Free The Escape by Teyla Branton Page A

agree.”
    “So what do we know?” Ava tented her hands on the table.
    A smile tugged at Stella’s mouth, and I knew she was remembering her earlier comment about me sounding like Ava. “Well, besides the conclusions Jace and I have filled you in on, I think we need to find out what we can about Patrick Mann’s birth.”
    “Agreed,” Dimitri said. “We must learn how he got into place, especially when Erin says his parents seem unaware of the whole Unbounded issue.”
    I took a chair at the head of the conference table where I could still see the screen. Ritter sat kitty-corner next to me with his back toward it.
    “If they’ve done it once,” Ava began. She didn’t need to finish. However the Emporium had accomplished Patrick’s positioning, we all realized it wouldn’t be an isolated incident.
    Tenika paced a few steps, her lean body and tight movements betraying centuries of training. Her ability wasn’t combat, but I wouldn’t want to meet her in battle alone on a dark street. “My biggest concern is getting my people back from the Emporium.”
    Before the slaughter, Tenika’s group had been the largest organization of Renegades in the world. They’d had fourteen Unbounded and a dozen mortal family members and employees. They lost fifteen people the night of the slaughter, five of them Unbounded. Our visiting European allies lost four more Unbounded and one mortal. Twenty people in all. By piecing together the remains found at the scene, Tenika discovered that five of the lost Unbounded hadn’t been killed, two from her group, and we assumed they were the prisoners in the Emporium compound listed on the recovered thumb drive.
    She stopped pacing and turned at the foot of the table, leaning over and placing her hands on the gleaming mahogany. “What I haven’t told you is that of our seven remaining Unbounded we lost two more that same week.”
    “What?” Jace interjected. The question could have come from any of us, judging by my own reaction and the surprise on my companions’ faces.
    Tenika nodded. “It’s not what you think. They left on their own—they just needed time away . . . from everything. Both are gifted in combat. One is very young, only a couple centuries, the other over five hundred. Their wives were killed that night. One was expecting. The other had a teenage son, who was also killed. So many deaths. It was hard for all of us.”
    Standing straight, she pulled back the chair in front of her and sat. “Sometimes people need to distance themselves in order to recover from a traumatic event. I see it all the time in my practice. I know where they are. They haven’t removed their transmitters, but they won’t come back, not yet. I believe they will eventually. Unfortunately in the meantime, that leaves me with only two Unbounded I can depend consistently on, Yuan-Xin and Eric Halden.”
    “What about the other two?” Jace asked.
    Tenika rubbed her temple. “They have helped where they can. In fact, tonight they’re with Eric, Yuan-Xin, and your two new Unbounded watching the compound, but the truth is, their minds are elsewhere. They’re gifted in the arts.” She smiled, nostalgia entering her voice. “When Chloe dances, you forget everything else exists. And when Noah sings, the tune makes you cry with its beauty. In another age, they would be our blessing, but for the moment, I confess that I worry about protecting them.”
    Ava put her hand over Tenika’s. “You should have told us.”
    Tenika shrugged. “I thought I had it covered, especially once we had two more of our descendants Change, bringing us back to seven, even without the two who left, but they . . .” A frown grew on her face. “Well, let’s just say they lack training.”
    Tenika was being generous. I’d heard from Yuan-Xin that their newest members were more interested in thrills and close encounters with death than protecting mortals. Hopefully they’d get over themselves soon.
    “Anyway,”