Walking away from the gym gave her an opportunity to get her head back in the game. They had some impossibly difficult tasks ahead of them, and she needed to make sure that she and Aaron were on the same page. They were scheduled to meet with the larger team in about an hour, but she hoped she had a few minutes to go over a few things with him before the rest of them arrived. There were about to be a lot of balls up in the air, and she didn’t want to drop any of them.
Noises from the kitchen greeted her as she opened the apartment door. She dropped her gym bag by the door, reminding herself to come back for it later so she didn’t poke the bear, as Elliott would’ve put it, and followed the noise.
“Oh, hey,” Aaron said, standing over the stove. “How was the gym?”
Cadence stood in the doorway a moment longer, both eyebrows arched. “Fine. What are you doing? Have you been abducted again?”
He snickered. “I don’t think so, but it’s hard to tell.” He flipped over what appeared to be a grilled cheese sandwich, and Cadence moved in for closer inspection. “I know I don’t cook much—”
“Or at all.”
“But I wanted to do something nice for you, and Mrs. Carminatti is working on a whole list of items I asked her to look into this morning, so I had to do it myself.” He seemed satisfied that the sandwich was the right color and the cheese was melted enough so he scooped it out of the pan with a spatula and plunked it down on a waiting plate. “Four triangles, halves or whole?”
A giggle escaped her lips as she wrapped her arms around his waist. Rarely did he ever attempt to cook anything, and for good reason. Not that she was one to talk. If it didn’t come from a box with specific directions, she wasn’t trying it either. “Halves, please,” she replied, and he cut the sandwich in half with one hand while he held her with the other.
It was hard for her to let go of him to take the plate, but the buttery, cheesy aroma was intoxicating, and she soon found herself sitting at the table, wolfing it down. He brought her a Dr. Pepper and a bag of potato chips and took a seat across from her, not speaking, only staring at her with a gentle smile on his face.
“It’s really good,” she managed between bites.
“Glad to hear it. Janette’s recipe.”
Cadence laughed. “I didn’t realize grandma had a grilled cheese recipe. Butter two pieces of bread, put some cheese in the middle?”
“And she said she only shared it with me.” His smile widened, becoming the lopsided grin she loved, and Cadence would’ve tossed her food aside and checked their own speed if she wasn’t so hungry. And focused. She needed to talk to him about… something. Vampires. Yes that was it. Vampires. “What’s up?”
“Oh, right. You can read me now, huh? Now that you’re back in there?”
“You’ve always been hard for me to read, but I can tell there’s something on your mind. And it seems work related.”
A blush covered her cheeks as her mind temporarily went to the night before. She pushed those thoughts away, hard as it was, and tuned back in. “Yeah. I was just concerned that we have a lot to accomplish, and I want to make sure that we don’t leave anything out or screw this up.”
“I understand. I feel like I’ve spent the last three weeks working my ass off on things that don’t matter.”
Cadence nodded. That seemed about right.
“Now that I can concentrate on what we really need to do, I don’t want to leave anything out either. I’ve even got your mom working on a few things.”
She tipped her head to the side, shoving another potato chip into her mouth, hoping the look would be enough that he’d understand her question.
He did. “You know the initial check Becky did with Paul’s team when he was missing?”
“Yep,” she said around her last bite of sandwich.
“Well, something wasn’t quite adding up on their reports. I have your mom going back through all of the clearing that was done with a timestamp and a list of properties. It seems like maybe Holland was messing with the team at the time, and I’m under the impression perhaps every building wasn’t cleared.”
Cadence nodded, finishing up her chips. That made sense. She dusted her fingertips off on a napkin. “Why do you think Holland is in Linz?” She washed her lunch down with a long swing of Dr. Pepper while she waited for him to answer, though she could tell by his expression, he was as puzzled as she was.
“I can only suspect there’s something, or someone, there that we don’t know about.”
“But Eliza’s team swept through there when we were hunting Giovani, and she seemed to be under the impression there wasn’t a large cell there,” Cadence reminded him, though she was sure he already knew all of that.
“I’m not certain she was particularly thorough. Giovani was our objective, after all. And Eliza never found everyone that was hiding him.” He leaned back in his chair, still thoughtful.
Cadence nodded. After Eliza had been moved from there, another Guardian had taken over, a guy whose name she couldn’t remember, but the Hunter Area Leader was a woman by the name of Marta. She’d already asked if Marta had any ideas why Holland was there, and the answer was no. They didn’t even know where Holland might be hiding. “Is it just me, or are there an awful lot of female Hunters and male Guardians these days?”
“No, that’s true. I think there’s a trend. If the Hunter Leader’s a female, there will be more female Hunters, and since the last two have been female, and the last two Guardian Leaders have been male, it’s making it difficult to find the opposites.”
