The sound of her shoes hitting the treadmill was a noise Cadence Findley had grown to love over the last year and a half. Sometimes she didn’t even listen to music when she worked out, preferring to focus on the sound of her rubber soles thunking against the endless black road beneath her feet. She knew she was running particularly fast when it sounded like a heavy deluge was falling, and by now she could usually tell when she’d reached thirty-five miles per hour without even glancing at the numbers because it had a certain… cadence to it.
Today, she was preoccupied, though, watching her sister, Cassidy, in the gym across the hallway, two windows and a couple hundred feet between them. Cass was still training with Aurora Howe and would probably be ready for her observational hunts in a week or two, though she was still having trouble with the weapons. Cadence thought it probably had more to do with Shane Talbertson being the one to teach her how to shoot than the actual shooting itself, and the Hunter Leader considered asking Elliott Sanderson to work with her in a couple of days, once he got back from Oklahoma.
All of it seemed surreal—the fact that Cassidy was a Hybrid who had been able to lure Gibbon out of hiding, that Elliott was back from the dead, that Grandma Janette was gone forever. Even though it had been nearly three weeks since they’d returned from Philadelphia, in these still moments when she had a chance to think, she had a very hard time believing any of this was real.
Taking one hour for herself every day to run was about all she could afford with thousands of Hunters around the world to coordinate. It was always night somewhere; there was always a hunt—or a dozen—going on elsewhere, but she held this time for herself sacred and rarely gave it up for anything anymore. Now that her system of delegation seemed to be working, it was getting easier.
And there was the fact that Vampiric activity seemed to have dropped off significantly recently, something they still hadn’t quite managed to grasp. The drop in sightings and attacks seemed to correspond with the night last week when Cassidy had her nightmare. That’s the only way Cadence could describe it. Even now, thinking back to how eerie it had been to see Cassidy sit up ramrod straight and announce, “The time is now,” before collapsing, was… bizarre to say the least.
While Cadence had been afraid to wake her sister at the time since she seemed to fall back into a peaceful slumber almost immediately, the next morning, she’d asked a million questions. All Cass could remember was standing in front of a dilapidated building, staring at two people who didn’t know she was there. She couldn’t remember who they were or what they were doing. As much as Cadence had questioned her in an attempt to jar her memory, nothing was forthcoming.
The door to the workout room opened, bringing Cadence out of her thoughts. She couldn’t help but smile when she realized it was Aaron despite the fact that he was here probably meant bad news. Still, even when he had that concerned expression on his face, she thought he was absolutely the hottest guy on the planet. He ran his hand through his light brown hair, another sign something was wrong, and Cadence glanced down at the treadmill. She had another fifteen minutes to go, but she was pretty sure she’d be cutting her run short today. She hit the kill switch and wound her way down to a jog and then a walk as he waited patiently for her next to the treadmill.
“What’s up?” she asked as soon as she could catch her breath. She pulled her water bottle out of the holder in front of her and guzzled it as he began to speak.
“Sorry to interrupt. I know how important this time is to you, but I think you need to know about what happened in California last night,” he replied, his piercing blue eyes narrowed with concern.
“Everything okay?” Cadence asked, a question she knew he’d take to mean she wanted to know if everything was okay with their own personnel. Obviously, everything wasn’t okay or else he wouldn’t have interfered with her run to walk all the way over here. The fact that she had her IAC completely off so that no one could bother her while she worked out was a good indication of how sacred her workout time was, and if anyone knew that, it was Aaron McReynolds.
“Yeah, with our people, anyway, but… just come to the conference room as soon as you’re done in the shower.”
“What? You don’t want me to come like this?” she asked, tossing her towel over her shoulder and jumping off of the treadmill, her hands raised in a display of disbelief.
Aaron flashed a crooked grin in her direction. “Nah, cause you stink.”
She made a wounded puppy face and then launched herself at him, wiping her sweat all over his nice blue dress shirt and gray slacks. “I stink? I stink?” she asked.
“Seriously, Cadence?” he asked, but he was laughing, a sign of progress that she was managing to make him a little more normal, and she found his lips briefly before she pulled away sparing him the task of pushing her off. She knew he would likely go all the way back to their apartment and change clothes now that she’d wiped her stinky perspiration all over him.
“Okay. I’ll be right there,” she said, stepping backward as he looked down at his damp shirt and shook his head. “I was just marking my territory,” she shrugged.
“Thank God you didn’t pee on me then,” Aaron muttered as he turned to walk away. Over his shoulder he shouted, “By the way, for future reference, I don’t think that’s necessary! Everyone already knows I belong to you.”
Cadence couldn’t help but smile. “They better,” she said, catching his eye before she turned and took off for the showers. As she pushed through the door, she almost ran directly into Ashley Stone who was headed into the workout room.