Page 104 of Resolve
Reid returned, and then Kellan started the long drive to the medical director’s hospital.
We're going to end this, even if we have to chase him to the end of the world.
I’ve been eating and taking naps between them to recover my strength. The world outside is dark, which means I’ve missed sunset and we’re now stretching into the night.
“It’s behind us,” Dane answers, typing something out on an old flip phone. It’s the burner phone we have to communicate with Alice’s siblings. His mouth is tight, his brows pinched together as he finishes his text.
“What’s wrong?”
Aiden responds from the front passenger seat. “The medicaldirector knows he’s our target.” Damn. But I'm not surprised. When six of your colleagues are called together for a meeting and then the building collapses, killing them, it’s not a far stretch to assume it was a planned attack. I’d hoped we might reach him before the news did, though.
Dane flips the phone closed. “He’s waiting for us. Karl—Alice’s brother—just sent that warning.”
Unease curls in my gut. It shouldn’t matter if he’s waiting for us. It doesn’t change anything. Yet, hearing the warning sets off internal alarm bells that there’s more to it. “So what’s the plan?”
“We get in, make sure he’s alone, and kill him,” Aiden replies.
I shake my head before he’s even finished. “No. The point of all this is to avoid close contact with the board. If he’s waiting for us, then it’s got to be a trap.”
Dane sighs and runs his fingers through his messy blond hair. It looks like he’s been doing that a lot. “It’s the only way we’ll get him. I don’t fucking like it, either. But Karl said he didn’t go home when his shift ended today. He’s staying there indefinitely. Or at least until we confront him. We have to get him here or not at all.”
“He’s going to use the patients against us,” Jackson muses.
We’d worried about this guy the most, and he’s already proving we’d been right to be concerned. We can’t exactly take down a hospital with sick and injured patients inside. He’s also been on the board longer than anyone else and seems to have a closer relationship to Charles, according to both Reid and Alice. “What was his gift again?”
“Fear,” Tinsley surprisingly answers, sounding haunted.
Right. The ability to read your fears and use them to fuck with your head.
The fact that he’s thepsychiatricmedical director of the hospital makes me sick to my stomach.
Metal shifts and moves in Aiden’s grip like it’s something alive. It melds together effortlessly, smoothing itself into the shape he pictures as he outfits himself with metal gauntlets and a chest piece. “Kellan, Jackson, Reid, and I will be the only ones going in,” he remarks while working on a whip sword next.
“Like hell you are!” I jump forward in my seat. “I’m going, too. I know I can’t use the full strength of my gift, but that doesn’t make me powerless.”
“You think we can’t handle him, beautiful?” Kellan challenges, throwing his arm over the back of his seat so he can see me.
“I can’t handle you going into a fight without me, where I can’t have your back! Aiden almost—” The words stick in my throat, emotions thrashing in my chest from the memory. I take a breath, slowing my words. “I don’t care if you’re about to fight the fucking Easter bunny. I’m going to be there.”
Kellan chuckles. “I won’t tell the Easter bunny you said that.”
Dane slips his hand in mine, weaving our fingers. “I don’t want to be separated, either,” he tells me, his voice low. “But he’s going to fuck with our heads. Our fears.”
“Let him.” My voice is hard, my stare pinning his with determination. “It’s time I faced them anyway.” Dane’s brows lift in surprise, then sink as his gaze heats. “The more of us there are, the harder it’ll be for him to use his gift. I don’t think he’ll be able to get inside all our heads at once.”
“I’m sorry, but I think I need to stay here,” Tinsley murmurs. “I thought I could, but I think I’d be too much of a liability with... my head.” She smiles softly at Reid, whose lips turn down.
He squeezes her thigh. “Don’t leave the car. Lay low.”
Reid only shared a little bit of her past with GE and that they messed with her head. It makes sense for her to pass on this if she’s only just gotten better.
Aiden’s intense stare draws my eyes to his. I can almost see the argument forming to keep us here, but a small ding intervenes before he gets the chance.
Dane passes the phone to Reid. “Karl sent through a picture of where the doctor’s holed up.”
Pulling on the seat in front of me, I peer over Reid’s shoulder. “Why is it so dark?”
Aiden extends his hand for the phone, and Reid gives it to him. He studies it for a few seconds.
