by Cara Carnes
Her gut clenched. “I didn’t come out here for that. I don’t use people. I wanted your opinion only.”
“Glad to hear it, but I think it’s a solid play, Kamren. I’ve got history with the MD’s that’ll trump my last name, or should anyway.”
Kamren stilled. He knew the Marville Dogs? She thought back to when that would’ve been and soured. It had been during her teens most likely, back when the only people she saw were her family. And Dani. They’d kept in contact even though it’d been a pain in the ass.
“You knew Dom before he went to prison.”
“And Ricardo. We both tore off when Dom went down. I guess neither of us could handle it.”
She’d almost lost Dani back then, too, her sole link to the outside world. Her best friend had lost so much. It’d bonded them to one another, strengthened their friendship in a twisted way.
Kamren needed to fix the fiasco she’d caused. Figure out who killed her dad, make things right with the Marville Dogs, and move on with her life. That was her new list of things to do.
For Rachelle.
For Dani.
For Dad.
Which meant sucking it up and admitting she was in over her head. She’d already been way outside her comfort zone when everything started. “I’m okay with that.”
“Good, then we’ll keep you out here a little longer, then we’ll get to work on sorting Marville out.”
Nolan and Jesse ran over. Grim lines hardened their otherwise handsome faces. They offered her cursory nods, but their attention was on Dallas. “Sheriff Patterson’s calling in a favor. Bubba’s grandkids, the twins, have wandered off. They were last seen out near the back of the old Seymore place.”
It’d been a while since she’d been in Resino, but the old Seymore place was the only spread between the Burton brood’s land and the tail-ass end of the Mason property.
“How old are they?” Kamren asked.
“Six yesterday,” Nolan offered. “Going on sixteen. They’ve been gone four hours, could be anywhere. Fence line’s up around our lands, but not sure about the Burton’s. Patterson’s calling them to help, but thought he’d give us a head start.”
“Get teams ready to go; let the girls know. We can use the drones.” Dallas looked overhead.
The night sky was crawling up into view quick. The last thing they needed was a ton of boots on the ground screwing up the search grid before someone got a chance to track those kids. “Where were they last seen? Is it close?”
“Why?” Jesse asked.
“We should check it out first before you send a bunch of teams out in grid formation. They’ll tramp all over the trail.” Kamren shrugged. “Sometimes a small effort is the most efficient.”
“We’re down for a small strike. You in?” Dallas asked.
Adrenaline surged at the invitation. Though her entire body ached and her head still throbbed, she wasn’t used to being inactive. Having something to do would help ease her anxiety. She nodded and jumped up. “We’ll need supplies.”
The backpack. She hadn’t put it down for months, but she needed supplies more than she needed to hold onto papers like a hoarder. She looked around and spotted Addy with a group of women at the edge of the sidewalk. The redhead had been nice to her and treated her with respect, which didn’t happen too often for Kamren. She ran over and unshouldered the backpack.
“Kamren!” Rachelle screamed her name and ran forward. “They just told me you were here. Oh my God! Are you okay? They told me there was an incident. What happened?”
“I’m okay, Rache.” She squeezed her tight, then pulled away to truly look at her sister for the first time in months.
Rachelle did better when Kamren didn’t hover nearby, or so Cliff said. She thrived around Riley. Her eyes shown brighter than her smile. She was happy.
Safe.
“Come on, I’ll show you the room I have in Mama Mason’s house.” Rachelle took her hand.
Damn. “Listen, I’m afraid I’ve gotta go. A couple kids are missing.”
“But you just got here.” Rachelle’s voice rose. “You can’t go.”
“It’s just for a little while to find the kids, then I’ll be back and we’ll catch up. Okay?”
Rachelle crossed her arms. Her lips thinned. “Fine. I guess I’ll see you later. Riley and I were about to watch The Walking Dead anyway.”
She looked at the backpack, then at her sister. Rachelle hadn’t been a fan of her ongoing project, to say the least. She held it out to Addy. “Watch over this?”
The redhead’s eyes flared a second. “Sure, though if I go wheels up with the teams, I’ll have to relegate it to my girls here.”
“Hi, I’m Vi.” The blonde with red-rimmed glasses waved. “This is Mary. We run back office operations. Our drones are going out with you guys. This is Bree and Rhea.” She motioned toward the other blonde and brunette. “They helped us design the drones and some other stuff. We’ll watch it for you. Addy mentioned we might be able to help you with something.”
She eyed the women, then her sister. “Yeah. It’s time I get a second opinion and decide whether there’s anything to my theories or not.”
“And if there isn’t?” Riley asked. “You’ve wasted almost two years chasing your tail.”
“If there isn’t, I’ll drop it and move on.”
“Really?” Rachelle breathed the word, as if not believing it.
Someone had tried to kill her last night. She was close and over her head. It was time she asked for help. “Really.”
“Okay then. We’ll wait until you’re back before we dive in,” Addy said.
“Thanks. It probably won’t make much sense.” She looked over at Addy. “Can I borrow another backpack and some supplies?”
“Come on. I’ll show you where stuff is,” Dallas offered.
Kamren tightened. She’d been so busy with the women she hadn’t heard him come up behind her. The man was eerily stealthy, like a prowling tiger. “After you.”
6
Kamren had crammed half the supply area into her backpack. She’d stocked enough supplies to undergo a three-week mission through the jungle, but Dallas admired her tenacity. She’d inspected knives and riffled through drawer after drawer with proficient speed, which was odd since all the contents were clearly labeled. Nolan and Jesse stood behind him, also watching her mad dash through the supplies. She was a cute squirrel shoving stuff into her backpack and pockets like she’d been let loose in a candy store for the first time.
She shouldered on the backpack and looked around one last time. She snagged a couple more KA-BARs. Nolan and Jesse both laughed. She’d already procured two. He’d have to get them back from her or Marshall would be all over his ass.
He looked over at Kamren when her stomach rumbled. “Sweetheart, when did you last eat?”
“Addy showed me the cafeteria at breakfast. I had some eggs and bacon.”
“Nothing since then? That was more than fourteen hours ago,” Jesse said. “You didn’t even have much on your plate.”
Red rose in her cheeks. “I didn’t know it was free and didn’t have much money with me. Besides, I was taught not to mooch. You eat what you kill or earn yourself.”
Dallas reached into his pocket. “I can respect that, sweetheart, but as long as you’re on our compound, you eat. Okay?”
She eyed the protein bar like it was a rattler, but she accepted it with a grudging nod. “Thanks.”
“Eat up. We’ve got about a four-minute drive to where the boys were last seen.” He reached into the pack he’d gotten and handed each of his brothers a granola bar. They ripped them open and started chewing along with Kamren.
“Marshall and Cord are going to work with Sanderson and Addy to assemble teams, in case they’re needed.” Jesse held up two small cases. “The girls sent drones, and Nolan’s got headgear for us. They said it’d be a good test run for a search and rescue op.”
Dallas grunted his response as they piled into a truck. He relegated hi
mself to the back with Kamren so he could get her situated with the headgear and wrist apparatus. He doubted she’d enjoy it much since it was like wearing a tuxedo for the first time when you’d prefer a pair of shorts and flip-flops.
“Drones won’t help out there. It’s dark and there’s a lot of land to cover. I doubt the area’s been bulldozed in the past couple of decades, so brush will be thick and impossible to see through from the air,” she said.
“HERA’s a bit different. These drones can find heat signatures and do all sorts of cool stuff,” Jesse explained.
“Oh.” Her eyes flared a bit. “That’s cool.”
“Here.” Dallas held up the headset. “Let’s get this situated. Give it a few minutes before you shun it completely. It limits your visibility in your left eye until you acclimate to the read out. You can still see through it if needed. The girls will put up data in the display that they think might help you.”
“‘The girls’ being the brainiacs back there? Vi and Mary?”
“Yeah, they’re the best back-office operatives around. The Quillery Edge,” he offered.
“Right.” The tone proved she wasn’t impressed. She was a civilian, which meant none of what he’d said meant anything.
Nolan and Jesse chuckled from the front seat. He situated the headgear on her and adjusted her ponytail so it wasn’t in the way. Her hair was fine silk as it flowed through his fingers. He traced down her arm and put the wrist device on.
“What’s this?” She looked down at the doodad, which was spewing all sorts of data.
“It tracks medical stats and gives you the ability to navigate the drones. If we were stuck in a heavy firefight or cut off for a long period of time, you could provide intel to them through this.”
“Team leaders use it the most, usually to signal if there’s a problem with one of the team members that might impact the op. They can adjust the plan accordingly,” Jesse offered. “We can handle the tech and let you track.”
She breathed deeply with an exhale. Relief. He almost chuckled, but then he noted the worry lines on her face. “Hey, this is okay. They probably fell asleep under a tree somewhere.”
“Yeah, okay. We’ll go with that. It’s been a while since I’ve been there, but I remember the place. The crazy coot had holes drilled everywhere. There’s even a cave somewhere and all sorts of traps.”
“Traps?” Dallas asked.
“Hunting traps. He was a survivalist, didn’t want others on his land,” Nolan commented. “She’s right. He was nuts.”
“There’s another one,” Dallas’s voice echoed through the desolate ranch land. The Mason brothers had turned finding the next set of tracks into a competition, showing the ease with which they worked together, even within tense situations.
Would her life have been different if Cliff had enjoyed tracking and the other stuff their father had done? Or Rachelle? What if one of them had been forced to take on the family legacy to keep food on the table?
Nolan crouched beside his brother, but neither messed with the area surrounding the track. Drones hovered overhead and cast light across the area. Kamren had been skeptical, but the little electronic monsters had been useful, once she’d figured out how to use whatever gunk the brainiacs were feeding to her left eye. It was a jumbled-up knot of useless data since she had zero idea what it was supposed to say. That left her unable to unscramble any of it.
But green was good and red was bad and she’d discerned numbers by recognizing a pattern she knew to be coordinates for the Resino area. And Dallas, along with Nolan and Jesse, were damn good. The three could’ve easily handled this without her in tow, but they’d let her do her thing.
“This one’s different,” Dallas commented. “Blood.”
Heat fanned from his muscular form as she crouched beside him. Awareness crawled through her insides in a warmth that made her shiver. His scent, a musky oak, permeated her nostrils as she leaned her head downward a bit to focus on the tracks.
Blood droplets darkened the soil around the area and within the track. One of the kids was injured. She rose, focused on the area to the southwest from where they’d come. With a point of her finger, she had Jesse and Nolan looking east while Dallas went with her. They’d worked out the hand signals quickly once she picked up on the ones they used and started using them as well—something all three of the men found great amusement in for some reason.
She needed to find the missing boys. Exhaustion plagued her and she’d noticed Jesse’s pronounced limp getting worse the farther they moved toward the Burton property. That was when she noticed what was wrong.
There was only one set of tracks.
Dread clawed her insides as her pulse punched into overtime. She unshouldered her backpack and tossed it to Dallas as she flicked on a flashlight she’d kept in her hand and sprinted back toward the last set of tracks they’d found. Nolan and Jesse followed.
“What’s wrong?” Nolan asked.
“One set up there, two back here. We missed something,” she said.
Blood darkened the lower edge of a bush. She stooped, running her finger across it. Recent.
“Yeah, bring the drones back this direction, Vi. Kam has something.” Dallas gave her the credit over the com even though he’d been the one to locate the track and note the shift in the situation.
Kam. Dallas had started the ridiculous use of a shortened version of her name, and both his brothers had picked up on it soon enough. They were all about nicknames, though. Vi was Quillery and Mary was Edge for some reason that made no sense to Kamren. Whatever. Not her circus, definitely not her monkeys.
She studied the barely visible remnants of a rudimentary trap. The string was thin, broken. Dirt and debris covered most of it, which was probably why it’d been overlooked. Drones circled overhead, fanning lights along the area.
“Tell me what you need.” Vi’s voice in the headset startled Kamren a moment. They’d never spoken directly to her, not since she’d growled about the display being a waste of time and made Dallas remove it so her eyesight wasn’t impeded.
“One of the boys tripped a trap. He was running faster than they’d been going. The tracks are shallower from the running pace. He’s hurt.” She looked toward another drone hovering above where Dallas was searching an area. “Continue past Dallas. One of them is running full-on, likely to get help. Or he’s scared.”
“And the other?” Jesse asked.
“That’s what we need to find out, sooner rather than later.” She stood. “The dark isn’t going to help; it’ll only get worse. There are wells and holes all in this area. Likely one of them fell in. The where will be hard to find.”
“Not necessarily. Give Mary and me a moment.” Vi’s voice paused a beat. “Z, get in here. We need your help. We need to establish a perimeter around the current location. We’re looking for holes, shifts in the geography.”
“It’ll be between my current location and the one before this. We’ve lost a set of footprints,” Kamren said as she ran toward the last location, not waiting for the fancy drones to do the work.
The distance felt like a mile but was far less than two hundred yards. In the darkness, though, it may as well have been ten miles.
“To your left. Ten feet,” Vi said.
Rotted boards that had cracked in two came into view when she angled her flashlight that direction. Son of a bitch. Dallas was at her side and had the backpack undone before she had a chance to shout for it. Nolan remained quiet as he stood beside Jesse a couple feet back.
“Need you following the coordinates I’m feeding, Nolan. Drones spotted one of the boys about half a click from your position.” Mary. The woman hadn’t spoken much during the mission.
“On it.” Nolan darted toward where they’d been.
She flashed the light into the hole, but there was no verbal response. If it was a well, it could be a long way down. The shape was wrong, though. This was more of a natural recess, something the crazy coot had probably du
g from a slight sinkhole. A trap for a boar to fall in perhaps? No, it was way too deep for it to hold animals. This had been the old man’s paranoia, a trap meant to catch trespassers.
“Anyone down there?” She had the ropes and equipment pulled from the backpack before she finished the question. Jesse and Dallas undid it all and worked together to get it ready. Precision perfect movements.
Without comment or discussion, the plan had been set into motion. The entry was small, too small for any of the Masons to get into. Which left her. A drone disappeared into the hole. Kamren reached up and yanked the display back over her left eye.
Kamren’s heart leapt into her throat as images filled the viewing area. The boy had fallen farther than Kamren wanted to contemplate. Was he alive? Injuries were a given for that distance. Shit. There was no way she could even get that far down, which meant they’d have to wait for a rescue crew to bring equipment in.
“Okay, Kam. Vi and I aren’t willing to wait for people to find a rig to haul out there and get that boy out. You ready to get down there?”
“Yeah, of course.” Kamren shone the light down the hole. “I can probably find an outcropping to leapfrog from once I’m down the rope.”
“We can do a bit better than that.” Three drones appeared over the hole. “Dallas, you and Jesse get her harnessed. Let me know when you’re ready.”
“No offense, but I’d be happier if Vi was the one handling the play on this one, Edge. You’re not exactly known for handling the light work.” Dallas’s voice was edged with concern as he glanced over at Kamren. “We’re about to do something that’ll sound crazy, but trust me and trust Vi and Mary. Okay?”
Kamren swallowed her uncertainty. She could do this. A broken leg or arm wouldn’t matter much if she could get the boy out, right? Dallas positioned the harness around her with an ease which denoted proficiency.
“Look at me, Kamren.” He settled two fingers beneath her chin and pulled up until her gaze locked with his. “You don’t know us well enough to trust us, but there’s no way in hell we don’t have your back on this one. Okay? I give Edge shit, but she and Vi would not suggest we move on this unless they knew for a certainty we could handle this.”
