Chapter 32 — Ace

The city had blockaded all roads leading into the city. I spent a good ten minutes arguing with a policeman, trying to convince him to let us in, but he remained adamant.

Instead, I had Ted put us up at a motel outside the city limits. He had refused to tell me his name, but it was easy enough to guess based on the ID he handed over to the front counter.

Alone in a sketchy room with a creaky bed, I used the burner phone Isabel had left on my nightstand to call my mother.

The entire time, she switched between thanking every god in existence that I was alive and threatening to finish the job herself if I ever pulled the same stunt again. I got whiplash trying to keep up with her moods. Next was Josiah, who promised to get me once the blockade came down, after delivering a rant that lasted half an hour.

I flung myself onto the bed. Pain flared in my back, and I let loose a stream of curse words. If Genevieve was within earshot, she would have revoked my dessert privileges for a month.

I spent an hour washing off the dried blood and redressing my wounds. The whip lashes alone took fifteen minutes and various contortionist positions to take care of. Too anxious to sleep, I passed the time by scrolling through news sites. A little gem of an article popped up at one in the morning, announcing the EAGLE director’s arrest. There was no mention of Seth. After another hour of fruitless searching, I gave up and went to sleep.

Loud knocks woke me up in the morning, growing more insistent after I didn’t respond.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I said.

I threw on my shirt and grabbed the Bible from the drawer. The knocks had progressed to kicks by the time I opened the door to find Nicholas standing outside.

“My mom left last night to be with Seth,” he said in a shaky voice, “and I can’t track her down. They’re leaving for Russia.”

“I can’t help you if they’re halfway across the ocean,” I said.

Nicholas shook his head. “The airports are on high alert. If Seth so much as steps foot inside, he’ll have police on him in an instant. He has to go to someone he trusts, who knows how to fly a plane, and who’s unafraid of a run in with the law. Do you know anyone who fits the bill?”

“Seth wouldn’t trust me with a butter knife, let alone his personal secrets. You should ask my mother.”

“All she could give me was the same old cottage in the forest symbolism.”

“That’s hardly helpful.” I thought for a minute. “What kind of car does your mother drive? This is assuming she left in her own car.”

“The brand’s Nissan, but I’m not sure about the model or the year.”

I grabbed his phone. “Do you remember the license plate?”

Nicholas rattled off a series of numbers and letters that I put into a search bar. A moment later, my phone pulled up a map with a blinking blue dot traveling down a highway.

I showed it to Nicholas. “That’s her.”

He shook his head. “My mom disabled her trackers, including the one that came in her car. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“She couldn’t disable it if she didn’t know about it. Certain carmakers put additional trackers in their vehicles and often forget to remove them. The Underground synced the trackers to a car database, so we can get a lock on her location.”

Nicholas took his phone back and stared at the blue dot on the screen. I waited for him to collect his thoughts.

“Should we call a taxi?” he said.

“No need.” I pulled out a gun from the drawer. “I’m sure Ted would be more than willing to drive us.”

As a matter of fact, it took quite a few threats to persuade him. Nicholas rode shotgun with the tracker pulled up while I kept my gun trained on our driver from the backseat. Ted drove as far over the speed limit as he could without being pulled over by the police.

“Stop here,” I said when we passed a hunting supply store. “I need to grab a few things.”

Since I was the one holding a gun to his head, Ted ignored Nicholas’s protests and took the proper exit.

“Ace, are you serious?” Nicholas snapped. “We don’t have time for you to buy equipment for shooting deer. My mom has a significant lead on us, and the longer we wait, the more likely it is she’ll leave before we catch up.”

“I’ll be fast.”

True to my word, I was in and out within three minutes, paying with cash I had slipped from Ted’s wallet. Nicholas’s eyes widened as I walked back to the car.

“I understand the ammunition, but was the hunting knife necessary?” he said. “It’s almost as long as your arm.”

I ignored him in favor of examining the razor-sharp blade.

Around three in the afternoon, Nicholas bolt upright in his seat.

He pointed to a silver car several feet ahead of us. “That’s it! That’s her!”

“Keep tailing her,” I ordered. “If we play it right, she could lead us straight to Seth.”

Nicholas glared at me. “We’re stopping her before she gets anywhere close to that man. I don’t want my mom getting caught up in a fight.”

I relented. “Fine, but it doesn’t change the fact that we can’t stop her when she’s in a moving vehicle unless you want to kill her in a car crash.”

That shut him up. Hopefully, his mother wouldn’t get out of the car until she had reached where she was going, otherwise I might miss the best chance I had of finding my father.

But there was no such luck. An hour later, the silver Nissan exited the highway, pulling up at a rest stop instead of the obscure meeting point I was hoping for.

The moment Ted parked our car, Nicholas burst out of his seat and sprinted toward his mother. They started arguing, with Nicholas trying to drag his mother toward us and his mother refusing to budge.

After several minutes, I was losing patience.

There had to be something useful in the glove compartment, considering the car belonged to the Underground. A few minutes of sifting through various items revealed a box of sedatives.

I took out a syringe filled with amber liquid, tapping it to get rid of air bubbles.

Ted watched me work. “Are you kidnapping people now? This wasn’t what I agreed to.”

I rolled my eyes and got out of the car. “Don’t pretend to grow a conscience.”

Diana Pierce looked like she was on the verge of tears as she pushed Nicholas away. I marched right up to them and plunged the syringe into her arm.

Nicholas was the first to come to his senses, yanking me away from his mother and slamming me against the hood of the car so hard I could feel it dent beneath me.

“What did you do to her?” he demanded.

I shoved him off. “You were taking way too long. I’m trying to help.”

He took another swing at my head and called me a string of unflattering names. “In what world is killing my mother helping me?”

“You’re being overdramatic,” I said. “All I gave her was a mild sedative. She’ll be fine when she wakes up except for maybe a few scrapes from falling on concrete.”

Nicholas rushed to catch his mother before she could hit the ground.

“Ted can take you back to the city,” I said. “Don’t be afraid to use your gun he gets difficult.”

His eyes narrowed. “Where are you going then?”

I glanced at the silver Nissan, where Seth’s location was still entered in the navigation system. “I’m going to pay a visit to my father.

The idea was good and well in theory, but as I got into the driver’s seat and watched Ted turn back onto the highway, I realized I had no idea how to drive a car. Sure, I had gotten Isabel’s Lexus through the city without crashing, but that had been a combination of good maneuvers from other drivers and sheer luck.

The car jumped beneath my feet as I pressed down on the gas pedal. I almost lost my nerve then and there, but I managed to guide the Nissan out of the parking lot and onto a service road that ran parallel to the highway.

The Toyota to my left honked as I started drifting out of my lane. I swerved, nearly crashing into the car on my other side.

The drive to the meeting point was only fifteen minutes, but within that time span, I had almost crashed into fourteen exit signs, a random suitcase, and God knows how many other cars. It was a miracle I hadn’t died.

The GPS led me to a lot, overgrown with weeds, which meant Seth had either given Diana a false location or she had scrambled the coordinates to throw us off track.

But it could be worth a look. I reloaded the gun and folded up the hunting knife before getting out of the car. Even with the large pockets on my coat, the knife was a tight squeeze.

The idea of walking in the open was an unattractive one, but there was no cover in a thirty foot radius around me.

I couldn’t breathe easy until I was behind a copse of trees.

Low hanging vines scratched my ankles as I kicked them aside. Instead of dirt underneath, I hit upon rock, pockmarked by years of snow and wind.

That was why Seth hadn’t been waiting in the abandoned lot. It was never the final destination.

But these stones hidden under layers of vines and dead leaves would lead me straight to him.

Using my phone as a flashlight, I followed the path as it crossed a field and wound between shrubs and streams, taking me deeper into a thicket of trees. The place had an unsettling silence. It made me unable to shake the feeling that I was walking into a monster’s trap. All I needed was a red cape.

I half-expected to find my father waiting for me at the end of the path, hidden in a tree with a sniper rifle or standing there ready to shoot as soon as I came into view. But it was a ridiculous thought. Seth would expect Diana to show up, without the faintest clue I was coming instead. If a fight came, it would be on my terms.

After an hour of walking, with my ankles slashed bloody by thorny vines, the meeting point came into view. It was a quaint little house sitting at the edge of a bubbling river next to a huge clearing covered by tarmac. A plane was parked at the end of the makeshift runway.

Cottage in the forest indeed.

There was a figure moving outside the house. When sunlight illuminated their face, my breath caught in my throat.

It was Seth. And he appeared to be unarmed.

I edged closer to the house, the ground muffling my footsteps. The gun I had taken off Seth’s men had so short a scope it was ridiculous. I didn’t want to risk shooting until he was well within range, but if I drew any closer, Seth would see me the moment he looked up.

A stick snapped under my foot.

I went still.

Seth hummed to himself as he pulled out a toolbox.

Raising the gun to eye level, I aimed at his head and took a deep breath, willing my hand to stop trembling.

The gunshot echoed in the eerie silence.

Seth threw himself to the ground, the bullet sailing over his head and punching a hole in the side of the house. He pulled a dark, slim object out of the toolbox and pointed it at me. Another shot rang out before the gun in my hand exploded into a mess of shrapnel. The bullet grazed my palm, leaving a smear of blood.

My heart stopped as he pointed the gun at my head. “Show yourself. Last chance before I shoot.”

My feet dragged like I was walking toward my execution. Depending on how angry Seth was, I certainly could have been.

“Ace.” His voice was dangerously quiet. “You’re supposed to be on your way to a safe house right now.”

“I changed my mind,” I said. “Your men didn’t put up much of a fight.”

“How did you know about this place? I told only one person about it, and she should have arrived by now.” Seth took a sharp breath. “What did you do to Diana?”

“I didn’t kill her.”

He stalked forward and grabbed the front of my collar, repeating his question through gritted teeth.

I tried to look as casual as I could with my feet dangling off the ground. “I took her out with a sedative. Nicholas is bringing her back to the city where she’ll be safer than she ever was with you.”

Seth shoved me away, and I went sprawling in the dirt. “You’ve been such a thorn in my side, Ace. I should kill you right now. I could if I want to.”

“But you won’t.”

“But I won’t,” he agreed, “because you’re going to leave this place, not breathe a word of our exchange to anyone, and let us go our separate ways.”

In response, I grabbed a huge stone lying beside me and hurled it at him. It knocked the gun out of his hand, smashing it to pieces on the ground.

Seth drew his knife and threw it at my chest. It thudded into a tree when I ducked and pulled out my own.

The blade gave him pause. “I warned you before, Ace. You won’t win in a fight against me.”

“I think you’re a little overconfident in—”

Before I finished my sentence, I feinted toward his neck and stabbed down at his leg. Seth anticipated the trick, catching my blade on his and twisting.

My knife almost fell out of my hands. He pressed forward, coming at me with lightning fast sweeps and jabs. I cut him across the wrist and he retaliated a slash along my collarbone. We parried back and forth, blades meeting again and again in a lethal dance.

My breath came out in ragged pants, fogging up in the cold air. Seth caught me off guard with a backhand strike and slashed me across the chest. Blood dripped onto my clothes.

I braced myself against a tree, gasping for breath. My head was spinning.

“Had enough?” Seth asked.

He hadn’t even broken a sweat. I raised my blade as he launched into a series of blows that rained down on me from every direction. It was like fighting ten people at once.

Seth slashed across my knee and my legs gave way. In a desperate move, I folded my blade in half and flicked it like a boomerang. The bend tore the knife from his hands. I swept his legs out from under him.

Seth recovered fast, lunging forward and twisting my arm so far behind my back I thought it would snap off. I kicked back to loosen his grip.

He dug his fingers into the wound on my shoulder. The pain was so intense I almost blacked out.

Seth wrapped his hands around my neck. When I tried to jerk away, his grip tightened and cut off my airway. I clawed at his hands, but they remained fixed like welded iron. His eyes were wild when they met mine.

I knew better than to scream for help. It was a waste of oxygen when there was no one within earshot. Even as sweat and mud dripped into his eyes, Seth didn’t waver. My struggles grew weaker.

“You should have left when I gave you the chance,” he said.

I wanted to spit in his face.

“Perhaps Andrea was mistaken about you,” he continued. “No child of mine could be such a fool.”

That was interesting. Seth still felt the need to justify his actions. He couldn’t kill me if he thought of me as his son, but he had no qualms about killing an assassin that had gone rogue and messed up his plans.

Dehumanization. How often had I done the same to silence my own conscience?

He leaned until we were nose to nose. “You’ve ruined everything for me, Spades. It’s only fair that I return the favor.”

I managed a feeble twist before my body went limp. A moment later, I was falling deep down into unconsciousness.