Something dark flashed across his face in that instant. There was a flicker of evasion in his eyes, she thought. Brief but impossible to miss, and shuttered a second later by the downward sweep of his lashes as he palmed the car keys and dropped them into the center console of the vehicle.
"No," he answered finally. "I don't question anything my duties require me to do. Not ever."
He opened the driver-side door and began to step out of the vehicle. "The plane is ready for us. We must go now, while the night is still on our side."
"They're on the way to New Orleans now."
Lucan glanced up as Gideon ended his call with Hunter and came back to the tech lab's conference table where Tegan and he stood, poring over a set of unrolled blueprints. "No further issues with Corinne Bishop or her kin in Detroit?">Unable to deny the truth in that statement, Dante felt his jaw tighten to the point of pain. Chase was fucked up. He knew it as soon as he'd heard what happened in the chapel with Elise. The fact that he had skipped out on the Order was just another nail in a coffin of his own making. But Dante wasn't ready to give up on him.
He had to believe that Harvard wasn't lost completely. Maybe if he could find him, talk some sense into him. Give him a wake-up call about the shit that had gone down at the compound a few hours ago and let him know that he was needed.
And if all those options failed, Dante was ready and willing to kick Harvard's selfdestructive ass from now into next week.
"He went this way," Dante said. "He's got to be back here somewhere."
Kade lifted his chin, gesturing toward the open railcar. Dante nodded. It was about the only place Chase could be hiding, although Dante knew as well as anyone else in the Order that if Chase didn't want to be found, his talent for bending shadows would prove effective cover no matter where he'd gone.
Together, he and Kade approached the car. Dante walked up to the gap of darkness that spilled into the big metal box. The fetid stench of more forsaken humans wafted out at him as he hoisted himself up and took a quick look around the gloom of the place. His vision was flawless in the dark, as with all of his kind. He saw no sign of Chase among the sleeping men and women, nor with the small number that huddled under a shared blanket, staring up at him with vacant looks.
Chase wasn't there, not even in the deepest reaches of the shadows.
"Harvard," he said, trying to reach out to him anyway. Maybe if he heard a familiar voice ...
Nothing but silence.
He waited for a moment, a part of him saddened by the wasted lives that littered the dirty interior of the railcar and the ones smoking their wits away over the barrel of burning trash. They were strangers, humans, born to live and die in the span of less than a century. But in their lost, hopeless expressions, he saw his friend Sterling Chase.
Was this what lay ahead for Harvard if no one stopped his downward spiral? He didn't want to go there, didn't want to imagine that Harvard might be waging a war with demons of his own. He didn't want to believe that Tegan and Lucan could be right - that Chase might be falling into a blood addiction. There was no worse fate for one of the Breed than succumbing to Bloodlust and turning Rogue.
And once lost, there was hardly any hope of coming back to sanity.
"Goddamn him," he ground out between gritted teeth.
He dropped down from the railcar onto the frozen ground near the tracks. As he landed, he felt the knock of his cell phone shifting in his coat pocket.
He pulled it out and hit the speed dial before he could spit out an explanation to Kade.
"His cell," he said, hearing the first ring begin on the other end of the line. "If Harvard did run this way, then maybe he's got his cell on - "
The words cut short as a soft trill sounded from several dozen yards away. Kade's silver eyes glittered under his raised black brows. "Gotcha, Harvard."
They set off at a dead run, both of them hoofing it across the rail yard toward the muffled ringing ahead.
Dante didn't want to hope, a cold edge of dread warning him that even if he did find Harvard, he might not like what waited at the other end of the bleating line. With tempered expectation, he led Kade away from the rails and between a pair of sorry-looking storage buildings. He had to disconnect abruptly, cursing when the phone went into voicemail. He speeddialed again and the ringing sounded even closer. Holy hell, they were practically on top of him now.
There was no one around. Not a soul, not even the humans.
He and Kade ran farther, faster, until the bleating of Chase's phone was playing in stereo against his ear and from somewhere very close by.
"Over here," Kade said, dropping into a squat near a pile of frozen tarps and cast-off plastic sheeting. He dug into the heap, tossing the shit everywhere as he burrowed toward the bottom.
When he slowed down and issued a curse, Dante knew they'd reached a dead end. Kade held up the cell phone, his face drawn with disappointment but not surprise. "He ditched us, man. He was here, like you said. But he didn't want to be found."
"Harvard!" Dante shouted, more pissed off than anything else in that moment. Worry had his gut twisted, his heart hammering in his chest. He sent his rage in all directions around him, pivoting to scan the area, futile or not. "Chase, goddamn it, I know you're here. Say something!"
Kade clicked off the ringer and slid the phone into his pocket. "Come on, let's get out of here. Harvard's gone."
Dante nodded mutely. Last night, Sterling Chase had walked out on the Order after numerous fuck-ups and excuses. Now he'd ditched the closest friend he had among the warriors. He was turning his back on all of his brethren, and based on what happened here tonight, Dante had to admit that Chase was doing so deliberately.