Aaron had messaged Cadence after his hunt last night, and she had ignored him. She finally decided to go ahead and let him know she was alive around 10:00 as she was humming along down the highway at a pretty good pace. “Hey,” she said. “Sorry—I went to bed pretty early last night.”
“That’s okay. How’s it going?”
“It’s going. How was the hunt?”
“Not too eventful. We basically did a stakeout. Hopefully, things will be better this evening.”
“That’s good. Did Christian get their tech up and running?” she asked, trying to keep him talking about what he was doing so he wouldn’t have the opportunity to question her about her nefarious activities.
“Yeah, he fixed the problem. We need to add training more tech guys to your list of recurrent training.”
“That’s a good idea. Was it a simple fix then?”
“Seemed to be. What are you up to?”
“Not much.”
“Are you at the training facility.”
“No, not right now. Are you going to be back tomorrow morning you think?”
“I hope so. If things go well tonight, we might just head back this evening after the hunt.”
“Oh, okay. Well, I’ve got a lot of conversations going on in my eye right now. Can I get back to you in a few hours?” she asked, hoping he would let it go. He knew she wasn’t nearly as good at handling heavy traffic on the IAC as he was.
“Sure,” he said, sounding a little busy himself. “Talk to you soon. Love you.”
“Love you, too,” she said, clicking her IAC off, happy to have been able to get out of the conversation without giving him any information and hopefully not arousing his suspicions.
She contemplated contacting Christian right away, but since she had just told Aaron she was busy, she didn’t want him to get wind that she was talking to the techie right away. Luckily, within the hour, Christian was contacting her himself.
“Hey, Cadence. How’s it going?” he asked.
“Okay. I’d forgotten how beautiful Utah is,” she replied.
“Yes, nothing like the beauty of an interstate highway.”
“Well, you have to look off into the distance sometimes, but it’s so different than what I’m used to. How are you? You keeping him distracted?”
“I’m trying to, but it’s kind of hard. These ‘problems’ aren’t really problems, so he can fix them pretty quickly, and there wasn’t really anything wrong with their computers either. One of them literally wasn’t plugged in.”
“Seriously? Remind me not to promote that area leader any time soon.”
“No kidding,” Christian agreed. “Aaron’s talking about coming back this evening now.”
“He told me. Can you find a way to make it take longer, you think? Without being obvious? I mean, don’t miss the mark or anything like that. But if you can think of some sort of training to suggest that would be a nice evening event, that would be very helpful.”
“I’ll see what I can come up with,” Christian agreed. “The way these Vampires are acting right now, it shouldn’t be too difficult to come up with something.”
“I was just going to ask you about that!” Cadence exclaimed. “What is up with that? One jumped out of a dumpster last night at a motel and almost got a guy in the parking lot. Is it the moon?”
“I think it might be. Not that it’s even almost blue necessarily, but that it’s almost full.”
“But this is a little much,” Cadence reminded him. “I can’t remember anything like that happening before, and I got several reports Thursday evening of similar bizarre activities.”
“It’s definitely something to keep an eye on,” Christian admitted. “Have you asked Cassidy how she’s feeling? Maybe she could give us some insight.”
“No, but that’s a good idea,” Cadence agreed. “I’ll see if I can get her after school today. I don’t want to interrupt her during class if I can help it.”
“All right. Well, be careful. Let me know when you get to Reno. And I’ll keep you posted if there’s any change here.”
“Sounds good. Thank you, Christian,” she said, sincerely meaning it. Even though he’d been able to figure out where she was going, she wasn’t worried about him telling Aaron. She couldn’t have done this without his help. He said goodbye, and she tried to focus on the scenery, a more pleasant alternative than the myriad of thoughts clouding her thinking.
Cadence made it through Elko, Nevada, a decent sized town, before she realized she was almost out of gas. The idea of running out of gas in the desert, without her phone, even if there were a lot of cars on the interstate, didn’t sound too appealing, so she was happy to see a sign that showed a gas station in a few miles. Once she’d reached the appropriate exit, another sign informed her that the station was actually about five miles off of the highway, a nuisance, but she was in no hurry anyway.
She pulled up to the pump in front of what could only be described as the world’s loneliest gas station and debated whether or not to use her credit card so she didn’t have to go in or suck it up and run inside and pay cash. There was only one other car in the lot, but the lights were on inside the station, and she could see the cashier peering at her through the dust covered window. She didn’t know if the car belonged to him or if there might actually be another customer inside.
With a sigh, she decided she could use a snack anyway, if they had anything that wasn’t expired, so she took off her helmet and climbed off her bike. Leaving the backpack behind was out of the question; she double-checked the straps were fastened tightly. She considered leaving her helmet there since there was no one around to steal it, but habits die hard, so she tucked it under her arm and started toward the convenience store.
A few feet away from the car, she saw movement inside the older model Chevy, and instantly, her hand went to her Glock, hidden beneath her jacket. It only took her a moment to realize there was a child in the backseat, not anything dangerous, although she found it extremely odd that the little boy, who looked to be about eight, was sitting there by himself. Deciding that talking to him might be unsettling—what with stranger danger and all—she chose to see if maybe his parent was inside.
