Cadence couldn’t sleep. Whether it was because she was still on Fiji time, had slept a little on the plane, or was still leery of having another dream like the one she’d had the other day--that hadn’t been a dream--she couldn’t quite tell, but rather than attempting to sleep anyway, she was sitting on the couch, drinking a glass of wine, and going over what they knew and what they didn’t know with Aaron.
“So this silver nitrate bomb is implanted under the skin, and when it explodes, it’s supposed to ignite the Vampire from the inside out. That sounds pretty deadly to me,” Aaron said, holding up the design blueprint they’d gotten earlier from Cadence’s dad.
“I agree. But I don’t understand why Christian would leave in the middle of production. And Dad said that they’d made fifty so far.”
“And yet we could only locate forty-five.” Aaron was shaking his head. “He wouldn’t take explosives to Hawaii.”
“Did he fly commercial? I mean, Hannah said he didn’t take one of our planes.”
“I assume so. I guess I could have Emma or Fannie check on that. His phone is off, and the last place it pinged was here.”
“Which means he didn’t take it with him. Who the hell goes from Missouri to Hawaii with no phone?”
A knock on their door prevented Aaron from answering her. Cadence looked at her husband for a second before she whispered, “Who is it?” but not to the knocker. It was a test.
Aaron arched one eyebrow, narrowing his other eye. “Who do you think it is?”
“I don’t know. You’re the mind reader.”
“No, that’s Cass. I’m just good at making predictions.” He smiled at her, stood, mouthed “Elliott” at her and then went to open the door. “You’re out way past your bedtime.”
“Ha, ha,” Elliott fake laughed. Cadence marveled at her husband’s accuracy as their mutual best friend walked in. “I’m not, but why are you still awake, kid? Shouldn’t you be sawing logs?”
“I’ll probably regret it tomorrow, but I’m all out of whack.”
“Oh, yeah, isn’t that the largest island in Fiji? Whack Island. Lovely in the spring.”
“Why are you here, Elliot?” Aaron asked, resuming his seat as Elliott dropped into a chair near Cadence. “Not that you aren’t welcome, but your visits usually don’t happen this late at night.”
“Well, I did a shitload of research today, talked to Ward. Pretty sure I can’t die. I go home, and Brandon’s moping on the couch as he’s been doing most of the last few days since he and Cass split. And so we start chatting, and he said something that got me thinking.”
“Dangerous,” Cadence joked.
“Exactly.” Elliott nodded in agreement. “So Brandon mentioned that he saw Christian and Cassidy having coffee together last week, in the coffee house. I hadn’t thought about it until just then, but isn’t that really weird? I mean, she hates him. She tore his face open recently. Why would she be having coffee with him?”
Cadence shrugged. “Trying to hash things over?”
“Does that sound like your sister?” Aaron asked, and Cadence had to agree it didn’t. “Why do you think she was with him?”
“I don’t know,” Elliott admitted. “But... Christian’s IAC is not working, and he has no cell phone—right?”
“Right. As far as we can tell, it’s still here,” Cadence said.
“So... who’s the only person who can contact him?”
“Why didn’t we think of asking her to reach out to him earlier?” Cadence asked Aaron.
“I did. But I wanted to check the phone first. And... I gave Cassidy so many other tasks, I was going to wait until we were sure he didn’t have his phone with him before I asked her to do that.”
“But I think... she already has,” Elliott said, pointing at both of them.
“Why...?” Cadence didn’t know what to make of that statement. She looked around in confusion.
“Because I don’t think our little jackass friend is in Hawaii.”
“You think he... went after Daunator by himself?” Aaron’s expression conveyed what Cadence was feeling—that Elliott had lost his mind.
Even Elliott looked unsure, but his head began to loosely nod back and forth in a round-about motion. “I do. Or something like that. I bet he took some of those new weapons he’s been working on and tried to get the jump on all of us, wanting to go over there and wipe him out while we were still sitting around picking our noses.”
“We aren’t sitting around picking our noses,” Aaron said, his face perfectly straight. “We don’t do that—hardly ever.”
Cadence grabbed a throw pillow and tossed it at him. “Elliott, what you’re accusing Cass of is kind of a big deal. Do you really think, if what you’re saying about Christian is true, and I highly doubt that it is, she knows about it but didn’t tell us during the meeting?”
“I don’t know if that’s what I think or not. But it’s possible.”
Not knowing what to say, Cadence sat dumbfounded for a few moments, letting the possibility mull around in her head. Eventually, Aaron said, “I guess it is possible. We’ll talk to her about it.”
That seemed to be good enough for Elliott. “Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, I guess my work here is done.” He clapped his paws down on the armrests before standing. Aaron got up, too, to walk him to the door, but Cadence was still puzzling over his accusation. It was a pretty big one. She needed some answers, but she figured Cassidy was probably asleep by now. She’d have to wait until the morning.
“How’d the hunt go, by the way?” Elliott asked, one hand on the door. “It was several hours ago, wasn’t it?”
“It was a no go,” Aaron replied. “They couldn’t find the guy. I don’t think Eliza asked Cass for help this time. Hannah said when she mentioned to her that we were back, Eliza got a little... nervous.”
