Page 20 of The Wayward Sons & The Vampires of Fortune
Power flex. I didn’t care if they hated me and took it out on me. I was curious, however, about why the FBI was involved. Was this something my father had done? I could only imagine what they thought of me.
But why?Wasn’t sending vampires after me enough? What was he getting at now?
CHAPTER 14
Here.” Sam dropped his phone on the table in front of me when he returned from making a phone call outside. It took everything in my fucking power not to spy on him. One little dip into my hunter hearing and I would’ve heard every word.
But it was wrong.
Or at least Ryder would tell me it was wrong.
I picked up the phone and glanced at the screen, doing a quick double-take when I realized my baby was on it. He sat in the corner of a holding cell, hands in his lap and eyes on the window. Occasionally, he glanced around the room as if assessing the others he was stuck with.
I didn’t like it. Not one fucking bit.
“Is this live?” I demanded.
“Yeah,” he said. As he spoke, he pulled shit out of cabinets “Riley sent me a feed from the jail—”
“Is it legal?” I interjected.
“Is hacking a government security system legal? Oh, I don’t know, Gray. What the fuck do you think?”Point taken.“I justfigured you’d like to know that he’s okay while we’re stuck here waiting for shit to happen. There’s a federal hold on him, so he’s not going anywhere for the next few days.”
“Next few days?” I repeated, my voice rising. “There ain’t no way we’re leavin’ him in there for the next few days!”
Fuck that shit.Ryder needed to be out of there now. I recognized the discomfort on his face—the struggle with emotional input. He wouldn’t survive days stuck in there.
“There ain’t no way he can be in there for days,” I reiterated. “You don’t get it. With his power—”
“He’s in danger of losing control,” he finished for me. “I get it—I do—but that’s the safest place for him until we’ve put all the pieces on the board the way we need them.”
Pieces on the board?Did he hear himself?
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”
“Chess, sunshine,” he retorted. I hated when he called me that.Okay, maybe I didn’t fully hate it, but he didn’t belong calling me it.“I’m talking about chess. We won’t beat them with brute force, so we have to outsmart them.”
“Right.” I nodded slowly, my gaze falling back on the video of Ryder. His eyes were shut, and I watched the way his chest expanded with a deep breath.His breathing exercises.I hated every goddamn part of this plan. This was torture for him. But what was the alternative? Because this man was ready to spend the rest of his life in jail if it meant avoiding the vampires. “Can’t your agent friend have him moved to a solo cell? Bein’ around all of them is killin’ him. He’d still be in the buildin’ and under watch, so he’d be fine, right?”
Vampires wouldn’t take that as an opportunity, would they?
“He’s safer around them,” he said. Crossing his arms, Sam leaned against a counter. “Just so I know, how bad is his lack of control?”
“It ain’t that it’s a lack of control,” I told him. Sam had experience in that department. Growing up, he’d come into his power during a schoolyard brawl and damn near killed a kid. He wore a magic necklace to contain his power because he couldn’t control it. Ryder wasn’t like that. “His power is overwhelmin’. He just feels too much.”
Pain. He felt too much pain. That shit would incapacitate anyone. It was Ryder’s burden.
“Okay.” He said nothing else, which bothered the hell out of me.
“So, what the hell are we supposed to do now?”
“I need some kind of code word.”
“A what?
“I need something that my agent can say to Ryder to clue him into the fact that we’re working with you,” Sam explained.
I clicked my tongue as I thought about it.Something us… something disarming… something that would tell him I was coming for him…
