Indestructible by Alycia Linwood

listening in.”
    “I don’t care. All I want is to find my mom before it’s too late.” Tears welled up in my eyes, but I pushed them back. My mom was going to be fine. The thought of losing her terrified me, and I hadn’t even known this until the real danger appeared. How could I have ever thought that I wouldn’t miss my mom? Even if she never accepted me for who I was or never accepted my boyfriend.
    “We’ve got a lead,” Lily said, breaking through my hazy thoughts. “Carly Hansel lived in Firefalls and her element was fire. There are no mentions that she ever had the disease, but that’s not surprising. Your great-grandpa hid that information too.”
    “What about her children or grandchildren?” I asked.
    “She had two daughters, three grandsons, one granddaughter and two great-granddaughters. I’ll send you the school photos of the great-granddaughters so you can see if one of them looks like the woman who took your mom.”
    I waited for the pictures to load onto my phone and carefully examined them. “I’m not sure.” I handed the phone to Adrian, who quickly glanced at the screen.
    “The one to the right,” he said without hesitation.
    I frowned at him. “Are you sure?” The girls on the picture looked nearly identical and I couldn’t match any of the faces with the face of the assassin.
    “Yeah. The girl to the right has a birthmark under her left eye, just like the woman.”
    “Okay.” Adrian must have seen her better because he’d been face to face with her while they were fighting. “Lily, listen. Adrian says it’s the girl to the right. What can you tell me about her?”
    “Her name is Margaret Hansel. She’s 25. Her family pulled her out of school when she was 13, I suppose because she had the symptoms of the disease. I can’t find any important info about her. She doesn’t own a car and, apparently, she lives in her great-grandma’s old house, but I don’t think that info’s correct.” A distinct sound of typing could be heard from Lily’s end of the line. “She’s like any other carrier. Mostly in hiding.”
    “So there’s no way to find out where she could be taking my mom?”
    “Not yet, but we’ll find something,” Lily said determinedly. “You believe Carly Hansel was your great-grandfather’s lover Rosalia, right?”
    “Yes.” Carly had been a magic disease carrier, had known my great-grandpa and her great-grandchildren were alive and hunting down my family. That couldn’t be a coincidence. “Wait.” I took a sharp breath. “I think I know where she’s taking my mom! She’s taking her to a bank in Las Vegas.”
    “If she wants to open one of the safes, she only needs your mom’s element. She doesn’t have to take her there,” Adrian said.
    “I know, but she already has an element!” Hope surged through me. My mom was still alive. “If she wants to get the money, she’ll have to force my mom to open the safe for her. Or open all the safes, but that would mean she’ll need to take my mom there every week.” I shook my head. “I don’t even know how this works now that there’s no one to control the terms of the deal. But she’ll need my mom alive and she’ll wait until her air expires to collect my mother’s element or until all the safes are open.”
    “She could still take your mother somewhere first and wait until the element expires,” Lily said. “We can monitor the bank, but we have better chances of finding them if we can track the car.”
    “Yeah, sure, but this means my mom is still alive and we have time to find her.” I only hoped Margaret was a regular carrier like she appeared to be and not some mutated carrier who could take more than one element. There was no indication that she was an element preserver.
    “Where do I go?” Adrian said. “We can either go to Vegas or to Firefalls. You choose.”
    I looked at the highway in front of me and closed my eyes. What did my gut tell me? Where would my mom be? “Las