Page 17

The instincts I’ve been doing my best to ignore flare to life.

“Dax.”

“Copy.”

“Who else lives here besides Varenthrall?” I crouch down and advance through the shadows, searching for a better view of the window.

“Staff,” he replies. “His wife is dead, like I said last night. He has a daughter, but…” He trails off, and I hear him flipping through a stack of papers. “I’m not seeing anything that leads me to believe she still lives at home.”

“There’s a chance she does, though?” I’m moving before he can answer, creeping closer to the house.

“Doubtful. If she were, I’d have come across records leading back to her.” He exhales a long-suffering sigh that ends in a growl of irritation. “You just had to ask me the one question I have no fucking answer to.”

He complains, but I already hear the sound of his fingers clicking away as he starts his search.

I can just picture him, hunched over his monitors, grey eyes narrowed, black hair a shaggy mess from scrubbing his hands through it after spending all night and day on preliminary surveillance. He’s probably hacking into everything from her pediatrician’s files to her report cards from High School.

I duck behind a large bush to the right of the hedge maze and hiss when a thorn catches on my sleeve, piercing my forearm.

I ignore it. The pain’s more of an annoyance than anything.

The figure has moved and is speaking to someone at the door now.

It’s definitely a girl. She’s small, almost delicate.

I creep along the edge of the maze. Long minutes of silence fill the darkening night before Dax grunts.

“What?”

“There’s not much here.”

I don’t like the edge in his voice.

“I found a birth certificate and some pediatrician visits. There’s registration up to middle school, but then it all stops.”

I hesitate, checking the perimeter before crossing the few meters separating the garden and the mansion. I keep my gaze trained on the female, even as I flatten myself against the stone wall and out of sight.

“She’s twenty-two,” Dax mutters, sounding irritated. “Where’s her online footprint? No photos, no TikTok’s lip syncing to Taylor Swift, no Spotify full of sad-girl playlists.”

I pull at my hood to be sure every inch of skin is covered, and shift to the left to get a better view of the room.

Much to my irritation, she’s already moved, no longer in my line of sight. Without thinking, I step out of the shadows, desperate to get eyes on her again.

Cursing, I force my muscles to freeze mid-step.

What the hell am I doing? I nearly just exposed my location for a glimpse of some random female.

What. The. Fuck.

Dax, totally oblivious to my near-blunder, keeps talking.

“There’s no Facebook account. No Reddit. No Instagram.”

He lists each missing social media account as though its absence is a mortal sin against the tech gods. I can hear a pen tapping furiously against the desk. He’s agitated. His huff of annoyance confirms it.

So like any good packmate, I poke the bear.

“Gods, Dax. Tell me you haven’t met a twenty-year-old girl in the last half-century without telling me you haven’t met a twenty-year-old girl in the last half-century.”