Page 18 of Ramshackle
The doorknob creaks, and I move to stand behind the door. It opens slowly as whoever is intruding peeks around to make sure it’s clear. Everywhere except where I’ve hidden.
Vera lets the door fall closed behind her without bothering to shut it all the way or even look. She starts pulling open drawers and moving things aside, then sweeping through the items on the floor or on the dresser surface.
“Yes!” she whispers excitedly as her hand closes around something in one of the drawers. She lifts it out, and it’s none other than the gift-muting cuffs that I’d last used on Raegan. But how…?
It clicks. The congressman. She’d been at the warehouse when he’d used the original cuff on Raegan. Was she the one who had given it to him?
I wait to see what she plans to do next, but then my phone rings in my pocket and gives me up. She twirls around as I pull the phone out to see if it’s Jackson.
It’s not.
Why Elias is calling me at this time of night is a question for later. I hit the side button to mute his call.
“What are you doing?! You scared me!” Vera hisses to keep from waking anyone else.
I sidestep in front of the door before she can think to escape through it with the cuffs. “I should be asking you that, although I think I know the answer.” I nod to indicate the cuffs in her hands and then hold my palm out. “I’ll have those back now.”
She frowns and clutches them tighter. “These don’t belong to you.”
“No, they belong to Raegan after she acquired them from the late congressman.”
I’m already working my gift, twisting and reshaping the metal on my arm, around my neck and chest, with my thoughts alone, until it’s a living, moving thing that joins together to form the image I’m impressing on it in my mind. I haven’t found a limit when it comes to what I can do with my gift. So long as I can think it, touch it, and have enough metal for it, I can do it.
It moves to my hand, settling the handle in my grip and pointing the tip of the sword at Vera’s neck. I have a second twin sword in my other hand that I use to pluck the cuffs from her grasp.
She gasps at the first sword, too distracted by it to notice the second when I relieve her of the cuffs. I catch them against the pommel of the second sword with a few fingers.
Vera raises her hands in submission. I’ve been careful of what technology she has access to, particularly since finding that chip in my car, but even with limited access, I wouldn’t be surprised for her to have an ace up her sleeve.
I don’t drop the first sword yet. “I’m curious. What did you plan to do with them?”
“Nothing bad,” she says with a small shrug, trying to play innocent now that she’s been caught. “A piece of my brother’s in there. I thought it was only right for me to give it back to him.”
My brows raise. “Oh? That’s all? So, if I tell you that he’s already said he wants nothing to do with them, you’d be fine letting them stay with their current owner?”
“Their current owner isn’t here anymore. What use does she have for them?”
“What other use wouldyouhave for them?”
Vera sighs loudly. “Fine. Whatever. Are you going to let me go? I don’t appreciate you pointing that thing at me.”
I’m not sure of anyone who does, but I choose to keep that to myself. Once the sword is lowered, I step out of the way so she can leave. She does like her ass is on fire.
It feels like we’re running out of time.
Like there’s a clock looming over us the longer we take to find Raegan, and Vera keeps sneaking around with whatever she’s been up to. She hasn’t left the firehouse. Of that, I’m positive. But has she found a way to communicate with GE still? Is she just trying to find the rest of the Guild members, or does she have some other goal for being here?
For someone who is still sided with Gifted Enterprise, she didn’t put up much of a fight leaving them.
My phone rings again, and I pull it out just enough to view the caller ID. Elias. He’s not usually so persistent, or such a late caller, so I exit Raegan’s room, locking and closing the doorbehind me, before stalking all the way to the locker room. I answer before the last ring.
“Adams?”
“Yes, Thorton, I’m here. What’s so urgent?”
“I can’t reach Raegan on her phone. Get her for me.”
The smile on my face is nothing short of malevolent at the implication that I’m some messenger dog who will do his bidding. “You can give your message to me.”
