Arise (Awakened Fate Book 4) by Skye Malone Page B

more than before, Chloe looked on edge.
    And like so much else, that couldn’t be a good sign.
     
     

Chapter Six
     
    Wyatt
     
    We’d burned through the charge in the cell phone twice and still we hadn’t reached the damn fish.
    Clay muttered a curse and hung up. “You sure we can’t just leave a fucking message?”
    “Keep calling,” Dad ordered from behind the wheel. “I want to hear her voice when we tell her.”
    I kept my eyes on the view beyond the window. We’d been meandering across Wyoming for most of the night, stopping occasionally and generally buying time till the girl finally picked up the line. Dad didn’t want to push it, or take the landwalkers too close to the coast before the girl knew what was happening. It was no good killing them with proximity to the water if the girl wasn’t even aware we were doing it.
    Though at least it’d make her father shut up.
    I grimaced as the woman began crying again. I didn’t mind the sound. There was something soothing about things being afraid of you, like a certain rightness to the universe. But the guy would start comforting her, and his whispers of how everything would be alright annoyed the hell out of me. He seriously thought they both weren’t dead in all this. That by keeping her quiet, rather than ditching her and gnawing his own leg off like some animal in a trap, he still stood a chance of surviving and the woman did too.
    It was revolting.
    His little whispers started up again. I pressed my head to the window glass. Much more of this, and those two wouldn’t make it to Washington – to hell with the plan. Dad’s idea was to get a hold of the fish girl, tell her to meet us at our cabin or else, and then head back home and wait for her. I wasn’t sure which of us he intended to let have the girl – though I was pretty certain he wanted to kill that black-haired bastard himself after what the guy did to Brock – but if Clay or Owen thought they were going to get a chance at her, they were sorely mistaken. I was the oldest. I’d been waiting the longest. I was damn well going to be the one to take that girl’s life, and if either of them got in the way, I’d just have one more body to bury.
    Though all that was irrelevant if we couldn’t get a teenager to answer her fucking phone.
    “This plan blows,” I muttered.
    “You got a better one?” Dad snapped.
    I paused. I probably shouldn’t have said that out loud. He sounded pissed.
    And I didn’t have an answer anyway. I’d kill her father and leave his body for the cops, under the assumption that the bitch would hear about it eventually, but Dad probably wouldn’t agree. More leverage was better and all that.
    But at least I wouldn’t have to listen to the guy anymore.
    “We could try Harman?” Clay suggested from the back seat. “See if he knows any other numbers to call?”
    Disgust twisted my face. “That little weasel won’t–”
    “Good idea,” Dad said. “Call him.”
    I could have punched Clay for his smirk.
    Knowing I couldn’t easily reach him over the seat, he ignored my glare while he thumbed on the phone and then dialed. “It’s us,” he said when the doctor answered. “We can’t reach the fish. Who else can we call?”
    My ears picked up the sound of Harman sputtering.
    “I-I think she might’ve headed to Fort Pedrosa. My granddaughter… she’s with them and so we’re–”
    The sounds were muffled for a moment as Dad reached back. “Give me that.”
    Clay handed the phone over.
    “Why the hell didn’t you tell us this earlier?” Dad demanded.
    “Well, I mean, I wasn’t… Eleanor is a very smart girl. She might go there, but…” Harman seemed to regroup. “It’s under control, Richard. I have the chief of police from Chloe’s hometown with me. He understands the seriousness of this and of what that dehaian boy has done. Don’t worry; we’re only minutes away from Fort Pedrosa and if we find Chloe and Zeke there, Barry will