Page 181 of Reverie
When I lunged at him, he caught me easily around my chest, taking care to avoid my baby bump. But when I started yelling profanities and swearing how I planned to murder him with my bare hands for harming August, he slapped a hand over my mouth.
A second before I could bite down on the flesh of his palm, he hissed in my ear, “If you want to live, shut thefuckup and come with me.”
His words were like a gong in my brain, but given that there were two, now three, dead bodies on the floor and Marcus had managed to take out the one who had a gun pointed toward me, I felt compelled to listen.
But it wasn’t until Patrick stood up and rushed toward us saying, “Listen to him and let’s get back to safety,” that I accepted that I needed to trust Marcus Law.
How did this all become so, so complicated?
When hasn’t it been complicated, Winter?
When I pad out of our suite and down to the living room, I’m met with a flurry of activity.
Patrick and Keegan hover over a computer screen, and Misha’s terse voice echoes from the speakerphone on the table next to them.
“What’s going on?” I ask. Patrick looks at me over his shoulder, and his face is grave.
Sharing a look with his partner, he says, “Brigham’s sister is missing.” Keegan stands, rushing out of the room with a laptop in his hand.
“What do you—Ella? Ella is missing?” I ask Patrick, and he waves me off, agitated.
“Hey!” I yell, putting my hands on my hips. “I don’t know what stick crawled up your ass, but you can’t treat me like trash. I deserve basic human respectandyou’re talking about my sister-in-law,” I say in a measured tone I don’t feel.
Patrick sighs just when Hunter walks into the room. He looks tense but focused, his movements tight.
“Ella has decided to hand herself over to The Legion,” Hunter says. Each word presses through his tight jaw.
“What? Why the hell would she do that!” It’s my understanding that once we found out the clues about Isla Cara from the rings, the plan to offer Ella up as bait to draw out The Architect took a pause. We don’t need to go that route, so we reserved it as the nuclear option. We have Plan A—Misha and the rest of the team will infiltrate Isla Cara, find The Architect, and get rid of as many Legion members as possible at the same time.
Ella was on board with this plan...right?
Her moodiness at our wedding clearly was a red flag.
Oh, Ella, what are you doing?
“Fuck if I know,” he mumbles, looking away from me. “Patrick, we’re out of here in five minutes.”
Then he spins and walks out the door.
Wait. What?
I rush to follow after my husband. “Where are you going?” I say, each word rising in volume.
“I’m going to get my sister,” he throws over his shoulder as he follows the path to the helicopter.
“Wait a minute, Hunter!” I say, struggling to keep up with his fierce clip with my bare feet. “You can’t just go running off. Don’t you need backup?”
“Keegan dispatched a drone to fly over Isla Cara. There are very few people on the island from what we can tell. Less than ten. I can handle that. Plus, Keegan and Patrick are coming with me.”
My head spins.
“Wait, what? What about The Hunt? I thought… Wait. Hunter, please don’t—” I swallow my words. Because can I really tell him not to go after his sister? Can I really demand that he stay here where it’s safe?
He spins around when we’re a yard from the helicopter. It hums with the beginning stages of the startup sequence.
He crashes his mouth to mine, bringing me close so that our bodies are flush.
“Sunbeam, I’ve been running from this shit for my whole life. It’s time I stopped running and faced it.”