“What about his phone.”
“He crushed it.”
Raising her brows, she leaned forward on her hips. “I’m sorry. What do you mean, he crush—”
“He stepped on it, so it’s in pieces on the floor of the garage—”
“I thought you said you were on the highway.”
They were talking over each other, the words coming out faster and faster until they hit the brick wall of her last syllable.
“That’s why we can’t locate him using GPS or anything.” When she didn’t respond, Rhage tacked on, “We’ve also been calling and trying to reach you—”
On reflex, she slapped her own butt over both pockets. Then she closed her eyes and shook her head. So that’s what she’d been missing when she left—the little echo in her mind that she’d ignored.
“I forgot my phone.” She looked down at the scatter of photograph albums. “At home.”
“We need you. He needs you.”
She used to think both were true. Well, it used tobetrue for the former when she’d been doing that important job for the species with the civilians. And when it came to Wrath now?
Looking down at the photograph, she tried to connect to their past.
Shaking herself back to attention, she put the Kodak moment into the pocket her phone should have been in. “Sorry. And I’ll do what I can.”
Rhage’s perfect face relaxed, and so did his heavy shoulders under his leather duster. “Thank you.”
“Yes, of course.”
Like she was the concierge in a fine hotel and had just fielded dinner reservations for the male. Maybe she should have gone with, “My pleasure.”
Casting off the throw blanket she did what she could to hurry, given how stiff she was from sitting on the floorboards. As she went downstairs, the delicious aroma of Toll House chocolate chip cookies was an off-note to her stress, and she was relieved when she hit the first floor and everybody was in the kitchen.
The laughter and chatter escorted her out onto the porch.
Hitting the cold, bracing air, she breathed in through her nose, and her sinuses hummed like she’d eaten ice cream too fast.
“Did you come with a coat,” Rhage asked as he paused in the open doorway.
She glanced back at him, and that’s when she saw a figure step into an archway deep inside the house. The soft glow of white hair told her who it was, and she waited for Rahvyn to come forward.
“What is it?” Rhage asked as he looked over his shoulder.
The other female disappeared, and not in a dematerializing kind of way. She broke apart and then faded.
This was engineered, she thought. Her time with those photographs, with her memories of the way things had been.
“Beth?”
“Nothing,” she replied roughly. “Ah, just give me a minute to try and locate him.”
Closing her eyes, she did her best to concentrate, but all that registered was the squeaking sound Rhage’s shitkickers made on the snowpack as he joined her and shut them out of the house’s warmth.
And then things went seriously sideways. As nothing came back at her, no signal of her own blood, no bead on where Wrath was, true fear broke through all her frustration and the impotent anger she’d been feeling toward him. Was he gone? Again? Lost in the present, and this time, there was going to be no magical intervention.
Rahvyn had told her it was a one-time thing—
The Polo to her Marco came through. Strongly. Clearly.
