She laughed, finally closing her eyes to search his connections. Logan was different than Aern, though both were strong. Aern’s connections would allow him to use the sway, to send those impulses more easily and to more people at once. It would make his direction stronger, the way it had with Morgan, and—if her suspicions were correct—give him a talent for knowing what people were thinking that would drive Emily crazy. But Logan’s powers would be more in the physical realm, his line having a talent with mass that the others lacked. It was scarier for some reason, and she wanted to believe it was because she’d had no choice with Aern, not because it was more dangerous. Not because of her visions.
She resisted the urge to draw her lip in, knowing that Logan was watching as she worked. She could practically feel his eyes on her face, roaming over her features, wholly unconcerned with the change she was producing inside him. She wondered how it would feel to him, if the process would drain him the way it was draining her. She wanted to open an eye, peek at his face, but knew she didn’t have much longer to work before exhaustion took them both.
“Brianna,” he whispered, and she could hear in the density of his voice how tired he truly was. When she looked at him, he murmured, “Let’s spend all of our Saturdays together.”
She smiled as his eyes slid closed—because it was still Tuesday—and wondered if he’d already fallen asleep while she tied the last two broken links.
***
When she woke later, Logan was up, sitting at the bedside table with a handful of maps and photographs.
He slid the paperwork over the top of the photos and closed the folder. “Hi.” Shifting, he braced a hand on his knee and leaned toward the bed. “Sandwiches in the front room if you’re interested.”
She squinted her eyes shut. “But business to talk about first?”
He smiled. “Am I that obvious?”
“No.” She sat up, craning her neck in a stretch. “I just thought I heard Aern’s voice earlier.”
Logan nodded. “Eric’s team found your warehouse. It seems Brendan wasn’t the only one they’d taken alive.” Brianna’s fingers tightened into the blanket, and he said, “Ellin is downstairs. They’d left her for dead, and it seems she wasn’t far from it.” He slid one of the photos from the bottom of the stack, carefully keeping the others from her view. “Does this look like the place?”
She stared into a photo of dark concrete floors, wet and tracked with footprints and drag marks, raw metal framework lining the walls. It was the space the dark-haired man had dragged Brendan through. “He’s gone,” she whispered.
“Yes,” Logan said. “It looks like they took Brendan and left, no care as to the evidence they were leaving behind. Aern sent a team in to check it out, but the building went up in flames.”
Brianna’s eyes came up from the photo, nothing but wet concrete and metal—not the most flammable material—to find Logan. He sighed. “Not exactly a natural disaster.”
Her stomach dropped as she remembered the dreams of the dark-haired man, heat and flame crumbling stone and metal as she waited with no chance for escape. The way she could hear his steps, even with the roar of the fire.
“Brianna?”
Logan’s voice was a vague background noise to a new vision, and she realized she must have triggered it with the memory, made some wrong decision. Things were different now, and those feelings—the little nudges that she’d taken to calling pushes—were turning to scenes, showing her exactly what would go wrong if she didn’t listen.
“No,” she said, shaking her head against an onslaught of wrongness that sickened her in its clarity. It was Aern, and Eric, and all of the Division’s men. And it was fire. Logan’s hands were on her, and she focused on that, tearing from the vision to burrow into his chest.
His arms came around her. “Brianna.”
“It can’t be them, Logan. We have to go ourselves.” She pulled away from his chest to look at him, to make him promise. “When we find where they have Brendan, we have to go to him ourselves. It has to be us.”
He nodded, smoothing her hair away from her face. “Whatever you need, Brianna. Whatever it takes.”
Chapter Nine
Aern
Aern sat staring at the maps and photographs on his desk, all too aware that they’d lost their best chance to find Brendan. He’d sent two more teams out, scouring the area for any sign of the men who had burned the warehouse. It was a risk, but it didn’t matter. Everything they did now was a risk.
Emily stopped her pacing behind him to lay a hand on his shoulder, and he leaned back, grasping it with his own. He’d not wanted to admit how seeing Ellin had affected him, but there was no question it had. It had affected all of them. These men were not simply a danger, not the type of threat that Morgan had been. They were something else, something that was beyond their understanding. They were something that scared even Brianna.
“What if she’s right?” Emily said. “What if they’re just waiting for something to happen?”
Aern breathed deep; whatever was going to happen was out of their control if they couldn’t figure out what exactly it was. “There has to be more,” he answered. “If they’re keeping Brendan for leverage, there has to be something else. Something they want.”