Drake Sisters 07 - Hidden Currents

prison—and she would be like the women she had tried to help—trapped in a world serving Stavros’s wil .
    â€œSheena!†Stavros was on his feet. “Don’t!â€
    Sid went up the side of the house, moving fast, but her vision was blurring and she knew she had to jump while she could. He would reach her if she didn’t get the nerve to take her chances in the sea and rocks below. Once away from the energy field, she’d have more power. She leapt out into space and lifted her arm to summon the wind.
    The wind roared at her, shoving her slender body out away from the rocks to the welcoming water. Behind her, Stavros lifted his arms and sent his countercommand. As capricious as ever, the wind shifted, dropping her the remaining feet. She hit hard, her mind exploding into a mil ion fragments as the cool water closed over her head, accepting her into its soothing arms. For a moment, she thought someone had landed beside her and that an arm brushed against her, but then she was sinking, not fighting, letting the sea take her home, far away from fear and a life she didn’t believe would ever be hers.
    Jackson. She whispered his name in her mind as she floated away.

    2
    JACKSON Deveau stepped through the doorway onto the front porch to stare up at the gathering clouds churning above the choppy waters of the sea.
    The storm was moving in faster than predicted, as it often did on the northern California coast. Fingers of fog, pushed by the building wind, reached shore ahead of the storm, covering the coastline in a wet, gray blanket.
    She was out there somewhere. Alone. Alive. He knew she was alive. She had to be alive. El e Drake, youngest of the Drake sisters, had been missing for a month now. Something terrible had happened to her or she would have reported in. Her undercover job had taken her into the seamiest side of life—human trafficking—and somehow her handlers had lost her. Her family had been told she was presumed dead, but he didn’t believe it any more than her sisters did. He would know. They would know. The Drakes were psychical y connected and, although El e’s sisters were devastated over her disappearance, the one thing they agreed upon was that she was alive. He wouldn’t— couldn’t —believe anything else.
    So he had to find her. Today. If her cover had been blown as was suspected, whoever had her would keep her far away, out of the United States, if they didn’t kil her first. Her family had tried numerous times, he had tried, but al of them had failed to even get so much as a direction on her. He had heard her soft voice nearly a month earlier and as many times as he replayed it in his head, he was certain she sounded afraid. And El e wasn’t afraid of much.
    The storm would provide a much needed boost of energy and the plan was simple. Al of them would gather together in El e’s protected house, home of her ancestors, gather the storm’s energy, send it out into the universe and find her. And it was going to happen, because there was no other alternative.
    He whistled and his dog, Bomber, bounded around the corner and paced with him to his truck. The big German Shepherd jumped inside and settled on the seat next to him. “Today, baby,†he whispered softly into the wind, letting it carry his words away from him.
    The drive through Sea Haven was familiar now. He’d moved to the smal vil age on the coast after serving first as an Army Ranger and then in the DEA with his friend Jonas Harrington. Things had gone to hel more than once, both in the army when he was taken prisoner and later on an undercover assignment. Jonas had wanted to go home to Sea Haven and had talked Jackson into moving with him. He’d joined the sheriff’s office and patrol ed the coastline, not realizing for a long time what the inhabitants of Sea Haven had come to mean to him. He was a man of few words and even fewer friends, but he had been accepted in the smal , tight-knit community.
    The vil age was mourning El e Drake, just as her family—and he—was mourning for her. There was a sense of quiet, of dread, as he drove through the streets. Everywhere he looked, he could see the smal yel ow ribbons on businesses and homes, waving from fences and trees. One of their own was missing and they al wanted her home. The wind continued to drive the fog until the coastal highway