Page 72 of Guardian

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By the time Logan and Winter reached the command center, Hamish and Manus had already joined Pearce.

“Where’s Enya?” Logan asked.

“She got called in as a second for an injured guardian in Seattle for the day,” Pearce informed him.

“Damn! What did you find on Aiden?”

“Aiden’s cell phone is charging in the kitchen. He must have forgotten it,” Hamish said.

“I tried Leila’s phone,” Pearce said, “but it’s not switched on. She probably left it upstairs in their quarters.”

“Fuck,” Logan cursed once again. Then he motioned to the computer. “Can you pull up every major shopping center within forty-five minutes of here?”

Pearce looked at him. “Can you narrow that down a bit? There’s gotta be hundreds of shops within those parameters.”

Winter approached the console. “I saw clothes. For kids.”

Pearce nodded and started typing something on his keyboard. “Okay, kids’ clothing stores. That helps a bit.” He pointed to the screen where a map had appeared. A cluster of red dots was strewn haphazardly over the map as if somebody had tossed a sack of marbles on it.

“Too many,” Winter murmured.

Pearce punched another command on his keyboard, and several blue lines appeared going outward from the location of the compound, stopping at various distances from it. “Taking into account traffic conditions, these lines represent the maximum distance you could travel from the compound by car within the last forty-five minutes.”

“Okay, that’s better,” Logan said. “Can you hide the shops that he couldn’t have reached?”

Pearce tapped on his keyboard, and a large number of the dots disappeared. At the same time, he made the map larger, providing a closer view of the different locations.

“Can you do a satellite view of that?” Winter asked.

“Sure.” Pearce clicked the mouse, and the streets disappeared. The red dots and blue lines were now superimposed over satellite imagery of buildings, green spaces, and other terrain.

“It wasn’t a strip mall,” Winter said. “When I looked out of the store’s window, there were no cars.”

“Okay, an indoor mall,” Logan suggested and pointed to two spots on the map. “Pearce, are these the only two indoor malls within range?”

“Yeah, pretty sure.”

“Zoom in on this one,” Logan ordered, then turned to Winter. “Anything familiar about the structure?”

She shook her head. “Sorry. From above they all look the same.”

“Hold on,” Pearce said and switched to another window. “I can pull up the website for the mall, see if they have pictures you can look at.”

Within a few seconds, Pearce had pulled up the website and navigated to the gallery. He scrolled through the images slowly, while Winter perused them. She kept shaking her head.

“None of this looks familiar.” She looked up. “How about the other mall?”

Pearce searched for the second mall on the browser, but a 404 Error came up. “Something is wrong with their website.”

“Shit!” Logan cursed. He locked eyes with Winter. “Are you sure that you recognize nothing in the first mall?”

She nodded. “Absolutely. It has to be the other one.”

Logan exchanged looks with his friends. Hamish nodded, as did Manus.

“Let’s do it,” Logan said. He turned to Pearce. “You stay here. Keep trying Leila’s phone in case she has it with her and she switches it on. The rest of you, let’s go.” He opened a wall cupboard where several daggers were stored. He took two for himself, then handed one to Winter. “For self-defense only. Don’t attack the demons. Stay back. Only use this if they charge at you.”