Page 99 of Bought for Blood

“Sery?” she says.

Nobody has called me that since they separated us.

I don’t remember crossing the room. She meets me halfway, and we go down together against the edge of the table, her fists in the back of my coat, my hand in her hair. She’s warm and solid and shaking and completely, absolutely alive.

“You’re here.” She says it into my shoulder, over and over. “You’re here. You’re actually here.”

“I’ve got you.”

Grace pulls back far enough to see my face. Hers is soaked.

“I spied for them for months. So they’d take care of you.” Her hands are on my collar. “They sent me a photograph of you. They sent messages. But I didn’t know… I never knew…” She chokes down a sob.

“Grace.” I take her face in both hands. “I’m here.”

She puts her forehead against mine and holds it there. Neither of us says anything for a while.

Somebody at the table clears their throat. Somebody else tells them not to.

Then a very large man in a flannel shirt comes over. He stops a good distance back and puts his hands in his pockets.

“Grace.” His voice is low. “Sit her down. She’s been in a car all night.”

Grace chokes out a laugh. “Decker. This is my sister.”

“I know who she is.” He pulls out a chair and turns it toward her. “Sit her down.”

I sit. Grace takes the chair beside me and keeps hold of my hand, and the room starts moving around us again.

My wolf lifted her head for Grace. She lifted it all the way.

That’s as far as it goes. The wards have had her pinned since the gate, and whatever she’s reading off my sister comes through thin and unfinished. There’s something about Grace I can’t put my finger on. I put it down to a year apart, and this mountain, and the state I’m in.

Now she puts it back down and points, and the feeling inside is worse in this room than it was in the car. The need to find him becomes all-consuming. And I hate that because Grace is sitting right next to me.

The man at the head of the table gets to his feet. He waits until I’m looking at him before he starts.

“Miss Sangrey. Viktor Parlance. This is my facility.” He puts both hands on the back of his chair. “You’re safe here for as long as you want to be. I have things to tell you, and you won’t like any of them.”

“Tell me.”

“All right.” He nods. “Last night we moved against the compound where you were held. Two teams on the ground, dragons in the trees. We went in at first light.”

My hand closes on Grace’s.

“There were twenty people in that building when I left,” I say. “And there’s a woman in cell seven. She’s—”

“There was nobody,” Viktor says.

“What do you mean, nobody?”

“The building was empty. Every cell, the medical rooms, all of it. They cleared it out days before we got there.” He doesn’t soften any of it. “Whoever runs that operation knew we were coming.”

“Then where is everyone?”

“We don’t know yet. We have a phone line we’re tracing, and we have vehicles that went somewhere. That isn’t what I need to tell you.”

The pull drags again.