Don’t piss off the tech goddess. We need her.
It takes her almost ten minutes to skirt the edges of the compound. It’s that fucking big. “No floodlights on the southeast tower. Southwest though…same setup as the other three.”
“Because they think no one’s stupid enough to scale that cliff face,” Connor mutters, leaning against the ATV.
“Yeah, well, guess we’re gonna draw the short straw.” Nate shakes his head. “Nothing like a little breaking and entering at four a.m. to get the blood pumping.”
Four a.m. Grace has been gone almost ten hours. My mind won’t stop running worst-case scenarios. All the ways this Prophet asshole could have hurt her—and Parker—in that amount of time.
“Taking the drone in deeper now,” Zephyr says. “Keep your eyes peeled.”
Jasper and Connor huddle around the monitor with us. The drone’s night vision is state-of-the-art, and the image is so crystal clear, it’s like watching a movie. A terribly boring movie with a life-and-death test afterward.
Greenhouses. Barns. A low, squat, gray building in the distance… So much of the topography mirrors Grace’s sketches. When the drone flies over the center of the compound, I lose my breath completely.
Fuck.
There’s the altar. The lanterns are lit, and around it, the remains of a fire smolder in a kind of sick and twisted moat.
“Find her window,” I hiss. “That’s where she’ll be.”
“You don’t know that,” Connor says, his hand steady on my shoulder. “We’re hopin’ that’s where he’s put her. We don’t know for sure.”
I turn and glare at him. “She’s in there.”
Jasper shifts beside me. “If she is, Parker’s likely nearby. She’s his leverage to keep Grace in line.”
Hardison spins around, shoving Jasper with an almost feral growl. “She’s a person. Not a poker chip this asshole gets to toss on a table.”
My brother’s right. But so is Nate. “Stand down. Both of you. Jas, don’t you ever call Parker leverage again. Even if that’s exactly what she is to their damn Prophet.”
Jasper blows out a breath. “Fine. But we’re splittin’ hairs here. And we still don’t know where the fuck she is.”
“Zephyr, how close to Grace’s window do you think you can get the drone?” I return my gaze to the monitor, watching the drone make its third pass over the altar.
“If I dip much lower, even running dark, someone could see it,” she says.
Fuck.
“We should go in now. Hit ‘em hard and fast. Before sunrise.” I’m already moving toward the ATVs when Connor grabs my arm.
“And walk straight into a kill box? AJ, they’ve got AKs on every tower, choke points at the gate, and God knows how many men inside. We go now, we’ll have no cover. The best time to move is right before the ceremony. Eight thirty, eight forty-five tonight. Maximum chaos.”
“That’ll be too late.” The words tear through my heart like jagged knives. “The poison could kill her long before the blade does. The fucker knows he failed last time. What if he gives her twice as much? What if he cuts her throat rather than just stabbing her in her side? What if he’s already done it…?”
Hardison clears his throat. “Cap?—”
“No!” My shout is too loud. Even here, almost ten miles from the compound, the sentries, my wife, I know I’m being reckless as fuck. But I don’t care. “Every minute we wait, is a minute closer to Grace dyin’. And once Grace is dead…Parker’s next.”
For several long moments, the only sounds come from the forest. The skitter of the occasional squirrel. The hoot of an owl. The whisper of tree branches in the light breeze.
Then Hardison pipes up, his tone light but the words obviously forced through a clenched jaw. “Well, gentlemen, glad we’re all in agreement—storm the death cult at dawn, die a glorious death, and maybe our heirs get a movie deal out of it all.” He taps the monitor, right over the Prophet’s house. “If we want to live long enough to have a say in the casting decisions, we need intel from inside.”
Connor pulls off his black cap, runs a hand through his hair, and tugs it back on again. “How, exactly, do you propose we do that?”
Hardison glances at me and shrugs. The move would be casual if anyone else did it. But for him…it’s tension personified. “Get a message in. To Grace. To Parker. Both if we can. Tell ‘em to stall any way they can.”
“You planning on walking up to the gate and passing them a goddamn note?” I ask.
