Read Shadeland (The Ethereal Crossings, 1) Page 33

  Prologue

  The bounty hunter was racing back to Ellengale as fast as his car would take him, but it just wasn’t fast enough. The text message he had received made it feel as if his heart had stopped, knowing what might have happened. It might already be too late, and the message was too cryptic to figure anything else out. But he wasn’t about to risk stopping to make a call; he needed to be in the town now.

  He swore as he reread the text message, only taking his eyes off of the highway for a few seconds.

  “She might not survive?” he questioned to nobody in particular. “What does that even mean?”

  The Charger flew past a slow moving minivan, a cartoon playing in the backseat. The hunters hands gripped the steering wheel, his teeth grinding together as his foot pressed harder on the gas pedal. An old habit came back, and he brushed a hand through his hair.

  He had never felt like this before, not really. He had been worried, sure, but terrified of something he didn’t even know about? That was new for him.

  As he pictured her face in his mind, he wondered why she affected him so much. It wasn’t like she had done anything special, or anything he hadn’t seen before. Well, that wasn’t true; she had stared him down, and his gun, without even blinking. Not only that, she demanded he let her help him, and travel with him. His hand smashed against the wheel, and he remembered how quickly he had left her. I should have stayed, he thought, made sure everything was okay.

  He had thought she would move on after her friend went free, and he would just become an old memory. The fact that she hadn’t contacted him made him think she had. But then again, he hadn’t contacted her either, and look at him now; breaking all the limits to try and find her, all because of one little text message.

  Thinking of the message made him want to read it again, as if there would somehow be new information he had missed the first twenty times he had read it.

  But it didn’t have anything new on it, just the same twelve words.

  Liv needs help. Something’s wrong with her, and she might not survive.–Luke

  His foot pressed harder on the gas as he passed a sign reading “Welcome to Ellengale”.