“And hopefully before it’s too late,” Brielle said softly.
The longer it took to find her brother, the more the odds worked against her ever seeing Julian alive again. It tore her apart to think that, but the truth was, it had been nearly a week since he’d called her. For all they knew, he might already be dead.
As she got to her feet along with everyone else, eager to head back to the hotel for some sleep after a long, frustrating day, Brielle felt Caleb take her hand, his face earnest.
“We’ll find your brother,” he promised. “Beforeit’s too late.”
Brielle nodded, touched by his concern. As they walked toward the door, she had to wonder if werewolves could read minds. Because she’d really needed those words of encouragement right then. And when Caleb was the one saying them, she found herself believing them.
Chapter 6
Russia
“Are we sure this is Surinda?” Caleb asked softly, his warm breath frosting the late-night air as he crouched in the fresh snow on the hill overlooking the small village below them. His enhanced hearing didn’t pick up any sounds from the collection of simple wooden houses. “I mean, the place is a ghost town. How many people are supposed to live here, again?”
“Almost a hundred,” Genevieve murmured from the other side of Brielle. “They’re mostly Evenki reindeer herders, along with a few other indigenous groups. At least, that was the number at last count a couple years ago. Maybe they all moved away since then.”
Beside Caleb, Jake let out a snort. “And left the lights on and the fireplaces lit in most of the houses?” he pointed out, motioning toward the smoke coming from chimneys in several of the nearer buildings. “I don’t think they just up and moved away.”
Caleb was tempted to point out that maybe everyone in this sleepy central Siberian village had simply gone to bed. To say this place was on the backside of nowhere was an understatement. On the way here, he’d seen an old manridinga reindeer. A frigging reindeer. He was pretty sure there weren’t any Netflix shows in these parts to keep the people who lived here awake this close to midnight.
He didn’t bother saying any of that, of course, because ultimately, he knew Jake was right. There was something else going on here. It wasn’t even the silence shrouding the town that made him believe that. It was the eerie stillness surrounding the village. The lights might be on, but no one was home; he was sure of it.
It was entirely possible that everyone who lived in the place had been slaughtered.
“Do you smell any blood?” he asked, glancing at Jake.
Harley or Sawyer could have answered that question, but since they hadn’t revealed they were werewolves to Hudson, Caleb sure wasn’t going to out them by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Jake lifted his face to the breeze and inhaled sharply several times before shaking his head. “No blood. But I’m also not picking up as many scents as I should if there are a hundred people living down in that village, either. Something is definitely off.”
Caleb frowned down at the tranquil village below. “Okay, aside from the disturbing lack of people, is anyone seeing anything to make us think the nukes are actually down there somewhere?”
“Maybe,” Forrest said.
Caleb glanced over to see Forrest looking through a set of night-vision binoculars, apparently fascinated with whatever he was seeing.
“Take a look at the east side of the village about two hundred meters to the right of the last cluster of homes and tell me that structure doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb.”
Caleb followed the direction of Forrest’s gaze until he saw the tall chain-link fence surrounding a small building. But it wasn’t the fence or the squat, windowless building that caught his attention. It wasn’t even the dozen or so trucks, some of them with a definite military design to them, that were parked inside the enclosure. No, it was the large metal tower that rose at least fifty feet above that building. That was thestructureForrest was talking about.
“Is that a cell phone tower?” Hudson murmured as he peered through his set of night-vision binoculars. “Behind a high-security fence?”
Caleb had never really paid much attention to what cell phone towers looked like, but he got the feeling this one wasn’t right. It looked too rugged. And those vertical cylinders running straight up through the center of the thing seemed more like smokestacks than anything a cell phone tower needed.
“A cell phone tower in the middle of a Siberian farming village? I don’t think so,” Jake said. “But we won’t know until we get a closer look. Split up into your teams and move in. Misty, I want you going in first, in case there are surveillance cameras.”
Decked out in a heavy gray parka to protect against the below-freezing temperatures, a big hood covering her long, purple hair, Misty nodded. From the corner of his eye, Caleb saw Hudson getting that curious look on his face again, like he seriously wanted to ask if Misty was one of those other supernaturals Jake had mentioned to him the other night, but the CIA agent held his tongue.
Caleb got to his feet, ready to lead Misty, Forrest, and Brielle down the hill and into the village. In her black parka with the faux-fur-trimmed hood pulled up, heavy snow boots, and ski gloves, Brielle looked even colder than Misty, and Caleb had to resist the urge to put his arms around her to warm her up. He’d tried to convince Jake to leave her behind with the support team, but his complaints had landed on deaf ears—again. For some reason, Jake thought Brielle might be helpful on this reconnaissance mission. Caleb didn’t know how.
Growling under his breath, Caleb took his team around to the east side of the village, coming at the fenced-in enclosure from the direction of the tree line. Luckily, the moon was mostly full, so they didn’t need flashlights or even night-vision goggles. The route would provide them good cover right up until the last twenty feet or so, but it also meant trudging through some deep snowdrifts. That didn’t bother him much because werewolves didn’t get cold, but it would probably suck for Brielle.
He almost snorted. When the hell had he started giving a crap about how comfortable Brielle was on this mission when he’d been telling anyone who’d listen earlier that she shouldn’t be coming with them at all?
“We’re almost in position on the west,” Jake said over the radio. He, Jes, and Hudson had taken an easier route near the cluster of houses at the edge of the village. “We haven’t come across anyone so far.”
“Same here on the north side,” Harley said, answering for Sawyer and Genevieve. “We’ve looked in a few homes along the way, and they’re all empty.”
