Revealed by April Zyon Page A

ten minutes later.
    “Yeah, I see
it,” Hector muttered. “Mercury, it’s Hector,” he said into his phone. “Looks
like the welcome party’s rolled out the red carpet. Yeah, that would be a good
idea. We’re slowing down so they don’t hit us like they did Gaius. What? Okay,
sounds good.”
    He hung up and
looked to Gaius. “He wants you to stop and see if they keep coming. Anything to
buy time. He’s coming with whoever’s hanging around. He thinks Jason’s there,
but he hasn’t got a clue if there’s anyone else, given the number of incidents
cropping up.”
    “Jason works,”
Gaius said with a nod. “Fucker’s been looking for a decent fight for a while
now.” The vehicle slowed until they came to a stop. Gaius threw it into park
and leaned forward, his arms braced on the steering wheel as he stared out the
window. He gave a snorted chuckle after a moment. “I think we’ve confused
them.”
    “Good, we need
to give Mercury time to get here. Given how they had their asses handed to them
the last time, they likely brought more muscle with them.”
    “Gods, I
sincerely hope not,” Gaius said.
    “What do you
mean you hope not?” Riley asked with a frown and leaned up in the seat. “I
don’t understand—wouldn’t you want more people rather than not enough?”
    “Not when it’s
the bad guys bringing more to the playing field, sweetheart.” Hector turned to
look at her and smiled. “We kicked the bad guys’ asses the last go around.
Which means they’ll be bringing more with them. Remember when I mentioned that
we’re low in numbers? Well, I wasn’t kidding. If they ever actually got all
their forces in one place, we’d be fucked.”
    “Unless we nuked
them,” Gaius muttered.
    “With the way
our luck’s been running, that would only make them more indestructible,” Hector
said with a glare to his friend. “I really don’t want something harder to kill
than what we already have to deal with.”
    “Shit, good
point. Maybe just some bombs … non-nuclear ones, I mean. Blow them all to
smithereens. If we ever got them all in one place. Wipe out the evil ones all
in one go.”
    Riley rubbed her
temples and laughed. “You guys are too much. I like it, though. The way you
both bicker with each other and so on. It’s nice to feel such a familial bond,
even when I know that the two of you are very far from being siblings.”
    “Thankfully,”
Hector muttered. He shot her a look and winked, one corner of his mouth kicking
up for an instant. Facing forward once more, he stared out the window. “Well,
the good news is that they’re still confused and aren’t moving yet.”
    “They likely
have a trap set up and are trying to figure out how to get us over there where
they can kill us and make off with Riley,” Gaius said before Hector’s phone
rang.
    “Yeah?” he
answered. “No, they’re not moving. Gaius figures there’s a trap set and we’re
screwing with their grand plans. Uh, we’re about a mile up the road from them.
Okay, sounds good.” He turned to Gaius. “Mercury’s close. He said to start
easing forward. If they make any move toward us, we’re to stop immediately. He
needs a sense of what they’re up to and also wants to see if we can taunt them
away from that spot.”
    Gaius shrugged
and threw the truck into drive, easing them forward at a whopping three miles
per hour.
    “We’re moving,
Merc. No, nothing yet. They’re definitely paying more attention, though. Got
it. Yup,” Hector said into the receiver. Hanging up again, he tucked the cell
in a pocket. “He’s two miles out. He says to keep playing with them a bit, and
maybe we’ll pull them away from whatever they’ve got going on up there.”
    “I’m all for
puttering along in grandma mode,” Gaius told him. “Hopefully, Mercury gets here
before we all doze off out of sheer boredom from our high-speed race to
safety.”
    Riley burst out
laughing, despite the situation. Once more, she leaned back and