Cassidy Jones and the Luminous (Cassidy Jones Adventures Book 4) (29 page)

“Stay,” I ordered them in that strange, guttural voice. From the corner of my eye, I could see Gavin watching me. The ski mask concealed the shock that I was sure had claimed his face.

The dogs stared at me with noble pride. They had too much self-respect to whimper and curl their tails between their legs, as Jason’s dog Princess had done when I’d forced her into submission. I would have to watch these two. One sign of weakness on my part, and they’d take advantage.

“Nice job with the dogs,” Emery praised in such an easygoing manner that he made me giggle. The rottweilers’ eyebrows shot up their foreheads, as though they were trying to determine if this was their opportunity to tear me to pieces. They tested the waters with low snarls. I tightened my grip on their throats.

“My last run-in with rotties didn’t go as smoothly,” Gavin admitted.

I made a mental note to ask him about that later.

“Status?” he asked Emery.

“Exchanging pleasantries,” Emery reported. “The Host is praising Nightcrawler’s father for forming their illustrious business and finding the plant’s facility.”

“Sounds like a setup,” Gavin observed.

“Without a doubt,” Emery agreed.

Gavin squatted next to my beta dogs and me. “Should we duct-tape them?”

“No need. They’ll stay put. Won’t you, boys?” I shook the skin on their necks. If looks could kill.

“Then tell them to
stay
and let’s go. The door they were let out of is probably unlocked,” Gavin pointed out.

An unlocked back door, and only a housekeeper and a couple of dogs—the Grimms didn’t appear overly concerned about home security.

“That won’t be necessary,” Emery piped up. “The Host offered to give Nightcrawler a tour of the plant, then instantly invited his pretty stepdaughter along.”

“How could Nightcrawler refuse?” Gavin commented, eyeing the second story of the five-car garage.

“Beauty is a powerful weapon,” Emery agreed. “And she is
potent
.”

My nostrils flared. Ashlyn was gorgeous, but give me a break.

“The Host called for a car,” Emery informed. “You’d better head back.”

The lights on the garage’s second story turned off. I figured that was their driver’s living quarters.

“Do your magic,” Gavin instructed me.

I stared hard into the dogs’ eyes. “Stay.”

They didn’t flinch as I released their necks, nor when I moved away. The dogs didn’t move even when Gavin and I reached the trees. For safe measure, knowing they could hear me, I ordered from behind a tree, “Stay.”

“Impressive,” Gavin remarked.

A smug smile twitched at my mouth. What can I say? It was sort of cool being the alpha to a pair of vicious rottweilers.

A limousine rolled up to the front of the mansion. The Grimms and their guests filed out of the house. Ashlyn was more beautiful than I’d remembered.

Potent
,
I thought, spellbound. Fascination shifted into offense when I observed her coyly admiring Jared.

Smiling, he said something to her. Ashlyn burst into a giggling fit.

What
did he say to make her laugh like that?
I fumed.

“
She-Ra
,” Gavin barked in a whisper.

My angry eyes snapped to him.

He aimed his finger at the wall. “Let’s go.”

I muttered under my breath, then sprinted for the wall, leaving Gavin in my wake.

~~~

The conversation in the limousine wouldn’t have raised any alarm if we hadn’t known the truth about these people and their evil plot against humanity. Patrick and Owen bantered like old friends, with Constance releasing a good-natured zinger now and then. Ashlyn talked Jared’s ear off, rambling on and on about her private school, friends, the places she’d traveled to, and whatever else popped into her pretty little head.

Jared had barely gotten a word in edgewise, not that he even tried. I knew his attention was divided between Ashlyn’s incessant chatter and the adults’ conversation, as he analyzed veneers and theorized about the real motive of this tour. He probably wasn’t even aware that Ashlyn scoped him out whenever he looked away from her. However, I did note—with much despair—that her prattle had lulled his heart rate into a normal range. If Grimm’s plan was to use his stepdaughter to lower Jared’s defenses, it was working.

~~~

“Drake, make a right,” Gavin instructed, a couple of blocks from the Luminous Water plant. A right would take us in the wrong direction. To me, he explained, “We know where they’re headed. No reason to chance being spotted.”

“Uh-huh,” I agreed, while thinking,
No duh
. My expression must appear perpetually confused—the Phillips family always seems to feel the need to explain the obvious to me.

“I’m pulling in here,” Dad called back, cranking the steering wheel and turning into a parking lot.

“So who’s your favorite band?” Ashlyn asked Jared in a breathy voice.

“Doesn’t she ever shut up?” I complained.

“Queen,” Jared absently answered her.

I smiled at how distracted he sounded. With a face like hers, Ashlyn probably wasn’t accustomed to not getting a boy’s full attention.

The monitors panned from her, past the Grimms’ faces, then settled on the corner of the left back window of the vehicle, which I assumed Jared was looking through, trying to determine where they were. Not that he would know anyway. We were far from our stomping grounds.

“
Queen
?” Ashlyn repeated. “What do they sing?”

I snorted a laugh.
Really?

“Ashlyn,” Patrick gasped in mock horror. The cameras moved toward Grimm. Patrick placed a hand over his chest as though the chatterbox’s ignorance had put him on the verge of a heart attack. “How can you
not
know the best rock band of
all
time
? Jared, you’ll have to educate her later—”

I ground my teeth.

“—Well, we’re here. Luminous!”

“And here we go,” Gavin said, calling to Dad. “Drake, let’s roll.”

We pulled out onto the main road again. The monitors showed the limousine passengers climbing out of the vehicle.

“Now, it may not look impressive,” Patrick said as Jared gave us a look around him. The Luminous Water plant consisted of a square cinder-block building, a white warehouse, a garage, and a parking lot lined with cypress trees. There were a few other cars in the parking lot, too. I guessed they belonged to janitors. Lights were on behind the closed mini-blinds covering the two windows that flanked the door.

“
But
—” The cameras swung to Grimm’s grinning face. He fixed oddly twinkling eyes on Jared. “—the magic is inside.”

~~~

Dad pulled up to the curb outside the plant. By that point, Jared, Owen, and the Grimms had entered the building. Masked and ready to go, I reached for the door handle.

“Wait,” Gavin ordered, holding up his finger. His eyes were on the monitor.

Puffing a frustrated breath, I obliged, and didn’t ask
why
. They were inside the plant, and neither satellites nor Jared’s cameras had showed any security guards roaming the grounds. So
what
were we waiting for?

“Cool,” Jared remarked. The group had walked inside the large room where the water was bottled. It was called the production room, I remembered from our earlier tour.

“Walk ahead, as if in awe, and make a slow three-sixty,” Gavin instructed Jared.

“This is
awesome
,” Jared exclaimed, seeming truly amazed.

As he turned a circle, the cameras caught Ashlyn, who looked around with a puzzled expression on her face, trying to see what Jared found so fascinating about the production room.

“Isn’t it?” Patrick agreed. Conveyer belts, stainless steel equipment, and stacks of crated water flashed by on the monitors.

He sounds genuinely proud
, I thought.

“Nightcrawler, ask where the water comes from,” Gavin said.

“Where does the water come from?” Jared asked Grimm.

Patrick’s smile widened. He seemed pleased by Jared’s interest, and I was becoming more confused by the millisecond. Maybe this tour was only a tour?

“Great question!” Grimm praised. “We extract the water from an underground natural spring.”

Gavin told Jared, “Keep eye contact with him and casually fiddle with the pendant on your necklace. Direct the camera at Mermaid.”

The live camera feed on the monitor shifted to Constance, who blandly watched her husband as he explained the water filtration process.

“Now at Fixer,” Gavin told Jared.

Owen’s face filled the monitor. He wore a look of impatience; his eyes restlessly moved around the room before settling on the pendant.

“Does he know it’s a camera?” I whispered.

“No,” Dad answered in a low, enraged voice. “That look on his face is called guilt.”

“He’s avoiding eye contact with Jared,” Emery confirmed. He glanced at his dad. “Convinced?” he asked.

Gavin switched off the headset so Jared couldn’t hear. “Something’s about to go down,” he agreed. “Cassidy, put on the tactical pack.”

His tactical pack was similar to Emery’s “bag of tricks,” except Gavin’s gear was military-issued.

Gavin turned the headset back on. “Nightcrawler, She-Ra and I will be close by. Keep the Host talking. Cable will feed you questions and instructions.” Gavin pulled off the headset, rolled on his ski mask, snapped on his gun holster, and collected the assault rifle from me, slipping the sling over his shoulder.

“Ask how many gallons of water they produce a day,” Emery told Jared as Gavin and I hopped out of the van. Dad closed the door.

Gavin rushed for a cypress tree. As I trailed him, a familiar scent wafted up my nose. Alarmed, I came to a halt on the sidewalk and drew in a deep breath to make sure I was smelling correctly.

“
She-Ra
,” Gavin hissed from the cypress tree.

I held up a finger for him to wait a moment as I concentrated, mentally shifting through the thousands of scents whirling around in my nasal cavity, pinpointing one: Joe’s scent.

What is he doing here?

“Joe is here,” I whispered to Gavin, running up to him.

“Joe?”

“Yeah.
Joe
.” I scanned for him. He wasn’t anywhere in sight. The faintness of his scent implied that he was no longer outside. “His scent is old. He might be inside.”

Gavin informed Emery. “She-Ra says Joe was here. Do you have a visual?”

“I’d tell you if I did. She-Ra, track him. I’ll keep you updated on Nightcrawler.”

“But—” I began to argue.

“Copy that,” Gavin cut me off. He motioned for me to proceed with tracking.

Emery will tell us if Jared’s in trouble
, I reassured myself as I followed Joe’s scent with Gavin close behind.
I can get to him in seconds flat.

My confidence waned, however, as Joe’s scent led us behind the plant, farther and farther away from Jared. It became full-blown fear when we rounded a warehouse corner to see an abandoned-looking building edging a shallow field of dirt. A section of the barbed-wire fence that marked the two properties had been cut away, and a trail had been worn through the weeds on the other side of it.

Why did Joe come out to this building?

The possibilities made me shudder.

“Stringer, find out what you can about the property we’re approaching,” Gavin said to Dad in a low voice. He surveyed the area through the night-vision goggles that he’d slipped on at the warehouse. The adjacent property and building were dark. Security lights from the plant didn’t reach that far.

“Do you hear anyone?” he asked me.

“No.” I was totally stressed. Where was Joe?

We entered the property where the barbed wire had been cut away and coiled back, and followed the trail. The weeds had been worn down to the soil from foot traffic. The dead silence was getting to me. If anything bad had happened to Joe, someone would pay.

“An Ester Burkhart owns the property,” Dad informed us. “From what I can see, the building isn’t currently being leased.”

“Copy that,” Gavin said, stepping over a wide, rusty pipe. Moving ahead, he motioned for me to stop walking, then peeked through his goggles around the corner of the building, gun held at the ready.

“Clear,” he reported, then slipped from hiding.

No kidding it was clear.

“Gavin, no one is around here,” I assured. He paused before a window.

“Just in case, better to not announce our presence by going through the front door.” He stuck his hand out. “My pack.”

I slid his tactical pack off my back and handed it to him. All the while, Gavin’s eyes swept the area.

From the pack, he fished out glasscutters and a suction cup. He attached the suction cup to the window. “Hold this,” he ordered.

I took hold of the knob, and Gavin proceeded to slice through the glass with the blade, starting at the bottom of the frame and cutting along the edge. When he’d reached the initial cut, he instructed, “Now pull the glass out,
carefully
.”

I gave the suction a little tug. The glass didn’t budge. So I exerted a bit more force into the next tug, which proved to be too much. The glass came popping out of the frame and disengaged from the suction. Trying to grab the glass, it sliced through my palm. I let out a yelp as the glass shattered against cement.

Gavin winced at the sound of the breaking glass, then looked at my hand, which appeared to be almost split in half.

“Criminy,” he whispered, digging through his tactical pack. “Does it still hurt?”

“No,” I said, blushing. How could I have done something so stupid? “Not anymore. Sorry.”

Gavin produced a roll of gauze from the pack and seized my hand, his intended medical care interrupted as amazement filled his eyes. The wound had started closing. He had never seen me heal before.

“Unbelievable.” Gavin’s head jerked up, and he looked around as though he’d suddenly remembered what we were doing there.