Theo shook his head sadly. “You boys found him?”
“Yes. I had to shoot him with a tranquilizing gun. He wasn’t going to come along without a fight this time.”
“He just seems crazy without her.” Cole stood, hands on his slim hips. Both boys’ shirts were wet from their efforts to clean the large canine in the tub.
“How bad were his paws this time?” Theo asked. He crouched to look for himself.
Evan just shook his head. “I cleaned out the cuts, but it wasn’t his paws I’m worried about this time. He looks to have hurt his ankle. See there? The right front?”
“Yeah, he definitely did something to it.” Theo nodded as he peered into the cage.
“I was worried it was a snake bite or a scorpion’s sting, but there were no puncture wounds and no stinger at the swollen site. I think he just stumbled or tripped into a crevice or something. I’m treating it like a sprain, unless you have another idea.”
Maze stirred and opened his intelligent yellow eyes just enough to see the metal wires of the crate he’d been locked in. He groaned once before letting his eyes drop closed again.
Evan was on his knees next to their beloved coydog. “I am so sorry, big guy. I just don’t know what else to do with you.”
Danny had been sitting on the floor next to Margo’s wheelchair playing with one of his cars. The room was quiet, everyone feeling the weight of their desperate situation heavy enough to make breathing difficult. Margo sighed deeply.
The four-year-old still didn’t speak very often, but when he did it was in complete, complex sentences. He walked to Maze and reached for the lock. “No Danny. Maze has to stay in his crate because he keeps running away.”
Danny looked up at Evan still sitting on the floor next to the coydog. “Poor Maze misses Meg so much,” he whispered, reaching between the wires of the crate to touch the coydog’s fur.
“Yes, love,” Margo wheeled closer to the little boy. “Maze keeps running away to look for Meg. He misses her—we all do.”
Danny’s eyes fell and he nodded solemnly. He moved so he could see Maze’s sleeping face and carefully lay as close to the crate as he could. Again, he reached his little sticky fingers into the holes of the metal crate just so he could touch the coydog’s silver fur, even if only a little.
“Could I talk with everyone in the kitchen for a few minutes?” Theo asked. He nodded subtly toward the little boy.
“Yeah, I could use a tall glass of juice anyway,” Cole offered, helping make their exit less obvious to the little boy who looked to be content lying beside the caged canine while playing with his toy car.
The whole family moved into the kitchen and let the door swing closed behind them.
Just then, Margo’s phone rang.
The noise startled her enough so her efforts to get the phone from her breast pocket sent the phone tumbling end over end toward the ground, still ringing. Evan’s hand shot out and caught it easily. He answered it in the same motion.
“Alik?” Evan felt a hint of the old excitement at the prospect of hearing from his older brother before reality smashed down hard on his shoulders and he remembered his brother was barely speaking to him.
“Evan,” he said coolly. “Put me on speakerphone; we have news.”
Gritting his teeth to keep himself from saying anything he’d regret, Evan punched the proper buttons and laid the phone down on the counter. He stepped back and crossed his arms.
Margo spoke first, “Okay Alik, we’re all here.”
The room chimed with a chorus of “Hi, Alik.”
Evan kept his teeth gritted, not saying anything further.
“Hey, everyone. Listen, we’re on a plane headed back your way, but that last lead we got from Mr. Burns panned out.”
“Have you found her?”
“We tracked her using an echo two nights old to Naples Airport here in Italy. A soldier has her and is taking her back to Arkdone, Mom.”
“Arkdone!” Margo spat.
“Looks like the Senator is behind her most recent abduction. The soldier who stole her away from Williams’ Italian chateau must be a metamonarch by the looks of it.”
“Why would she trust this metamonarch?”
“I don’t know Mom, but she’s still an empath.”
“Yeah, but if he’s a monarch, he could trick her like Slider did,” Sloan pointed out.
“She doesn’t remember being tricked by Slider,” Cole spoke up.
“She’s still a smart, intuitive girl—a natural-born fighter and full of moxie. Whether or not she remembers, those are her core characteristics, right?” Margo was trying to keep up hope.