“Not sure how we screwed up. As Hayden said, we followed protocol.”
“Then stop daydreaming about your female and figure it out!” He scrubs his face and walks over to a window, staring out at the falling snow. “How far from the facility was this?”
“Four miles. Two miles off the service road. It’s possible Blade missed cameras, but they’ve never had any that deep in the woods before.”
Blade slams his water down. “I didn’t miss any cameras. I detected no electrical currents or EMF fields. No batteries, plastics, or petrochemicals—nothing synthetic. One of you must have disturbed a marker or tripped some old-fashioned type of tripwire.”
“You really think we wouldn’t notice if we tripped over a hemp wire? These weren’t weekend hunters looking to bag a deer,” Callen says. “They’re well-funded, using military-grade tech and gear.”
“But we would have smelled anything made from plastics or metals.” Blade drums his fingers against the table.
Silence. No one has an answer.
“I should have returned with you,” Blade adds. “Maybe I would have noticed a change. Unless nothing changed and they detected me earlier, let me go, hoping I’d bring back the entire team.”
Damien quirks a brow. “That’s highly possible. Except when the team first encountered Angelina, she warned you all off. That would have been an opportune time to capture the team.”
“Maybe they weren’t prepared then, to take on four shifters,” Frank speaks up.
“Or the two situations aren’t connected,” Damien says.
Hayden shakes his head. “Something felt different about this one. Nothing explains how they got there so fast and undetected. Twenty humans, Damien. Not two guards, like Angelina reported aiming their guns on her and us. This was flat ground, with numerous escape routes, not a canyon. We heard no movement, caught no scent until they were on us. Fully surrounded us. It’s as if they appeared out of thin air.”
“Deer blinds,” Damien suggests.
I shake my head. “The wind was chaotic, whipping every direction, including downward. We would have scented them.”
Damien’s jaw tightens. “We need to understand what happened before we attempt any other rescues or raids on their facilities. I think we should?—”
A howl sounds in the distance.
We all fall silent, listening. The howl repeats, more desperate this time.
Damien races out of the house, and we all follow.
We hear the clanking of the pack’s truck barreling toward camp before we see it. The truck halts and Pryce jumps out without shutting the engine. He shifts mid-run and bound into the woods, disappearing under the cover of trees as he heads toward our compound.
Two border guards surround the truck, shut the engine, then walk away. I can’t see Angel. I’m not sure why she’d stay in thetruck if Pryce is racing toward us. My stomach knots. She’s hurt. That’s why she’s not getting out of the truck.
No, the guards wouldn’t have walked off.
Pryce races into the center of camp and shifts to human form before reaching us. “Angel’s gone. Taken.”
All breath is ripped from me. I charge at Pryce with a surge of raw power. “Where? When?” I shout.
Two sets of arms hold me back. “Easy,” Callen says. “Let Pryce catch his breath and report in.”
A growl erupts from deep down. My wolf’s not happy with anyone right now, including me. Adding chaos to a bad situation will only slow down a search and rescue operation, so I shut up.
“When I returned to the general store, she was gone, but all the supplies she’d been gathering were still there. Checked the truck. Empty. I returned to the store. Her scent led out the back, and down an alley. Then it ended.”
“Explain that,” Damien says.
“It just ended. And it wasn’t the only scent I caught. She… they… had to have left in a car.”
“She didn’t leave voluntarily,” I say. “She wouldn’t disappear like that.”
“Could have been pre-planned. She could have taken the supply job just to get to town,” Hayden says, then stares at me in a way that reminds me it’s his job to consider all angles.
