Page 29 of Cast in Shadow
Like flipping a switch, the blood in my veins turned to ice. I gripped the steering wheel tight and pulled myself up straight in my seat. “When was the last time you heard from them?”
“Shay checked in when they found Echo’s vehicle, but that was it. I haven’t been able to raise any of them since. I triedcomms and phones, and I already have Bravo and Kilo out there looking for them.”
Fuck.
I slammed the Jeep into gear and smashed the pedal to the floor, careening back into the sparse traffic on the darkening highway. “What do we know? Did they get in touch with the cleanup crew?”
“No. I called them directly to verify.”
My pulse roared in my ears, and it took enormous effort not to yell over the internal noise. “Where’s the Rover? Can you track it?”
“Already did. Bravo and Kilo were already there. Checked everything before calling the cleaners in. Echo is dead, torn to pieces.” He took a breath. “And the agents that were with Nguyen and Shay are dead too, but not by wolves. At least according to Anderson.”
A sick feeling swarmed my middle. “If it wasn’t wolves, then what was it? Were they shot? Hit with a car?”
“Their necks were snapped,” he said quietly. “Otherwise, there wasn’t a mark on them.”
That was better than being torn apart by feral wolves, if the end was as painless as it sounded. But then why take Shay and Nguyen? Was this someone’s way of declaring war on Lexa?
I glared at the dual red glow of the taillights in front of me. “What the hell is going on?” I was furious, confused, in desperate need of answers, and all I really knew was that someone was going to pay dearly for this.
“I’m trying to figure it out,” Dennis snapped.
Gritting my teeth, I pulled in a deep breath. “Did the other teams find anything useful? Any leads?” In other words, was there any fucking point in going out to the site of the attack when we already had eight agents combing the area?
The incessant click of the keyboard coming through thespeakers in the Jeep was wearing on me as I sped down the road, ignoring the speed limit and any other sign that might slow me down. “Dennis, give me something. Did the other teams at least check in?”
There was an impatient huff. “Yeah, they checked in. Only sign they found was drag marks leading to tire tracks that disappeared once they hit the dirt road.”
That didn’t help me at all.
“So, we have nothing?” I slammed my fists on the steering wheel. I couldn’t accept that. Wouldn’t. Before he could answer, I added, “Send me a pin for where they found the Rover. Now.” It was a long shot, but all I could hope was that maybe the other teams had missed something.
12
Fury and an unbearable sense of helplessness were pulling me apart inside, and the longer I drove, the more futile it felt.
Hours had passed since Shay and Nguyen’s team had arrived to find the members of Echo shredded and sprawled in the dirt. Any magical trail I might have been able to follow had long since evaporated. The cleaners had come and gone, and they were transporting the bodies of six of my agents back to Lexa as I stared at the road stretching out in front of me.
What was I doing? Why was I going out to a site that had already been cleaned?
I knew it was a wasted effort, but I needed something to do. Desperately. Something to pull my mind from the anxious claws sinking deeper—into my chest, my back, my shoulders, the base of my skull—as the minutes ticked by.
What if I was going the wrong direction? What if Shay and Nguyen were taken to the other side of Brynworth? Or somewhere else entirely? Would my time be better spent heading straight to HQ and leading the search from there?
It felt like there should have been a right answer, logically, but what if I was wrong?
I never should have let Shay do this. Never should have had her drive out to meet us in that damned parking garage or walk into this nightmare with Nguyen and the others. If she’d stayed at the hotel, she would be safe and sound right now, probably curled up on the comfy couch in her room watching a movie.
What on Earth possessed me to call her in on this job?
The answer was obvious, but it didn’t help ease my guilt: It was Shay. She wanted to be more involved. She wanted to experience field work, and I figured playing driver to three trained agents, whose only task was to locate and identify the agents we’d lost to the Clark Ridge pack, was about as safe as it would get.
Was I also secretly hoping seeing what could happen when a mission went wrong firsthand might be enough to convince her that field work was too dangerous for her? Yeah, I was. I was fine with her working for Lexa. Happy about it even. I loved having her in my day-to-day life, and there was nowhere safer than our headquarters.
The outside world was a whole different story.
“Dennis, I’m still waiting on that pin,” I said, searching for a calm that wasn’t there. The furious click-clack of his keyboard provided a steady backdrop to the sound of his uneven breathing. When he didn’t respond after a few seconds, I was about ready to reach through the phone and throttle him. “Dennis,” I snapped.
