Page 202 of Without a Trace
“This way,” Zeke muttered, already veering toward a black SUV waiting on the far end of the strip. “I figured it out. There’s a crossing point buried in the archives. Masked by Order glyphs, hidden for decades. They won’t have changed the path. Not if Thirelin’s still buried under the Veil.”
Kane threw the trunk open and climbed into the back with a muttered, “No one told me this was gonna be a goddamn exorcism road trip.”
I didn’t smile.
My pulse had been fucked since we left the island.
My forearm itched like fire—skin prickling, heat pulsing just under the ink. The lines of my tattoo shimmered faintly in the low light, like something was waking up inside me.
“She’s in pain,” I said quietly.
Alden looked at me. “You feel it?”
“She’s in pain,” I said quietly.
Alden looked at me.
“You sure?”
I nodded. “Not physical. Something else. Like she’s splitting in two.”
Zeke climbed into the front passenger seat and threw the map on the dash. “That’s what Thirelin does. It pulls. It remembers. If she’s touched anything—old stone, original symbols—it could trigger a bleed in the bond. Past, present, all layered over her. It’s not just a location. It’s a memory trap.”
I slid behind the wheel and gripped it too tight.
“She’s not ready for that.”
“No one is,” Zeke said. “But it chose her back.”
Alden stayed quiet, but I saw the tremor in his hand before he clenched it into a fist.
It wasn’t just my pulse syncing anymore.
He felt it too.
The roads out of the airfield were empty. Remote. Trees blurred into cliffs, mist curling off the shoulders of the mountains like Thirelin already knew we were coming.
Kane cracked a window in the back and muttered, “So, what, we just knock on the haunted blood manor’s front door and ask for Scarlett back?”
No one answered.
Because we didn’t know if she’d want to come back.
Or if the place would let her go.
I stared at the winding road ahead, the lines bending like threads being pulled toward something inevitable.
I could feel her now—not just emotionally, but in the way the air bent. The way my skin crawled every time we turned closer to the pull. Her name sat at the base of my throat like a command.
Scarlett.
The tattoo on my forearm flared again—hot, aching, like it was branded into my bloodstream.
She was calling us.
She was mine.
Scarlett
