Fragile Bonds

by Adelaide Walsh

  All six of them lounged around the truck, leaning against the machine with a carefully perfected facade of ease. I had a feeling that, despite the lazy appearance, these things were ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. Joaquín shoved me forward again.

  “This is where it happened. Now, tell us what you see in the dark that we’ve miraculously missed.” There was a taint of menace in his command.

  I looked around the space again, this time, my attention was not on the deadly creatures posted here, but on the setting. There were trees on either side of the road, the pavement well kept, not crumbling as the road I had driven in on was. The jungle framed us for as far as I could see in either direction. From what I could tell, this place looked like any other part of the forest. No breaks in the foliage at either side of the road. Nothing to indicate a struggle. But something did strike me as odd.

  “It happened here?” I asked.

  “That is what I said,” he drawled, patience, apparently, beginning to run thin.

  “Right here? In this very spot?” I pointed to the ground below me.

  The alpha set fisted hands on his hips. “Yes, it happened right here.”

  “Why?”

  He raised one dark eyebrow. “Why what?”

  “Why did it happen here? On the road? Your man was on a patrol, right? I don’t see a vehicle. No signs of a crash. Why would he have been on the road? He would have been in the woods. Would have been using one of your paths.”

  Joaquín’s eyebrows furrowed but it was one of the men, supporting himself on the hood of the truck sporting a shaved head and dark tattoos creeping up his neck from under his t-shirt, who answered me.

  “She’s smart. I think she got you, hermano.”

  The others in the circle remained silent in spite of the teasing comment.

  “I can’t help you if you don’t give me what I need to know.” I wasn’t about to play these games. If the bastardo was going to try and fuck with me, he was wasting my time and his own. I could save my people without saving Carro. A little part of me rebelled at the idea of abandoning the man, and I secretly hoped that Joaquín could find a way to trust me. Find a way to go beyond his cynicism so that he could accept my help. As the minutes passed, though, I was becoming less and less convinced that whatever mire had forged this alpha would not be able to release its grip on him and let him trust me.

  Rora whispered something from behind me and when I turned around, bathed in the unnatural light of the truck, I realized she was speaking to Joaquín. And in that moment, I saw the alpha for the first time.

  The man had a face carved on lines I’d only ever seen in the people who inhabited the American reservations. It was clear from those high cheekbones, that subtle tilt of his eyes, and the fall of arrow-straight ebony hair he had tied back in a queue at the nape of his neck, that his heritage was steeped in the American Indians. There were whispers though, in his features, of a Latino parent. The curve of his nose. The fullness of his mouth.

  Joaquín was beautiful, in a painfully masculine way, and looking at him, I couldn’t shake the thought that he was a warrior, more at home in the jungles than in the political spotlight he so often found shined his way.

  I’d seen pictures of him before, but standing there, just inches from the contained fury of the man, I understood exactly how little the photos conveyed. My breath caught in my throat before I wrenched myself back to the severity of the moment.

  “I need to know exactly what happened, everything you know if I’m going to help you. He’s only got the night and then Carro is dead. If I can help, I need to do it now.”

  The alpha paused for a moment and then answered, addressing the full circle of his people and myself. “We’ve got the most experienced retrievalists in the pack searching for Carro. He was part of my guard, and more importantly, my friend. I want to save him more than I want to breathe but I will not compromise the rest of my people for this mission. Show her his last known location. She gets clearance level D, no more.” He crossed those thick arms over his chest and stood as if waiting for someone to challenge his decree. But those words had come from the mouth of an alpha, not an equal. And no one responded. I was beginning to understand the lines.

  Rora let out a quiet sigh and laid a hand on my arm, whispering, “this way.”

  Apparently, she’d hoped for more. Level D didn’t sound all that helpful. The man who’d chastised Joaquín earlier from his position draped over the truck, shoved to standing and gripped the back of his neck with a heavily tattooed hand. The Bears in their fur slunk back into the pitch of the forest and the men and women standing on the road averted their eyes. Rora tugged me to the opposite side of the street, still illuminated by the glow emanating from the truck.

  “Carro was on patrol in this area. He was not on the road.” She paused, obviously carefully considering what she was able to divulge. “His last known position was very near here. We had...learned...of a vehicle traveling on this road about twenty-five minutes prior to losing contact with Carro.” Apparently, the Bears had surveillance in this area. Solar powered units maybe?

  Rora continued, “the two officers on patrol in the region were sent to intercept the vehicle. The operation had gone as planned, until the partner confirmed that he was unable to contact Carro. The partner reported gunfire and was ordered not to pursue the vehicle until back up arrived. The vehicle crossed out of den territory and Justice was contacted to continue the pursuit.”

  She rattled off the plate number for the vehicle and I read between the lines, heard what she wasn’t saying. It was obvious she was trying to tell me the men had separated to approach the vehicle. The Snakes had grabbed Carro at gunpoint and the fact that he appeared to have been alone was probably the only thing that left his partner alive...If the man even was still alive. She had conveniently left out the current status of said partner. It didn’t seem like these people would be the type to abandon a fellow soldier at the first sign of danger. And how had the Snakes known that Carro would be on patrol? Here? Today?

  The next problem I had with this story was the idea that Justice had been brought in on Pack business. Justice and the packs rarely played nice. Especially now that Dariel had infected the organization with his Snakes. If I had to guess, I would say the pack sent a unit to chase down that vehicle and did so until they either lost it or were forced to give up the game. Of course, she couldn’t tell me that part though. Packs only had jurisdiction on Pack land. Sending an armed guard into civilian territory would have caused political tensions at the best of times, to put it lightly.

  I dug my phone out from my bra and quickly tapped the plate number into a note. I’d follow up on that later. Assuming I was still alive when I left Bear territory.

  “What time exactly did your surveillance pick up the vehicle? And when did your man report the loss of contact?” I asked. The worm I’d been able to seed into Dariel’s comm network was limited. It gave me a line on some email accounts, mostly low-level administrators, and a few groups that constantly sent encrypted messages. I wasn’t positive of my assumption, but I figured they were probably vendors providing weapons and supplies to the military arm of the Snakes. If I had the exact times of the abduction though, maybe something would line up.

  Rora looked at me reluctantly and then gave me the information I’d asked for. I noted it all on my phone. It quickly became clear that she couldn’t answer too many more of my questions. Joaquín had eyed us through the entirety of the short discussion and when he inclined his head at Rora, she concluded the interview and discreetly pressed a business card made from heavy stock into the palm of my hand.

  “My number. In case you find anything.”

  She escorted me back to the ATV on her own. When we stood next to the machine, I informed her of a dark piece of data I wasn’t sure the pack had considered yet.

  “You guys have a leak. Multiple I think,” I informed her.

  Her face paled. “Impossible.”

&nb
sp; I held her gaze for a moment. “Consider this your confirmation and find a patch.”

  She raked her fingers through her short, sandy blonde hair. “Mierda. How can you know that?”

  I just shook my head. “I just know. And consider this proof that I’m a friend. You need to lock down your comms. All your data networks. And think about it...even if you don’t believe me, how else would the Snakes have known Carro would be here? It had to have been a compromised data system. The target was too specific.”

  She swung her leg over the quad’s seat on a deep sigh.

  “It’s going to kill Joaquín to know we left ourselves open like that.”

  I knew in that moment that the Bear alpha felt deeply for his people. It was a feeling I could sympathize with.

  Chapter 7

  I’d searched every scrap of content I’d been able to collect in the last week for anything that might help me find Carro, but I’d come up woefully short. I shoved my laptop backwards on the desk and threw the pen I’d been using to scribble down notes across the room. There was nothing here and the cubbyhole of an office I sat in was making me feel caged.

  The plate number Rora had mentioned was a complete dead end. A little digging in the right places told me that the pack did, actually, put a call into Justice about the missing sentinel, but no officers had ever been dispatched to the scene. They sure as hell didn’t make an attempt at tracking the vehicle. This wasn’t much of a surprise. The only thing slightly out of place was that the plates on the vehicle that grabbed Carro were registered as government tags. Dariel had only officially been in power for three days, and he’d already worked out how to take advantage of this minute level of resource. I wasn’t sure I was buying into that league of efficiency. The man was smart, but there were just too many moving parts to start pulling out government issued assault-proof vehicles for a low-level kidnapping in so little time. The Snakes came into the city with machines from Venezuela. Why would they have even bothered with a diplomatic vehicle for this if they had their own? Sure, these were small questions but as a journalist I’d learned that the details often concealed the strongest evidence of the truth. The only explanation for the domestic plates I could think of was that Dariel had actually been a power in the city for much much longer than we all knew. It wouldn’t have been impossible to have seeded the ruling body with his people months ago, bribed the right people for the right access and have stood in the shadows pulling the strings that led to the actual invasion like some twisted puppet master.

  I knew our president had been involved and at least partially responsible for the insurrection. I hadn’t been able to find irrefutable proof of that involvement yet, but I would. This latest information was just the next piece of that puzzle.

  The bears hadn’t given me much before they effectively kicked me out. It was clear that Rora wanted to help me, but Joaquín quickly lost his patience with me. I’d stumbled around in the dark for a few more minutes after my chat with Rora, asking questions of each of the pack members who’d remained to keep an eye on me. They answered my questions with exactly nothing helpful. It was clear that most of them were skeptical of my involvement, and very well aware of what the limits of ‘clearance level D’ were.

  It seemed, however, that Rora, with her tiny stature and unimposing nature which hid a spine of steel—if you weren’t paying an ounce of attention that is—clearly outranked the other people there. To my unending appreciation she nudged the most reluctant soldiers to answer the questions they could for me. She may have not trusted me entirely, but I had every confidence that she took my warning about their unsecured comm lines very seriously. I just hoped they got their shit locked down sooner rather than later, or they’d be facing much worse from the Snakes in the very near future. I linked my fingers together behind my head and stared at the ceiling of my office at the KHG tower, waiting for inspiration to strike and letting my thoughts wander back to the hours I spent in Den territory.

  “I need to speak to the soldier who witnessed the grab,” I had stood toe-to-toe with Joaquín demanding more information and trying, in vain, to get a lock on the frustration bubbling through my veins at being, yet again, blocked by bureaucracy in this investigation. I knew this would be a difficult mission, but like every other story, it was a puzzle. I just needed to find the right pieces and assemble them to create a map to Carro. The only strategy I could think of at the moment though, with the stunted information I was getting, was that maybe I could get a visual of the kidnappers, match it up to one of Dariel’s more publicly available officers and then somehow track that individual down. My investigation strategy was half formed at best...it usually worked for me. Usually.

  “No.” The denial came as a clipped and unyielding grunt. Gee, way to help me out here.

  “I need to know exactly what he saw. How many were in the vehicle? What did they look like? Did he hear anything?” Logically he couldn’t expect me to pull an answer out of thin air. I tried to reason with him.

  “You’re supposed to be able to offer some kind of help,” he smothered the word ‘help’ in sarcasm so thick I could almost taste it, “that we could never hope to manifest on our own. Well, us poor, dumb Bears have already thought to collect all the information about the scene that is available.” His words had been chosen carefully. He’d never actually said they interviewed Carro’s partner. But he’d also never said that it was impossible to do so.

  “He’s injured. Unconscious?”

  Joaquín just raised an eyebrow neither confirming nor denying, clearly exercising his political savvy. I was becoming increasingly frustrated. I had to keep reminding myself that they had no way of proving I was actually on their side—not some spy sent in to pinpoint additional weaknesses.

  “Photos then. I need photos from your surveillance system.” I tried to negotiate.

  “Reinita, you’re not getting anywhere close to our systems. We have trackers on this that make you look like a child with a magnifying glass. If you can offer us something we don’t already have, we’ll talk. But if you’re digging for your next story, mama you best know that we Bears don’t print well.”

  I glared at this startling man and tore my eyes away from his metallic ones. I took one more sweeping glance around the area. There was nothing here. If he wasn’t going to give me anything further I was just wasting my time standing here. I needed to get back to a computer and start digging for information the old fashion—and illegal—way.

  “Fine. I’m done here then. But I will find him. Whether I can do it in time to keep your man alive or not...that’s on your soul.” I glared at him. “Take me back to my Jeep.”

  Joaquín and Rora, along with 2 other guards in what they referred to as their ‘walker’ form, escorted me back to my Jeep, this time along larger, entirely cleared paths. Joaquín was a silent presence at my back. He kept his hand firmly clamped over my upper arm the entire trek, and the hold quickly began to feel more than militant. Almost possessive? Had I come up with that? Or was there actually more to read into his bruising grasp. One of his soldiers, a man-boy with cocoa skin and hair that stuck up in short, spiky dreadlocks trailed behind us as we hiked and asked questions about what the city had been like since the invasion. I rattled off answers until Joaquín cut into the discussion, speaking over his man to ask a question of his own.

  “Will they be looking for you?” His auric eyes burned into my own and I felt so incredibly...off balance.

  “The Snakes? Don’t think so, at least, not tonight.” I smirked into the dark. “We’ll see how much trouble I can get into before morning.”

  The alpha didn’t respond to that, and when we reached my Jeep, he raised a hand, dismissing the others with militant efficiency. I didn’t care how civilized this pack was, or how political the media played them to be, if the Bears didn’t have a highly equipped, impeccably trained paramilitary arm I’d eat my boot. The stature of these men, the way they responded to the clear hierarchy here, the exacting a
dherence to even non-verbal commands...I’d only ever seen this kind of behavior in the most sophisticated of military personnel.

  I clambered into the vehicle, and Joaquín leaned against the open frame of the door, barring me from closing myself in, unapologetically in my space. There was a moment of silence while I felt for my key still in the ignition.

  “Reinita, if I see a word of any of this in the media tomorrow, I will be paying you a visit. And I won’t be so friendly this time.”

  I let out a rather unladylike snort at that comment.

  “Yes, you’ve been very friendly so far. I gotta say, you Bears sure know how to treat a guest. The tea and cakes you served me were to die for.”

  He smiled at my snark, his face illuminated by the soft orange glow from the lights inside the car.

  “Even though humans don’t feel the alpha compulsion, most speak to me with more respect.”

  “Oh, I feel it, oso de peluche,” teddy bear, I quipped as I twisted to latch my seatbelt.

  “I like that.” His voice skirted the edge of a snarl and it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

  When I turned back at him, the grin plastered on his face was a wicked one.

  “Good luck hunting down your man.” I suddenly felt exposed. Awkward. I didn’t fully know how to end this. His smile faded and he gave me a resolute nod. I laid my hand on the door, my arm brushing the hardness of his body in doing so. “See you,” I whispered. Not able to name the strange feeling sitting in the pit of my stomach. The nuances of this moment lost on my conscious mind. He stood there for another second before shoving away from the car.

  “Yes, you will.”

  And on that alarming promise, I pulled the door shut and raced back to Bogotá.