?"
"I don't know," Jack admitted. "But I don't want to find out. Seriously, I want to be back on the next flight to the US. I don't even care where it's headed so long as I'm back where I belong on American soil."
Giovani crossed over to the laptop sitting on the counter in the adjoining kitchen area. They had rented a very nice cabana with all of the amenities, just steps from the Caribbean Sea. "We can get a direct flight to DFW tomorrow and then connect to a flight to Omaha from there."
"Perfect," Jack said. "Book it."
* * *
Cadence did what most broken-hearted women tend to do; she threw herself into her work, hung out with her friends, and avoided the object of her disdain as much as possible. Of course, that was a little difficult to do when he just happened to be her boss. In the few weeks of the new year, she had managed to avoid going on very many hunts with him, preferring to go on alternate missions with other people. The two she had attended with Aaron had been awkward, and she had gotten them over as quickly as she could. She still refused to go out if Eliza was there, which put Aaron in a difficult position when he had to tell his girlfriend she was staying home so that they could take out their number one asset, but he made it work, and Cadence managed to get lots of kills without ever speaking a word to her leader.
She had somehow convinced Laura and Laney to stick around for a while as well. It had been much easier to convince the younger sister to stay, what with the older wanting to track down Giovani as soon as possible, but the events of Christmas Eve had endeared Cadence to Laura a bit, since she now had a sort of camaraderie with Aaron’s ex-girlfriend, and she was willing to give it some time. Cadence hadn't heard from Jack, but she was able to use the promise of luring him in to keep Laura patient.
Elliott was playing middle-man between the sparring ex-couple, which was a bit exhausting for him, but he was willing to do it to keep Cadence happy--or as happy as possible, anyway. After a detailed recount of events from Aaron's perspective, Elliott had concluded that his best friend was an "idiot," and he had relayed to Cadence that he strongly suggested to his long-time compadre that he needed to get his shit together and get rid of Eliza "yesterday." While Aaron insisted the situation was complicated, Elliott was resolute in his stance that Aaron had made a huge mistake and needed to do what he could to correct it. In the meantime, he continued to pass along messages when called upon to do so.
The rest of the team had tried to stay as neutral as possible, for the most part. Of course, Christian was refusing to speak to Eliza, and even those other team members who generally considered her a friend tended to avoid her now, including Jamie who had told Cadence from the beginning he, "had her back." Nevertheless, in order to keep the team together, most of the members tried to play nice. The only true exceptions were Aurora and Meagan who had taken Cadence's side from the very beginning. The three girls began training together nearly every day and whenever Cadence needed to air her grievances, the other two were there to listen and assure her that Eliza was a bitch, and Aaron was acting like a complete moron.
