The footage from the night before was difficult for Cadence to watch, but she made herself go back over it with the team, looking for anything they could’ve missed. In the first few seconds of Alex’s IAC recording, before he spoke at all, they could hear one of the Vampires in the background chanting something. That had sent Cassidy on an errand to go extract the information by whatever means necessary. A few hours later, she’d returned with a glint in her eye. “Leig solas na fala fala a-mach d ’anam!”
“Fala fala to you, too,” Cadence replied, a smirk on her face for the first time in a while. “Where’d you find that?”
“All of their heads, eventually. Well, the four gents. The girls had no idea what I was talking about. It took a little persuasion of the strong-arm variety.”
Cadence shook her head, glad her sister was on their side. “All right. So... now we just need to figure out what that means.”
“We should have help with that soon,” Cassidy promised, pulling out a chair at the conference table. To Cadence, it looked like Aaron had been here recently, there was so much paper—maps, diagrams, notes, communication logs. She knew he’d be able to look at this mess and put plenty of pieces together, to come up with a strategy, but she had nothing.
“I’m hungry,” Trina, who also happened to be a Hunter, announced from her seat at the far end of the table. “What do you say we order some pizza?”
“Sounds good to me,” Oswald chimed in. From the looks of him, he was definitely one of the Guardians who liked to eat—like Elliott.
“I’m not really hungry,” Cassidy muttered, staring at the map at the spot marked as Brandon’s place of disappearance.
“I’m not either,” Cadence admitted. “But we need to eat. What time is it?”
“Almost one.” Job motioned at the clock on the wall before he added, “That computer chip in your eye also has a clock.” He was teasing, she could tell by his grin, but she didn’t respond.
According to Cassidy’s information, Hamish Stewart should’ve touched down in LAX a few moments ago, then. Hopefully, Daniel and his team had him in custody. She was awaiting confirmation. While it would’ve been nice to watch them drag his sorry ass in, she didn’t really have time for that.
Hannah and Christian had let her know they were back at headquarters, the book in hand, and Hannah was scanning all of it so that it was accessible through the IACs to anyone and everyone who might need it. She apologized for not having told Aurora what was going on, saying she assumed Cadence would want to do that herself. It made sense; she just wished Hannah would’ve told her the plan first.
“Cadence, we’ve got Stewart in custody and are transporting him back to headquarters.”
The sound of Daniel’s voice in her head was music to her ears. It was a long drive from LA to San Francisco where Daniel was stationed, but he’d made it there in record time. When she’d promoted him to Leader of all of California, she’d seen no reason to make him relocate. There was an LA Area Hunter Leader as well, and Cadence knew she was part of the operation, but it was Daniel she trusted to handle this situation more than just about anyone on her team.
“Thanks, Daniel. I knew I could trust you. Keep him in holding, see what he’ll tell you, and I’ll decide whether I’m coming to him, or he’s coming to me.”
“Affirmative,” Daniel said before he turned his IAC off.
“We got him,” Cadence said, looking around the table with a satisfied smile.
“Good. Let’s go make him talk.” Cassidy sounded vicious again, and Cadence thought of Christian’s ripped skin.
“Daniel’s going to handle it for now,” Cadence assured her sister. She was eager to see what Stewart had to say, if anything, too, but she needed to stay calm and take things one step at a time. It hadn’t even been twelve hours yet, and they were making great progress.
“You said you couldn’t find Hines or Holland through him?” Job asked Cassidy, spinning his chair slightly from side to side.
“Not from here. But I might be able to if I was staring into his beady, little, gray eyes,” Cassidy replied.
“I’m sure you’ll get your chance. Right now, I want us to figure out what Holland’s angle is going to be on this. She’s got to assume we’re trying to get them back, so she’s not going to wait to attack. If her planes move, we’ve got her. What else could she do to get here?”
“Airline?” Trina asked, having finished ordering the pizzas.
“That would be stupid,” Cassidy blurted. “I mean, we just picked Stewart up at the airport. She has to know that. She’s probably pissed.”
“No, I don’t think she is,” Cadence replied. “In fact, I think she gave us Stewart.”
“Huh?” Oswald asked, running his hand along his jaw. He clearly hadn’t had a chance to shave that morning.
“Yeah, so, we couldn’t find Stewart when he was right here, but then suddenly Cassidy has a location on him and can get in his head. That’s not a mistake on Holland’s part. She gave that to us.”
“You don’t think I was just able to use my superpowers to find him?” Cass didn’t necessarily seem offended—yet—just curious.
“You’d been trying for a long time with nothing. Then, it was suddenly very easy for you to find him. So easy, in fact, that at first I thought maybe it was a ruse. But the way that Stewart reacted in the airport tells me we’ve got the right guy. So... Holland must’ve given him to us. Why would she do that?”
“Maybe she has no more purpose for keeping him, and it was draining her power to keep her shield over him?” Cassidy offered.
“Yeah, maybe.” It seemed like a possible explanation to Cadence. “What else might she need that power for? She was able to shield him, set up our decoys, and shield herself and Hines at the same time. We still don’t know if her baby is with her or if she hid him somewhere else, in which case she’s shielding him, too. It seems like she’s getting stronger.”
“Didn’t you say she was creating all kinds of shapeshifters and what-have-you before?” Job asked. His fingers were steepled in front of his face as he thought aloud. “Maybe since we took out Melbourne she’s got more power to work with.”
“That could be it.” Trying to figure out Holland was enough to give Cadence a headache. “At any rate, I think we need to expect her to move soon. And I think she may send in some more of her goons before she gets to us herself. While I’m certain she’d love to just meet me on the battlefield, she’ll be content with taking me prisoner and destroying me at her leisure.”
“Cause that worked out so well for Giovani,” Cassidy muttered.
A response formed on the tip of Cadence’s tongue, but before she could get it out, Cass’s phone made a whooshing sound, like a text being sent. Her little sister cocked her head to the side and pulled her phone out of her pocket, studying it for a second. “That’s weird.”
“What is it?” Cadence asked, her heart thumping into her throat.
“My message to Brandon just went through.”
“What time is it?”
“Noon,” Job said, sarcastically pointing at the clock on the wall again.
Cadence and Cassidy locked eyes, ignoring him. “What time did you say Tara got that message?” Cadence asked.
“What message?” Trina asked.
Cadence hadn’t thought to tell them about it yet because it seemed so ridiculous. Now, it was seeming a little less insane. “A text message from Dax.”
“Dax—one of the guys who’s trapped in the portal?” Oswald was leaning so far forward in his chair, Cadence thought it might topple over.
“Yeah. It was 7:00 AM,” Cassidy replied.
Cadence shook her head. At first, she thought maybe they were on to something, but five hours made no sense to her.
“Our time,” Cassidy reminded her. “So 6:00 AM Central time. Every six hours.”
“Oh, yeah. We are in the Eastern time zone,” Cadence remembered. It hadn’t occurred to her. “Okay, so....”
“So if he actually got that, we should hear back at 7:00 PM.” Cassidy drew in a deep breath, and Cadence realized this day was going to be even longer than she thought.
“Wait—I need more information. What’s going on with the phone?” Trina asked, but no one had a chance to answer her before the conference room door came flying open.
“Guys! I just got a text from Jamie!” Ashley screamed, waving her phone in the air. “Oh, my God! It’s true—they are in the portal!”
