Riders (Riders, #1)(25)

“Seeker.”

“Yes.”

“Is Seeker higher in rank than horseman? In the grand scheme, are you more senior than me?”

“Are you kidding?”

“I’m in the military. Rank matters. I just want to know where I stand. If we had uniforms with stripes on the shoulder, would you have more stripes than me?”

For just an instant, part of an instant, she looked like she wanted to laugh. “You’re unbelievable. Yes. I’d probably have one more stripe than you. I’m kind of the source for…” She paused. “I don’t know. For information. Does that bother you?”

“Why would it?”

She just looked at me.

Did she mean the girl thing? Because I had no problem taking orders from a girl. I’d been doing it my whole life, for one. My mom was the strongest person I knew. And if you were capable, I personally gave no shits what you were. For me character was character, end of story.

“Okay, this is good.” I shook some sand out of my hair, scrubbed a hand over my face. “Gettin’ some answers. Hangin’ in my Jeep with a Seeker in the middle of nowhere.”

“Cayucos.”

“Say what now?”

“We’re in Cayucos, California.”

My gaze drifted out to the surfers on the water. Cayucos. Kye-yoo-kuss. What kind of word was that? Spanish? I was definitely focusing on the wrong things.

“How are you doing with all of this?” she asked.

“Great. Really great.”

“Want me to keep going?”

“Absolutely. Keep going.”

“So … from time to time … I get this sort of … download into my mind. Information, like I said before. That’s how I know what I need to do, what my task is. In the last one, I saw you and the three other riders. I learned that I need to bring the four of you together so you can help protect something that’s very powerful. Something that can’t fall into the wrong hands.”

I nodded, taking a few seconds to let that sink in. “Are you going to tell me what I’m protecting?” It took everything in me not to look right at the silver necklace I’d noticed earlier. There was something unusual about the thickness of the links. Maybe that wasn’t the object, but my instincts were pinging.

“And what about this?” I lifted my wrist, showing her the cuff. “This showed up a few days ago without a manual. Any idea what it does? How it works?”

She looked from the cuff to me, shaking her head. “There are certain things I can’t tell you yet. I told you that. It’s safer.”

“There are certain things you need to tell me, Daryn. Usually on a mission it’s good to have what’s called an objective.”

“I agree. And right now the objective is to bring the four of you together. The Kindred are dangerous. We’re already outnumbered by them. You’ll be stronger as a group. We will be. The only way we stand a chance is together.”

That actually made sense. It was the same principle I’d been learning in the Army. Ranger Battalions only worked effectively when they worked together.

“All right,” I said, but I didn’t feel all right. I had so many questions. A hundred. A thousand. I couldn’t even focus on any one for long. But the thing I wanted to know—needed to know—was if I was good.

Was I an agent of darkness? Maybe the wrong hands Daryn was talking about were actually the right hands. If all of this was true, then I was War. I had a sketchy understanding of Revelation, but I was pretty sure the horsemen had been unleashed to cleanse the earth of evils. But I felt shaky about how things like war and famine and death could be on the good side—instruments of anything good. And from the minute Daryn had told me I was War, that had become a huge, looming question in my head.

Am I good?

Bigger than that, possibly, was my confusion over why I had been chosen.

Why me?

I was just a dumb kid.

But I couldn’t ask either question. So I skipped ahead to easier ones.

“What about the three people at the party last night? They’re part of this, right? Our opposition? You called them the Kindred. They’re after this secret thing I’m supposed to protect?”

“Yes. Samrael was the taller one. Ronwae was the girl, and Malaphar was the one in the suit. And there are four more who weren’t there.”

“How’d they know you’d be there?”

“They can sense the object when they’re near it. Its power calls to them. That’s why we need to—” Daryn winced, her eyebrows drawing together. “Gideon, we need to stop now. I need to figure some things out before I tell you more. I need to bring the four of you together—that’s what’s important.”

I let out a breath, my gaze moving to the ocean beyond her. One of the surfers wiped out in style, his arms flailing, his board jamming straight into the water like a tombstone. I watched him come up and swim over to his board. He slid back on, turned toward the waves, and paddled out, ready for more.

That was how you did it.

No hesitation. No fear.

Reaching under the steering column, I pressed the tape around the wires, bringing my Jeep back to life. “Where to next, boss?”





CHAPTER 15

“Let’s stop here for a second, Gideon,” Cordero says. “I have a few questions.”