Page 71 of Shadows Relived
“You better hurry your ass, Callen,” she whispered as she tested her restraints once more. And then she leanedto one side and then back to the other, playing in the uneven legs of her chair, hoping to break the bolts holding it in place. If she could get out of the chair, then she would have a better chance.
With another deep breath, she bit back against the pain and continued to rock from side to side. Then, the world outside exploded.
CHAPTER 26
THE RURAL ROADS OF Kingsland,Georgia, stretched out like dark veins beneath the tires, flanked by endless pine and whispering moss. The air was humid and tense, each breath Callen took pressing heavy against his chest. In the passenger seat, Senator Harrington sat stiff and silent, arms folded tight against his chest, eyes flickering with a mixture of blame, worry, and rage. It was a cocktail of emotions Callen fully understood.
However, he also didn’t care.
His focus remained on the red dot blinking steadily on the GPS tracker Blaze had fed to his phone, a tiny miracle embedded in a necklace no bigger than a thumbnail. One that sat against Meaghan’s skin if he was still lucky.
God, please let her still be there. And alive. She has to be alive.
He gripped the steering wheel tighter, his knuckles whitening around the rubber as every tendon in his forearm pulled tight as a wire. The SUV’s engine rumbledbeneath him, steady and powerful, but the sound barely registered. All he could hear was the blood in his ears, pounding like war drums.
They were close, with just a few more miles to go. The Georgia pines outside the window blurred into darkness, tall silhouettes in the headlights, but his mind was elsewhere, caught between the man he used to be and the one behind the wheel now. Wraith was back. Not the shadow who had slipped through enemy camps under moonlight but the one who had learned to feel again, because of her. And now she was the one taken.
Stupid, reckless, brave as hell woman.
A muscle twitched in his jaw as he downshifted hard and took the curve faster than the GPS recommended. Roger Harrington shifted in the passenger seat but didn’t speak. Not anymore. Not after the last verbal lashing Callen had given him back in Savannah. The senator had retreated to a stony silence, one hand clenched into a fist on his knee, the other braced on the door like a man waiting for a crash.
“Still blinking,” Callen muttered under his breath. “Hold on, Meaghan.”
He didn’t care if the senator heard him.
What he did desperately care about was the fact that the dot hadn’t moved in the last twenty minutes. Static. Centered at the address Tex had pulled from drone footage and county property records. An old house. A forgotten place in the trees, surrounded by nothingness.
And she was in it.
Then his mind went to all the worse case scenarios.They could have moved her. The necklace could have broken loose or fallen in the scuffle and be lying on the floor of an empty room. They could have found it and be using it as bait to lure him in to finish him.
He gritted his teeth against the spiral that threatened to spin him into oblivion. No. He couldn’t afford that kind of thinking. Positive. Always positive. She was strong. Had survived her father’s political world. Had survived him.
His chest ached at the thought.
He glanced in the rearview mirror, the distant headlights flickering behind him. Gage and Elvis followed in the second SUV, and somewhere behind them were Sage and Abbie. Closing in from the west were Hawk and Grim.
They were coming for her. All of them. There was no way they would lose, no way Marris would win.
But for Callen, this wasn’t a mission anymore. Or about duty.
This was about her.
Her eyes locking with his the first night on that back road. Her voice, low and ragged, telling him she wasn’t broken even when the world tried to shatter her. Her hand in his, trembling but defiant. Her mouth under his, heat and fire, and forgiveness all wrapped in one. Her body pressed to his as she whispered, “Stay.”
And since he met her, since the school shooting, she had become his reason to stop running.
Now he would burn the world down to get her back.
He reached for the comm on his dash andpressed the button. “ETA, two minutes. Weapons hot. Wait for my signal.”
“Copy,” came Gage’s voice, grim and ready.
Another light blinked, and a quick glance revealed Tex’s updated drone feed. The structure was still in view, along with four heat signatures outside. Two paced back and forth, with two more inside. And one… Callen swallowed.
One in the far corner of the main room. Sitting still.
He felt his brow pinch as he turned his gaze back to the road. Tied, maybe? Definitely alive, though.
