I have to make sure Maisie’s not in any danger.
“I’m just going to check the other room,” Rhys said.
“Sure,” said Maisie, looking around a bit dazedly. “Should I not touch anything, or…?”
Rhys shook his head. “Nah, these guys wouldn’t leave prints, or anything else. They’re professionals. They’ve probably never even had a run-in with human police.”
Maisie nodded, and started awkwardly adjusting a painting that had been knocked skew-whiff.
Rhys went into the bedroom. It was in just as much of a mess as the rest of the place, though he couldn’t tell whether the intruders had been looking for something, or just trying to send him a message.
He sat down on the bed for a moment, and tried to get his head together. Who was behind this? Hargreaves? The Agency, for some reason? Someone else?
Should he contact the Agency? Who could he even trust? Normally he would’ve done so without a second thought, but now he wasn’t so sure. He knew that he trusted his immediate team with his life, but he didn’t want to drag them into this unless it was absolutely necessary, either.
The sudden buzz of his phone jerked him out of his reverie, and he pulled it out of his pocket to see who had texted him.
Michael.
It was a bit early in the day for him, but he supposed that maybe he just hadn’t gone to bed yet. Or maybe Rhys had just been out of range, and the message was just getting through now. The resort was pretty much the only place on the island that had any kind of signal, and the island they’d spent last night on was definitely the kind of place where nothing got through.
Rhys tapped on the message, eager to know whether Michael had found anything out.
wherevr u r, get the hell out,the message read, and Rhys’s breath caught in his throat.ur movemnts are being reportd. u have been set up. someone is
The message cut off mid-sentence – Michael must have had to press send before he could get everything down.
Shit. Shit. This is very, very bad.
“Uh, Rhys? Could you get in here for a moment?” Maisie’s voice rang out from the living area.
Rhys practically raced back to the other room, his heart in his throat. But when he arrived, Maisie didn’t seem to be in any trouble – she was standing in front of the TV, which she’d evidently turned on.
“I, uh, I don’t know, I just wanted to see if it still worked, since everything else is ruined,” she said, a little sheepishly. “But look at what’s happening.”
Rhys frowned as he looked at theBREAKING NEWS!report that was currently taking place on the TV screen. At first, he couldn’t tell what Maisie was talking about, given it was just a smartly styled blonde talking – but then the picture switched to an aerial view of some Sydney streets, and –
His breath caught in his throat. “Is that –”
“Yeah,” Maisie said grimly. “I can’t really think of who else it would be. Unless you have any other quokka friends who happen to have cassowary girlfriends.”
Shaking his head slightly, he stared at the – slightly surreal, even to him – image of a cassowary rampaging through the suburban streets with a quokka riding on its back, clinging for dear life to the cassowary’s shining black feathers with its little front paws.
“And there’s a sight you don’t see every day of the week,” the smart blonde newsreader’s voice cut in over the top of the video of Michael riding Shaz through the streets. “A quokka on a cassowary – not the most natural of pairings, but these two seem to have formed an unlikely bond. It’s not yet known if the pair are escapees from a zoo, or perhaps from an illegal private collection. However, ever since this mad dash throughthe streets of Bondi Junction, authorities have been searching for the pair without luck. Let’s hope wherever they are –”
“This is bad,” Rhys said, as the picture zoomed in on Michael’s fuzzy little body atop the murder machine that was Shaz. “There’s no way either of them would have gone out in public in their shifter forms unless they had to.”
Maisie turned to him, eyes wide. “Um. No. I guess they don’t really blend in. Especially when Michael is, uh, riding her,” she said. “But they did say they’ve been looking for them and haven’t found them, so I guess they’re safe? For now, anyway.”
“It’s not really animal control they have to be worried about,” Rhys said, tension coiling through him. “Michael sent me a text message telling me my movements were being tracked, but it cut off mid-sentence before he explained anything. And now, it seems like they’ve had to make a break for it even if that meant exposing their shifter forms. I think something wentreallywrong.”
Maisie let out a soft gasp. “You mean their lives are in danger?”
“Let’s hope they’re safe for now, like you said. If I know Michael, he’ll have more than a few boltholes to run to,” Rhys said. “Right now, we should worry about ourselves. Clearly, coming here wasn’t enough.”
But why is anyone even coming after me?Rhys wondered, as, turning, he went out of the open door and onto the deck leading to the pool. He didn’t like the idea of having such an open space so close.First those guys in the café, and now this. Clearly, someone’s got it in for me.
He grimaced as he surveyed the pool area. It was pretty early in the morning still, so almost no one was out and about yet.
