Forever for Rose

Chapter Twenty Nine.

Pedro.

"And as I told you all, she is hard at work." Malcom's smug voice grinds my nerves, but I can't deny that he is right.

"I'd say she's pretty tough." Nathaniel nods, massaging his temples. "They took an enormous amount of blood and she was still pushing through it all to get information."

Calvin and Rachel agree, then Calvin sighs. "The question though is what do we do with all of this new information? It still doesn't really help us much."

Malcom buffs his nails on the underside of his shirt then admires them. "We let Rose worry about that part. That's why she's there. Our only concern is how to get her out of there."

Calvin tries to keep a diplomatic expression, but his voice is another story. "Do not presume to tell me what my duty right now is." He grits his teeth. "That's my daughter's life we are discussing, I know you wouldn't know what it's like to be a good father, but you'll have to excuse me if I'm not thrilled with the fact that my daughter used herself as bait to save a boy she hardly knows and is now in enormous danger."

"Calvin," Rachel chides him, putting her hand on his knee and Calvin shakes his head, letting out a deep breath.

Calvin's eyes sweep across the room to where Dalton sits on the couch between his parents, his head slumped forward. "I'm sorry, Dalton, I didn't mean...I know she did this for more than just you."

Dalton doesn't lift his head, he just shrugs his shoulders. "Trust me, Sir, I blame me too."

Victoria shushes him and rubs a circle into his back.

Nathaniel clears his throat to bring us all back to him, but I still watch the boy out of the corner of my eye. He's like a wounded puppy without her here. I never would have pegged him as the type to fall so hard for a girl, but clearly he has.

"So where is she?" Lance asks, standing to the side with Fallon and Mathew. "When do we go get her?"

Nathaniel looks up slowly, shaking his head. "I'm not entirely sure. There wasn't anything that really stood out to me." He sighs. "I know that isn't what you all wanted to hear, but I can only travel so far." He looks over at Rachel and Calvin mostly, understanding what it is to have a child in danger. "I can only project myself so far, about a 50 mile radius. Then within the projection, I can only go out a few yards. I got a small glimpse of the camp, but not enough to pinpoint a location. However, it is close."

Dalton snaps his head up. "You said a 50 mile radius?" Nathaniel nods and Dalton jumps from the couch and rushes into another room, riffling through the supplies we'd brought here.

Lance follows Dalton over to the table as Dalton spreads out a map.

"It makes sense to be close by if the first step in the plan is to take Castrum." Lance says, holding his chin while Dalton pulls out a marker.

"Within here." He says, circling the large area of possibility.

Rachel leans around Calvin's shoulder then sighs. "That's an awful lot of space." Her voice shakes in desperation.

Calvin pulls her forward so she can see better he kisses her on the cheek quickly, then points back at the map. "Not if you take into account what we know." He tells her and we all lean in to look.

He licks his lips then purses them. "She can't be to our West." He says. "She'd smell the ocean and the foliage out that way is much thinner." He explains, taking the marker from Dalton to cross out a whole area. "And she can't be to our East because Lanmoare is there, and they'd know if they had an army camped in their backyards. They've proven themselves loyal to us many times over." He crosses out the land to our East and then sighs. "So that leaves our South and our North."