Shattered (The Protectors 11)

He was almost frantic as he hung onto me. I knew it wasn’t smart because the trip could prove to be dangerous, but part of me needed him there.

My gut was telling me so.

“I do,” I said with a nod. “I’ll call him. But Caleb, if I can’t pull it all together in time…”

“I know,” Caleb said. “I know.” He hugged me, then released me and motioned to the phone. “Do what you need to do. I’ll get us back to Dalton’s.”

“Do you know the way?”

“I do. Trust me.”

I did. I absolutely did. And I told him so. He smiled and kissed me hard, then hurried above deck. By the time I started dialing Dalton’s number to tell him what was going on, the boat was already moving, and I sent Maggie a silent message.

Hang on, Maggie, I’m coming.

Chapter 16

Caleb

I had no clue how Jace had managed it, but I didn’t care. I was where I needed to be.

By his side.

I reached down to close my hand around Jace’s and he automatically linked our fingers. We were sitting in the back of a taxi that was taking us to a hotel near the park that had been mentioned in the text. We had almost a full twenty-four hours to kill before the three-p.m. deadline. Jace had already mentioned going to the park the following morning to scope it out, but until then, we were left to helplessly wonder what was going on.

Jace hadn’t said anything, but I knew he was terrified. The fact that the text had been sent to a number which only Maggie would have known, but hadn’t included any kind of personal message from her, had him worried. It had me worried. If Maggie was okay, why hadn’t she called? In the time it took to send a text, she could have made the call. If she’d been in danger, a call would have made more sense.

That was the problem, though. Nothing about any of this made sense.

And I knew that made it harder for Jace to deal with.

When he’d admitted that he loved me, but that he was terrified of losing me, I knew it was because he’d lost so many people in his life. His parents had died young, many of the men he’d served with had lost their lives in battle, and his younger sister, who he’d sacrificed his own physical well-being to protect when they’d been kids, had been stolen from him.

So to be faced with the prospect that his sister could very well be gone too was tearing him apart. I didn’t need him to tell me that to know it.

After I’d gotten the boat back to Dalton’s place, Jace and I had driven to New York to both meet up with the man who had the skills needed to create a passport, and catch our flight to Berlin from the JFK airport. We’d stopped only long enough to get my picture taken for the passport and for Jace to withdraw a large sum of money from his bank. He hadn’t let me come into the apartment building with him to get the passport, but when he’d come back out, I’d been relieved to see the small manila envelope in his hand.

We hadn’t told anyone besides Dalton what was happening. Jace had received multiple calls and messages throughout the day on his cell phone, but he’d ignored them, so I’d had to assume they were from Mav or Ronan. I’d been a nervous wreck when we’d gone through security at JFK. I’d been certain they’d be able to tell the passport was a fake. But there’d been no issue and we hadn’t been stopped at customs in Berlin, either.

It only took about twenty minutes to reach the hotel. Once we were in the room, Jace busied himself with his phone while I put our toiletry items in the bathroom. Neither of us had slept on the plane and I doubted we’d get any sleep tonight, either.

“Jace,” I said softly. He was pacing back and forth in front of the sliding doors that led out to a small balcony. He didn’t even look up from what he was doing. I’d never seen him so agitated; it reminded me of how I’d get when things just became too overwhelming to deal with.

I went to him and stepped in front of him to stop his pacing. He was aware of me enough not to bowl me over. “What?” he asked impatiently.

“Come lie down with me for a bit,” I said softly as I eased the phone from his fingers.

“No, I need to study this map.”

He was talking about the map of the park. On the plane, he’d used the onboard Wi-Fi to pull up different versions of maps of the park and surrounding area and he’d spent hours going through them. I hadn’t been sure what he was looking for, but I’d left him to it.