Page 80 of Cast in Shadow
My own heart and mind had been in an increasing state of overwhelm since reconnecting with Emerson. What if my internal chaos was drowning out some looming threat?
I turned my attention inward. Anticipation, check. Excitement, check. A whole lot of worry mixed with self-doubt, check and check. But maybe he was right, because when I dug deeper, something darker churned beneath the surface. Something colder. Something that felt like a warning.
Intuition? An omen? I honestly couldn’t tell.
I wasn’t worried about Emerson in a fight. Primordial demons were damned near indestructible. It was the safety ofmy people that would weigh on me until this thing was done. But this was purely a recon trip. We were here to get eyes on the area and finalize the plan for positions.
The real show wasn’t for another twenty-four hours.
And yet, standing there in the cool light of the moon, another layer of unease draped over the first. When my phone buzzed in my pocket, I nearly jumped out of my skin. Nguyen shot me a look as I pulled it out.
“It’s Shay,” I said, showing him the screen.
If the events of the last few days had gone differently, I probably would have silenced it and called her after we’d wrapped for the evening. Now? I wasn’t about to send her to voicemail.
I held up a finger to let him know I would be a minute. When I brought the phone to my ear, at least a dozen voices spilled out, but they were mostly in the background, like she was at a bar.
“Senna?” Her voice was low, almost a whisper, and a trickle of warning dripped down my spine.
“Yeah, it’s me. Is everything okay?”
The background voices grew louder for a few seconds, then they were drowned out by the thump of heavy bass music. Shay said something I couldn’t make out.
I held my hand over my other ear, as if cutting off the silence of the forest would somehow help me hear her better. “Say that again?”
Nguyen inched closer, his expression turning sharp. “What’s wrong?” I tried to wave him off, but he wasn’t having it.
“Shay, are you there?”
The music dipped in the background. “Senna, you need to get down here.”
“Where?” I was already moving toward my Jeep with Nguyen matching me step for step.
A few excruciating seconds ticked by. “Andreno Heights.”
My stomach dropped. That was where we’d spotted Megan Navali the day before. What the hell was Shay doing in that part of town? Especially after I’d made it clear that I wanted her safe inside Lexa until the job was done.
“Are you okay? What’s happened?”
Nguyen stared at me intently, his brown eyes slicing clean through my calm facade. I pulled the phone away from my ear and tapped the speakerphone button. Music and laughter spilled out before Shay’s voice cut back in.
“Nothing yet, but Navali is here,” she whispered.
“Fuck,” Nguyen growled.
“You need to leave. Right now,” I ordered.
“I’m fine. It’s not like she knows who I am. I’ll just keep an eye on her until you get here.”
“Shay, I mean it. Get out of there,” I said, swallowing down the rising panic that was squeezing my throat.
She rattled off an address. “It’s a house party. Lots of cars. You can’t miss it. How soon can you be here?”
“Goddammit,” Nguyen hissed under his breath. I didn’t need to be psychic to know what he was thinking.
“Listen to me, Shayla. She is too dangerous. You saw the footage from the camp site. Remember? The bodies?”
The sound of the party spilled through the line, but she didn’t respond. Worry and dread raked sharp fingernails along my already sensitive nerve endings. At some point, I’d broken into a run, and Nguyen was right on my heels, barking low commands into his radio as we went.
