"I know it's hard to imagine something like that could exist, but I'm telling you, it does. Vampires exist, and they call themselves the Breed." She stopped short of naming Kade in their number, not quite ready to betray him, even though he seemed to have had no difficulty when it came to her. Zach stood up and threw out his hands at her. "Go home. Sleep it off."
"Listen to me," she cried, desperate that he not dismiss her as wasted or crazy. She could see that she was losing this battle, she was afraid that her failure to convince him now might cost other lives before long. "Zach, please! We have to warn people. You have to believe me."
"No, I don't, Alex." He whirled around to face her, something brutal in his expression. "I'm not even sure I can believe anything you've said today, including your claim of another dead body in the woods. I don't have time for this kind of bullshit right now, okay? I have my own problems I'm dealing with! Folks are already worked up over everything that's going on around here lately. I've got troopers arriving tomorrow, and the last thing I need is you adding to my headaches with a lot of crazy talk about bloodthirsty, killer aliens running loose in the bush!"
Alex looked away from him, unable to hold the sharp fury in his gaze. She'd never seen him so angry. So ... unglued. He was in a state of near panic himself, and it didn't seem due to anything she'd told him. As she turned her head, she noticed a folded wad of cash on the coffee table and a cell phone that looked vaguely familiar. She stared at both items, a peculiar inkling of suspicion worming its way up her spine.
"Isn't that Skeeter Arnold's cell phone?"
Zach seemed caught off guard by the question. "Huh? Oh. Yeah, I confiscated it off the little bastard this morning."
He picked up the roll of twenty-dollar bills without offering an explanation and stuffed it into his pocket, his eyes on her the whole time. Alex's blood slowed in her veins, oddly chilled. "I haven't seen Skeeter around all day. When did you see him?"
Zach shrugged. "I guess it wasn't long before you got here. I figure the Staties are going to want that phone for their investigation, seeing how he used it to record that video of the Toms settlement." The explanation made sense to her.
And yet ...
"How long ago was it that you saw him?"
"About an hour ago," he replied, his answer clipped. "What does it matter to you, Alex?" She knew why he sounded defensive, even without having to reach out and confirm it with her gift for pining the truth with her touch. Zach was lying to her. Skeeter was dead hours before now--dead at Kade's hands, after Skeeter had finished off Big Dave.
Why would Zach lie about seeing him?
As the question sifted through her mind, she thought about the cash Zach had tucked away, and the cell phone he couldn't have gotten when he said he had ... and the fact that although most of Harmony and the communities roughly a hundred miles out knew that Skeeter had connections in bootlegging and drugdealing, Zach had never found sufficient evidence to arrest him. Maybe Zach hadn't been looking hard enough.
Or maybe Zach had no desire to remove Skeeter Arnold from his line of work.
"Oh, my God," Alex murmured. "Did you and Skeeter have some kind of arrangement, Zach?" That defensive gaze narrowed even further now. "What the hell are you talking about?" Alex stood up, feeling some of her horror from everything that had happened today begin to melt under the heat of her outrage. "You did, didn't you? All your trips to Anchorage and Fairbanks. Is that where under the heat of her outrage. "You did, didn't you? All your trips to Anchorage and Fairbanks. Is that where you picked up supplies for him? What kind of commission did you skim off the top of his drug deals, or off the backs of the Native kids who threw their lives away on the alcohol he peddled to them on the side?
Good kids, like Teddy Toms."
Zach's eyes blazed with anger, but he offered her a sympathetic look. "Is that really what you think of me? You've known me for years, Alex."
"Have I?" She shook her head. "I'm not so sure. I'm not sure of anything anymore."
"Then let me take care of you," he said, his voice gentle, but she was hardly convinced. "I'm going to get my coat, and I'm going to take you home so you can get some rest. I think you need it, Alex." He pressed his lips together and gave her a vague nod. "I'll be right back, okay?" As he walked out of the room, Alex stood there, overwhelmed with uncertainty. Everything in her life had tilted beneath her. She didn't know whom she could trust now. Not Kade.
And apparently not Zach, either.
She didn't think it would be wise to trust him at all now.
Flames and debris shot high into the darkness as the mining company exploded behind him. Kade threw a glance backward, feeling the push of the expanding heat against his face, heat that turned the snowstorm that swirled around him and the other warriors into a brief, warm spittle of rain. The warmth didn't last. Frigid cold roared back in, all of it settling in Kade's chest.
"Alex," he whispered.
He had to reach her.
Brock shot him a concerned look. "What's going on?"
Kade rubbed at the icy hurt under his breastbone. "I'm not sure. It's Alex, and whatever I'm feeling, it's not good."
Even though he could tell from his blood bond to her that she wasn't in mortal danger, every instinct within him screamed for him to go to her. But he had a duty to the Order, and a duty to the warriors he still might have failed by losing sight of the ball on this mission. Dragos's Alaskan outpost was destroyed, a few more of his assets eliminated, but the Ancient was still at large. The warriors' mission here would not be complete until that deadly otherworlder was located and contained.