APEX

Ch. 17: What Matters

Rhys

A video of the explosion looped again and again on my computer screen. One moment, a regular flow of traffic, the next, a world in chaos. Fire, debris, metal fragments hurling into the air then cascading down in wide arcs until disappearing into the deep blue waters below.

Unable to remain calm, I let Jane know where I was going and then I took the stairs, skipping a step with each stride, all the way up to the rooftop. My heart pounded as I sprinted through the penthouse. Once I was outside, I scanned the streets below, hoping to spot Calla's navy-blue car making its way to Apex HQ. My body thrummed. I took a deep breath, smelling yeast from the pretzel vendor on the corner and the usual chemical diesel and asphalt odors mixed with urine and human sweat—the typical big city aromatic mishmash.

No honey. No cherry blossoms.

No Calla.

I set my gaze to the east, even though I knew I'd have no view of the bridge from this angle. And even if the girth of the Bank of Sury's solid gray tower wasn't standing between me and the river, there was, as of several hours ago, no bridge to view.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. Fragments remained. According to the news, and the CCTV footage depicting the explosion, a big chunk had been blown out of the center of it, and with it, an undetermined number of cars.

Was one of those cars Calla's? No matter how many times I watched the footage, I couldn't tell. It was too grainy and shot from too far away.

It wasn't likely, I told myself. She'd probably been with Dev when the explosion took place. Hell, I'd be happy to hear she was off fucking him somewhere, as unpleasant as that visual was, if it meant she was alive.

I was almost certain she wouldn't have been on the bridge. But being almost certain meant there was room for a kernel of doubt, and that doubt ate away at me. She could have wrapped up her meeting faster than expected. She could have passed on Dev's advances, citing her need to get back to the real man she shared an office with. She could have been in route. Perhaps those anti-werewolf bastards had finished the job they'd begun the last time Calla had been on Neutral Isle, and her body now lay in pieces along the murky river bottom.

The thought was too morbid to contemplate for long, but I also couldn't not think about it. As soon as I tried to push it away, it came rushing back. What if, what if, what if.

I'd called her, texted her. No response, and none from Dev either. The lack of communication and what that implied to me was unbearable. I searched for a reasonable explanation that didn't involve a violent end and a watery grave, but the truth was, she didn't even have to be in the blast radius to be in danger.

I paced the rooftop, but it did little to ease my agitation. If she was stuck in the backup of traffic after the bridge blew, that meant she was also stuck in the middle of a frenzy. As strong and capable as Calla was, she'd be a fish in a sea of ravenous sharks. By the time Dev and his team would be able to make it there, it would be too late.

I tried Dev again, only to have my call go directly to voicemail, the same as it had all the other times.

"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck."

Re-entering the building, I opened the mini fridge in the penthouse and took out a beer, popped the cap, and drained half of its contents. Bitter and hoppy. The cold clung to my throat and as I drank, my mind wandered into a related, but less traumatizing area, wherein I asked myself a question.

What did it really matter?

Or, more specifically, why should she matter to me? Calla was the brat daughter of the dead Alpha of a pack that had dwindling power within the city. She'd been brought on as my boss purposely to become the bane of my existence, a punishment lobbed on me by my father, even though I'd done nothing to deserve it. She took up precious space in my office, filling it with a scent I didn't want to smell. Or rather, it was a scent I craved so deeply, not having it fill the air around me now felt like a death. Her absence, brought on by her callous disregard for her own safety, was a knife to my chest. And that's what I hated most of all.