Toxic (Denazen #2)(26)

I could feel Kale trying to pull the edge of the tape up. Each time his fingers came close to touching my skin, I couldn’t help flinching. Unfortunately, this only made things worse. Each time I tensed, Kale would freeze, terrified he’d come too close to making contact.

He let out an anguished scream as the flames crept closer. “Your bindings are caught under a piece of bent metal. I can’t get it without touching you!”

With Jade not here, we couldn’t take the chance. It had started as intense pain on the crane, but what if I was exactly like everyone else now? If he touched me, I’d be dead. Dissolved in a pile of dust. Though at this rate, if he didn’t touch me, I’d burn to a pile of dust. Talk about your double edged swords.

I swallowed the lump crawling up my throat as a shadow fell across the cabin. When I looked up, for a moment all I saw was a male form outlined and illuminated by the sun. The way the light hit him, it almost looked like there was a halo around him. An angel, come to save the day.

Alex said nothing as he pushed aside the dead agent’s body like it wasn’t even there and dropped into the van. Once out of the sun, I saw he looked horrible. There was a fresh gash across his right cheek, and above his forehead, a large chunk of blond hair was red and dripping, leaving a trail trickling down past the corner of his left eye, which was nearly swollen shut. I knew he’d taken some damage during his fight with Kale, but it wasn’t nearly this much.

For a second, the sight of him was so startling that I forgot about the twins, the fire, and the fact that we were probably turned over in the middle of the road. “What the heck happened to you?”

“Move!” he snapped at Kale. He had the tape free and off my wrists in seconds—just before the flames kissed the spot where I’d just been. “Are you okay?”

I let him pull me up, cringing just a bit when I put weight on my left leg. A quick scan of the van, and I saw Aubrey and Able were gone. “I’ll live. What happened to you?”

Alex nodded to the front of the van as he dragged me toward the door, lips hinting at a smile. “Dude doesn’t know how to drive.”





10


Ginger glared at us from the front of the room. Sliding a box of tissues across the table at Alex, she said, “Don’t drip blood on my damned floor.”

The twins hadn’t followed us—they’d actually disappeared, which I thought was kind of odd. Between the three of us, we probably couldn’t have battled roadkill.

The remnants of Alex’s fight with Kale—a bloody nose and split lip, along with the shadow of a bruise coming out across the entire right side of his chin—made him look like he’d gone ten rounds with a stampeding elephant. His T-shirt was torn at the collar, and his left eye was swollen almost shut. But it was the other things, the nasty-looking gash and still-bleeding head wound, that kept me from throttling him for the crap he’d started with Kale.

When we climbed from the van, I’d nearly thrown up. Alex’s car was sideways in the road, the entire passenger side smashed in. The glass was shattered and the front tire flat. He’d driven past the van and cut in front to stop it from getting away. It was heroic—in an epically stupid way—and if I hadn’t run off like an idiot, he wouldn’t have done it.

Compared to Alex, Kale looked like he’d barely broken a sweat. His bottom lip was swollen but not split, and a faint bruise had started to bloom across the bottom of his chin where he’d hit the van floor when we’d collided with Alex’s car. In the chair across from Ginger, Kale watched Alex with an even mix of satisfaction and annoyance.

“Does anyone want to tell me what started that fiasco?” Ginger glared at me. “The one before you ran from the hotel like a brainless idiot?”

“Idiot?” I snapped, even though I knew she was one hundred percent right. “I thought they were taking my mom! Ask Rosie. She was there. She saw the same thing I did.” I gestured to Kale, Alex, and Jade, all seated around the table. “And everyone heard her scream.”

“Whoa,” Jade said, waving both hands in front of her face. “Don’t bring me into this. I didn’t see or hear anything.”

“You really believe it would be that easy to get into the hotel? Don’t you think I have this place locked up tighter than a frog’s ass?” Ginger narrowed her eyes, shooting me another one of her famous glares—this one we’d named Ginger’s glare of duh. “Sue isn’t even at the hotel. She’s been gone since early this morning.”

“Locked up how?” I pressed, stopping short of pointing out that when you cared about someone, you didn’t over think things. You just acted. But pointing out how she’d sacrificed her family for what she believed was common sense didn’t seem like the best bet right then. Plus she was right. I’d acted impulsively, and if I had it to do over again, well, I’d do the same thing.

But I’d still be sorry about it.

Ginger cackled and slammed her cane into the ground. “Just because you don’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there. This hotel is the safest place on earth for any Six. No one is getting in here without being let in on purpose.” She cleared her throat. “Now. One last time. What the hell caused all that chaos?”

No one said a word.

“Well?” Ginger pushed. “Don’t make me start swinging this damn cane!”