Page 68 of Bonded By Blood
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Brianna stared at the phone in her hand, almost not believing the message she’d just read. Except, of course it’d come to that. She should have known. Should have seen this coming. Should have prevented it somehow. I should’ve stopped her. But how could she have done that, when she’d been too busy trying to prevent her mother from attacking her daughter? Tears blurred her vision for a moment and she squeezed her eyes shut to push them back. She had done the best she could, hadn’t she? But now…
She looked at the screen again, forcing herself to re-read the words.
Now, Kendall had decided to take matters into her own hands and join the hunt. Putting her life—her precious, finite life—on the line. She didn’t know that Trista had expressed regret for her behavior when they’d last spoken. She would never hear the apology waiting for her if she didn’t make it back.
The phone case cracked in Brianna’s shaking grip.
She sucked in a breath and immediately loosened her hold, lest she break the phone itself. Joe’s with her. He’d promised to stay with her in his message. He hadn’t replied to anything since then, so she suspected he wasn’t able to and she hoped that only meant he didn’t want Kendall knowing he’d reached out to her. It was easy enough to assume Kendall didn’t want her knowing what she was doing.
But even knowing Joe was with her, Brianna found she didn’t feel as relieved as she wanted to. For all his good intentions, Joe was still so young in vampire terms. The men they were hunting were not. The men they were hunting were cold-blooded killers. Nothing short of true monsters. That wasn’t Joe. Brianna did trust that he would protect Kendall to the best of his ability, and if nothing else, that might give Kendall the chance to flee, but … then Joe would be the one who didn’t return.
That thought, too, brought a sharp, nearly crippling pain to her chest.
What can I do?
She might be able to track Joe’s or Kendall’s phones, maybe. They had someone on staff who understood technology well enough for that she was sure. But what good would that information be? Watching a little blinking light on a map on a monitor wouldn’t make her feel any better.
Brianna rose and crossed to the veranda, stepping outside for some fresh air.
The very same veranda Joe had thought to sunburn himself on earlier that day. Had that only been that same day?
Brianna rested her free hand on the railing and looked around, not sure what she was hoping for. A sign, a distraction—something. All she saw was the familiar, the expected. Guards, shrubbery, a water fountain she never went and experienced in person anymore. The perimeter fence, with softly glowing lights for the sake of the human staff. She wasn’t even sure how long they’d lived in this estate anymore. It’d been smaller and less assuming when they’d taken it over, and over the years—decades, at least—Trista and Brianna had built it up. Adding here and there where they wanted, what they wanted. Because they could. They could do anything.
Brianna looked down at the phone in her other hand and frowned. Except this….
She hadn’t called Kendall yet. Maybe Kendall would answer her? Maybe she would be reasonable? She could justify her call by now, couldn’t she? Kendall was late returning. And Brianna did sometimes just call her for the sake of it. She peeled off the pieces of the broken, useless case and dialed Kendall’s number.
It rang three times before Kendall finally answered. “I don’t want to talk right now, Bri.”
“Kendall,” Brianna said, keeping her tone calm. “I’m just worried. You’re late. Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. I’m not coming back right away, it’s no big deal,” Kendall said. Her tone was guarded, like she didn’t trust the direction of the conversation.
Remembering to pretend she hadn’t heard from Joe, Brianna closed her eyes to better focus on the sounds behind Kendall’s voice. There was distant traffic, but it wasn’t muted enough to suggest Kendall herself was inside a vehicle. “Why not? Weren’t you going to? I thought Joe was with you.”
“He is, and no, you can’t talk to him,” Kendall said. “We’ll talk to you later, Bri. Bye.”
Brianna opened her mouth, but the line had already clicked. The call was over. She pulled the phone away and stared at the blinking screen until it returned to her home display. It was a photo of her and Kendall, from the day they’d ended up at the outlet store where they’d met Joe. Kendall had insisted on taking the picture, to mark the supposedly momentous occasion of Brianna leaving the house.
That’s it! That’s what she could do. That’s how tracking their phones would be useful. She would track Kendall’s, since she knew Kendall had it on her, and then she would go there. That was how she could do her part to make sure the people she loved most survived another night.
Brianna paused at the thought and held her phone, by default, against her chest. Do I … love Joe? Had she really fallen in love again, after all this time?
The possibility made her heart race, but she couldn’t afford to distract herself with all of the associated thoughts. She had tasks to accomplish. And she needed to do them without involving her mother, because Trista would never agree.