Page 76 of Tracked
“Sarah is an adult. We can’t force her to do or not do something she wants—”
“We can. We can warn her, stop her. I can tell her the truth,” she rioted, a hungry desperation seeming to drive her.
“Lara.” I took her shoulders, demanding her attention. This wasn’t about Sarah. Not really. This was about her sister, and Lara holding on to all this guilt for no damn reason, let alone a good one. “We’re going to find Rachel. If they are going to take Sarah, we can follow them, rescue them both—”
“No.” Her head shook, caught up in the storm of her mind. She grabbed my shirt like she wanted to shake me—like she needed to shakeme—into hearing her. “I have to help her. Warn her. I won’t use her as bait. I won’t risk it—risk losing her, too. I can’t. I can’t lose—”
“Lara ...” I caught her chin on the edges of my knuckles, pinning her head in place. “What is it?” I searched her face. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Her throat bobbed, her eyelids drooping heavily. The pink swells of her lips parted, the warm rush of her breath tempting me to take a taste.
Everything she did tempted me to take another taste. Another kiss. When she looked at me. When she spoke to me. When she accused me of breaking her sister’s heart. Every single thing made me want to cover her mouth with mine and show her that what I’d said earlier had been the truth.
It had only ever taken one look at her to completely undo me.
“Calder ...” Lara swallowed again, her eyes glistening.
There was something else.
I wanted to catch the first tear that fell with my thumb. The second, with my tongue. I wanted to pull her resolute but weary frame against me and kiss away every pain. But instead, I forced myself to stay steady. To breathe steady. To ignore the white of her knuckles where she gripped my shirt, and instead focus on only her motionless stare.
One wrong move—one loud heartbeat—would break it.
The greatest skill a tracker could possess after an acute attention to detail was an enduring ability to be still. To let the answers come to him. To me.
It had never not worked. Until right now.
That storm Callum had warned was going to “hit” ... well, it seemed he’d chosen that word with purpose. Thunder cracked then like a bat against a perfect pitch.
Lara jumped and then shuddered, dragging in a breath as she pulled away from me. “I need some air.”
She was out of the tent before I could stop her, and there was no calling after her. Not now. Not after curfew.
Chapter 19
Lara
I sucked down giant gulps of air like I hadn’t been breathing at all for the last four minutes.
In the distance, lightning scratched giant white tears through the onyx sky. A storm was close, but it wasn’t quite here yet, and I needed to get out of that tent. Away from what Callum had found. Away from Calder’s probing stare and a different truth it threatened to uncover.
A cult.Rachel had joined a cult. And Ian ...I’d lost them both—failed them both.
“Lara.” Calder came up behind me but stopped a pace away. I hated how he knew I needed the space.
“I’m sorry. I just need a minute,” I managed.
“I’ll take one with you,” came his deep reply, and I shivered.
I could ask him to leave, but he wouldn’t. And then there was the tiny, broken piece of me that didn’t want to be alone.
It felt like he knew that, too.
My arms banded over my middle, my hands curling into the sides of my shirt.
Thunder boomed again. “They don’t have storms like this in Phoenix,” I said, watching the tapestry of the angry sky unfold.
I didn’t want to talk about Rachel right now. Or the cult. Or what was going to happen. Or what I could’ve done—should’ve done. I kept ...losingpeople. Because I wasn’t enough. Because I hadn’t done enough.
