Zoe’s shock was the only thing that kept her upright. As soon as she realized that she wasn’t in some kind of nightmare—that she was seeing the remains of what had once been her home—all her strength failed her.
Talan grabbed her around her waist and eased her to the floor.
The devastation was unimaginable, like some kind of bomb had gone off in her living room.
The furniture was slashed. Every drawer was dumped out. Every book had been searched and cast aside in a pile or ripped pages and bent covers. Even the walls had been torn open.
“What happened?” she found enough air to ask.
“Someone was searching for the sphere. Thoroughly.”
“My home… it’s ruined.”
Talan’s face appeared close to hers, blocking out the sight of the devastation. “It’s going to be okay. You’re safe. The device is safe. All the rest of this is just stuff.”
But it was her stuff. Her father’s stuff. She was just starting to accept the fact that she would never see her home again once she left this world, but to see it like this… “I can’t.”
He took the sides of her face in his big hands and used his thumbs to close her eyes. “Don’t look at it. Remember the way it used to look. That’s the memory you need to take with you.”
She tried to recall the controlled chaos that had reigned here—the stacks of books, the old but comfortable furniture. Her dad’s art.
“Are the murals safe?” Zoe asked.
“Yes,” said Talan without hesitation. “They’re all untouched. Just like you remember them.”
He was lying. She could tell. But he was doing it to save her pain.
As much of that as she’d suffered lately, she had to thank him for the deception.
“We can’t stay here long. Krotian must know this is your house. He could come back, and we need to find the other half of the sphere before that happens.”
She nodded, but not enough to dislodge his thumbs. She really didn’t want to see the damage again.
“Keep your eyes closed. I’ll get you through the house and into the backyard where we can search under the streetlight, okay?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t look, honey. Promise me.”
“I promise.” She squeezed her eyelids shut as he lifted her into his arms and marched straight through the house to the back door in the kitchen. She heard the crunch of broken glass and trash under his feet, so she hummed to herself to ward that away too.
Her weight shifted as he unlocked the back door, then she felt the chill of the night air hit her cheeks. The scent of raised dust and destruction was gone. All she could smell now was snow and the heat of Talan’s skin.
She buried her nose against his neck and breathed him in to steady her nerves. She wasn’t sure why his presence was so soothing, but it was, and she needed that right now.
He set her on her feet. “Don’t look back. Eyes forward.”
She did as he said and opened her eyes. The backyard was untouched except for a set of footprints leading to the back door.
This was how the asshole who’d wrecked her house had come in.
“No one’s been near the corner of the yard with the light,” Talan said. “That’s a good sign that your father hid his treasure well.”
As he always did.
A flutter of grief filled her gut, but she ignored it. They had a job to do. Lives were at stake.
More important, whoever had trashed her house was going to be pissed as hell when she found the treasure after he hadn’t.
“Take that, bitches,” she said aloud.
Talan raised his brows, making his tattoos shift. “Take what?”
“I’m going over there to find what Dad left me.” She picked up the snow shovel propped against the back of the house and tromped through the snow.
A pool of light fell squarely in the rear corner of the yard. Even the eight-foot privacy fence her father had put in couldn’t keep the overhead light at bay.
She started in the center of that spotlight and cleared a circle of frozen grass. While she did, Talan ran all over the yard, leaving a weaving path of footprints and disrupted snow.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Making sure that no one can figure out what we were up to from our tracks. No sense in giving away any advantage.”
She never would have thought to go to those lengths, but then that’s why she needed a man like Talan around.
The plastic blade of her shovel hit something hard and scraped.
Excitement slid through her, making her hands shake on the handle of the shovel.
Talan appeared beside her. “Let me. You’ve shoveled enough.”
It took him half the time it would have taken her to clear the rest of the area. What she’d scraped across was some kind of metal plate. It was about the size of a manhole cover, but square. There was an obvious gap around the edge, like it was meant to open, but it had been welded shut in several places.
“This wasn’t here when I was a kid,” she said. “I would have remembered it. I played back here all the time.”
“He must have put it in sometime.”
“When I went to college, maybe.” She wasn’t certain about that, but she did remember there had been a lot of mud in the kitchen when she came home for the summer one year.
Talan took her by the shoulders and eased her away from the opening. “Stand back. I’m going to open it.”
“How?”
He pulled a small glass vial from his vest. “Acid.”
“Is there anything you’re not prepared for?” she asked, grinning.
He touched her cheek with so much gentleness, she could almost mistake it for love. “I wasn’t prepared for you, Zoe.”
Her heart squeezed hard in her chest. She could fall for a man like Talan way too easily, and that scared her.
She pulled away and took a long step back. “I’ll give you room to do your thing.”
His hand fell, as did his expression, but he crouched and did the job, pouring a thin stream of yellow liquid across the welds. The metal hissed and smoked as it was eaten away. It worked in seconds, allowing him to pull the lid free.
Lights came on as soon as the metal was clear of its housing. There, in her own backyard, was a tunnel leading straight down. The walls were cement, and metal rungs had been bolted in the wall for ladder access whatever was below.
Zoe stared in surprise for several seconds. “I had no idea this was even here.”
“I’ll go first,” Talan said.
“What do you think is down there?”
“Only one way to find out. Stay here.”
He was on his way down before she even considered arguing with him. This was all just too surreal.
As soon as Talan made it to the bottom, he looked up. “You need to come down and see this. But don’t touch the acid.”
She climbed down, closing the lid behind her so that nothing could easily follow them down. The lights went off for a second, giving her a jolt of panic, before flickering back on again.
“Motion sensor,” said Talan, pointing to a flat area on the wall.
She’d never seen anything like it, but she did recognize her father’s handiwork on sight.
At the bottom of the ladder was a small, round room. It was barely tall enough for Talan to stand upright, and only a few feet across.
“It looks like one of those storm shelters—the kind they use in Tornado Alley.”
Talan nodded. “Yeah, except it’s been modified. There’s Imonite tech all over the place down here.”
There was a single work bench across one wall. Its back was rounded to fit the space, as were several shelves and colorful bins used to hold small parts and hardware. The space was far cleaner than her father’s usual work areas, telling her that he either didn’t spend much time down here or had cleaned shortly before he died.
On the workbench was a sticky note with her father’s writing on it. She held it up to Talan. “What does it say?”
“‘What is your favorite color?’”
“Are you asking, or was he?”
“He was,” Talan said.
Zoe started opening red bins. There was another of those fabric pouches in the third one. From the weight of that and the way it fit her palm, she knew what was inside.
With shaking hands, she opened the drawstring and slid out the other half of the sphere. Without even trying the two pieces together, she knew they would fit. She’d studied the first half for so long, she knew every scratch and ridge it held, and this piece was a perfect match.
“This is it,” she said, beaming up at Talan.
He had a strange look on his face. She didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t joy.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He said nothing as he shook his head. Instead, he pulled out a flat, disk-shaped device from his pocket and slid a smaller disk into the first. After studying the gadget for a few seconds, he said, “The next window is twenty minutes away. It opens in an hour.”
“That’s it?” Zoe asked. “We’re done?”
Talan nodded. “It’s time for you to go home.”
Stevens waited until it was safe before he started his engine. As soon as he was in place well behind the couple and in enough traffic to not be noticed, he made the call.
“Yes?” answered the freak.
“They’re gone. I’m on their tail.”
“Which way are they going?”
“They just merged onto the highway going east.”
There was silence for a moment.
“What do you want me to do?” asked Stevens.
“Nothing. I know where they’re going.”
“What about my money?”
The freak let out a sound that was almost a growl—one that had every hair on Stevens’ body lifting in fear. “Follow them. I’ll be waiting for you there with your payment.”
Something about the way the guy talked warned Stevens that this was a setup. He wanted the stack of cash he’d been offered, but there was no amount of money worth his life.
Let the pretty couple from the bank deal with the freak. Money or not, Stevens was out.
He took the next exit, none the worse for wear. He didn’t even suffer a pang of guilt that he hadn’t warned the couple that they were speeding toward a trap.