Night Whispers: ShadowLands, Book 1 by Alisha Rai Page B

an emergency was at hand.
    James stretched and rubbed the small of his back as he entered his office. It ached from being hunched over a cot for the past few hours. A full dozen of the soldiers who had returned from the aborted Cheyenne mission that afternoon had become even more sick during their journey back. After a couple of the medical staff fell ill too, it had been all available hands on deck in the sickbay.
    Thankfully, it was looking like a particularly virulent strain of flu, and not anything related to the Illness. James made a mental note to read up on medical care. There was nothing he hated more than caring for the sick—it brought back too many memories—but sometimes necessity trumped his desires.
    He sank into his chair at the same moment his handheld uttered a warning beep alerting him to a change in one of his agent’s vitals. He docked the device, his own heartbeat stuttering when he recognized Jules’s icon pulsing.
    A quick glance at the time showed him she should be close to, if not in California by now. Had he not been tied up, he probably would have checked in an hour or so ago.
    He expanded her window. In the space of a second, the waves representing her vital signs were rocketing across the monitor, stronger and more frenzied than he’d ever seen them.
    This is not caused by a rat.
    Without waiting for his customary verbal check-in, he pulled up her visuals. The screen morphed from blue to a wavy pattern of greens and purples as he started to connect.
    “Jules. What’s going on?” His tone was brisk, kisses and virtual reality forgotten in the heat of the moment and the fact that his woman was facing something that was bad enough to affect her unshakeable composure.
    She didn’t respond.
    For a split second the screen was filled with a mixture of white and steel. A loud static filled his audio, a far cry from Jules’s brisk tone. “Jules?”
    The visual dissolved. The audio cut.
    Her vital signs flatlined.
    James breathed in deep. Don’t panic . It was a glitch. A glitch on his end, or maybe hers. Technology was temperamental sometime.
    He reestablished the connection. Nothing.
    He shut down his end and rebooted. Nothing.
    He slammed his hand down on the control panel. Nothing.
    Now. Now was the time to panic. “Jules!” he bellowed, knowing it was useless but unable to help himself.
    He grabbed his handheld and tried to pull up her location. The tracker on her van showed that it was in the same general vicinity she’d been in last night, give or take a few miles. Her collar gave him no GPS signal.
    Her collar was giving him nothing.
    James realized he was breathing in pants, and he attempted to bring it under control. Cool it. Think.
    Everything could be fine. Her collar could have malfunctioned, and she simply hadn’t left yet.
    Why would she not have left today? Unless something had gone wrong and she needed help.
    He knew it. He couldn’t explain how he knew it, but he was suddenly, completely certain that something catastrophic had happened. It was the same queasy, uneasy feeling he’d had all day before the explosion that had killed so many.
    Christ, she needed help. He needed help, since he was absolutely and totally ill-equipped to assist her. Why the fuck had he been put in charge of her life, of anyone’s life?
    He should think about this rationally and calmly and come up with a good plan. He was awesome at plans.
    Fuck a plan. He charged out of the office, his handheld gripped firmly in his hand. As he sprinted up to Gabriel’s, he continued to refresh the trackers, her signal, to no avail.
    Come on, come on, come on… The chant continued in his brain until it became a never-ending loop, until he became unable to deny the reality anymore.
    Flinging open the door of Gabriel’s office, he charged inside. “I think Jules is in trouble,” he blurted out.
    Gabriel rose from his chair with some difficulty, a frown crossing his face. “What kind of trouble?”
    He shook