Page 24 of Inside the Wicked

I open the back door for Shadow and then slip in the front, staring straight ahead as Rix speeds off.

“I don’t bite,” Rix says at my stiffness and refusal to look at him. “Well, depends who you ask, actually.”

I want to relax at his humor, but my thoughts are scrambled. Shadow would bite if I commanded it. He’s my security right now, lying in the back seat.

“You don’t speak anymore?”

“How do I know you are who you say you are?” I rush out.

I slide him a look then. He doesn’t appear offended by my doubt.

He reaches into his side compartment and then holds a card out to me between two fingers. I recognize it. As I take it, the logo of Xoid surfaces the painful memory of when Rhett showed me.

Welcome the lost, pity the found.

“I guess I am lost now,” I mutter.

“Which is why, thanks to your excellent connections, you’re getting a fast-track to Xoid HQ. Not many get to come here, by the way. We have many other setups in many states, but the Den is where it all began.”

I flip over the card to find his initials are on it: “RB.”

Beneath it is a six-digit code like the one Rhett had.

“What does the code mean?”

“When someone calls it, it connects to the phone of whoever they’re trying to reach. Not a call though—instead it’s like a temporary virus to them while our phones completely copy their data. We know who called, where they live, and so much more that we can usually guess why they contacted us. And then we can decide if we’ll answer, and they won’t know until we show up. Or don’t.”

I find that fascinating.

My unease doesn’t fully settle from being given the piece of card; it lingers for the twenty-minute drive. When he cuts the engine, I stare out at the pitch-black deserted building beyond chain-link fencing with new anxiety.

“Afraid of the dark?” Rix asks.

I jump at his voice, not hearing him step out. He leans in his open door.

Unbuckling, I know I’ve reached a whole new level of reckless judgment to have gotten in a car with a stranger and let him lead me to somewhere far away from civilization in the middle of the night.

Oh well. Too late to find my sanity now.

I get out, clutching Shadow’s leash tightly as I follow Rix through the dark. He has a flashlight, but we don’t go through the chain-link fence.

“Where are we?” I whisper.

“It’s an ex-army camp.”

“Isn’t it . . . trespassing? Illegal?”

“Highly.”

I gawk at his back, but he doesn’t elaborate to ease my new fear.

He goes through an open metal side door into a building long forgotten. It’s creepy as fuck, and I feel like I’ve just stepped into a haunted bunker. I’m waiting for Michael Myers to appear around the next corner with a chainsaw to rattle the eerie silence.

“Never judge a place by the exterior,” Rix mutters.

We step into a huge elevator, the newest-looking thing I’ve seen so far, and Rix presses his thumb to a scanner before typing a code into the keypad.

“Did you have to bring the wolf?” Rix asks as we start heading down.

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