Zach straightened. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
Jessie shifted as close to the back of Zach’s seat as possible and reached her hands forward. She intended to put them on his shoulders, but he raised his hands to grab hers. They were strong, with long fingers. All except the one that had been broken.
Her awareness of the physical was swept away as the emotional flood poured from him to her. It hammered at her. Jessie gasped. Instantly, Zach let her go. In the driver’s seat, Kade stiffened.
“Dammit. No, it’s okay,” she said to both. “I’ll be okay. Just took me by surprise.” She paused for a deep breath and reached forward. After a moment, Zach took her hands again.
This time she was better prepared for the onslaught. Fortunately, most of it was positive. People happily stuffing their faces while they sat in the sun.
“You’re linked?” Cara asked.
“Yep,” Jessie answered, breathless as Zach’s power swept her along. It rapidly expanded outward, past the forks and along the river.
“Can you tell where you are?”
“Yeah.” Connected to the emotions Zach read, she caught glimpses. Some were memories, but others were external images from people enjoying the warm, sunny day.
A path that followed the water... “We’re on the Riverwalk Trail.”
Cara’s voice remained calm, an anchor in the storm of emotion. “Okay, Zach. I need you to let Jessie look for Braden. She is connected to him. Her energy will instinctively search for him.”
Zach’s hands tightened on Jessie’s. She squeezed him back, but her heart thundered.
“Jessie, just relax and let your mind wander. Zach, follow her. Try to make note of landmarks. We’ll need them to follow where you lead. Don’t try to pinpoint him right now. We just need a general idea. We don’t want to risk tipping him off too soon. We’ll move closer and do it again.”
Jessie tried to relax, but Zach’s power continued to soar in response to her contact. It raced along the river, bounding from person to person. She sensed his frustration at being unable to rein it in.
Cara sensed it too. “Try deep breathing,” she suggested. “Get your breathing to sync, and your minds should follow.”
Jessie had often used breathing exercises at work as her go-to-tried-and-true method for calming. So she talked Zach through it. “Okay, Zach. Breathe with me.” She started counting. “1... 2... Breathe out... 3... 4... Breathe in.”
Zach followed her coaching. With their breathing synced, he relaxed. The frantic pace of his readings slowed, and Jessie was able to keep up with him.
The breathing relaxed her too. She visualized her connection to Braden as if he had her on a tether. She let it pull her along, and Zach followed. His ability lit up the people they touched.Anger, pain, hate, joy, love, excitement...And along with the emotions, images of their locations.
“It’s working,” gasped Jessie, amazed.
“Good,” Cara crooned. “Stay in sync. Breathe.”
Kade merely grunted in satisfaction.
They gained speed. Reached the downtown core, heading past it toward Polo Park where the cavalry waited. But the tether weakened. Had they lost Braden? “We might be off course,” Jessie said.
“Think of Braden,” Cara coached. “How he looked. How he smelled.”
Smelled? But even as Cara said it, the memory surfaced. Jessie’s heart accelerated. It wasn’t entirely fear.
Zach’s hands spasmed.
He had just made contact with a person pulling into the Polo Park lot when, suddenly, something wrenched her away. As though someone had grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her around. Something powerful that hooked into her very soul.
Zach followed as she sailed back the way they’d come. She was yanked along. Braden’s presence grew, and Jessie fought the impulse to resist. Or not? Her confusion made Zach falter.
They needed to find him if she was going to be free.
The tether took them a bit north of the river. Zach tapped into the people they passed, searching for images. They were headed along Portage Avenue. Into the core of downtown Winnipeg. Surely Braden wasn’t here? In the heart of the city? Not many abandoned buildings in the downtown core for hiding a werewolf. But then, they weren’t always werewolves. They spent a lot of time looking human.
Kade’s warning rumble penetrated her absorption. “Get a location and break it off. Or he’ll find us.”
