Page 21 of Bound

The silence that followed was glacial. “What do you want?”

“We need support from the Tracers on this and we need it handled quietly. A hand-picked team you’re sure you can trust. For now, we can’t have what Topher is able to do getting back to Guillermo or the rest of the Council. Cal is with me on this.”

“Is he.”

“Come on, Riv,” August muttered. “Don’t be that way.”

“If you’re going to be pissed, it should be at me,” I said. “I was the one who was worried about Topher’s abilities getting back to the Council. He told us what he could do back at Thanksgiving, right after we learned you have a mole on the Council who’s been selling information to the vampires. It’s not that we don’t trust you. It’s everyone else living at the compound. How many neuro-manipulators could pick this strand of information from your head if you slipped for half a second?”

“You done?”

“It wasn’t personal,” Brody said flatly. “Be pissed at me all you want, but you and I both took oaths to serve and protect, and I don’t think for one second you’re going to pass up on this meet if it could mean a lead on the missing civilians.”

“Yeah, well. One small problem. I can’t just order a strike team down to Austin two days from now. Not without explaining why. And as for who I can trust.” River paused. “That list is pretty short at the moment.”

The silent fuck you going unsaid.

“Talk to us,” I said carefully.

“We’re stretched thin at the moment investigating the abductions. Plus we’ve had internal security issues with check-ins at our access gates, not to mention there was a break in last week at the onsite medical lab.”

“They think someone at the compound is selling prescription meds?”

“Looks like it. The pharmacy was trashed. Narcotics. Benzodiazepines. Stuff it’d be easy to offload on the street.” River paused. “They also took a couple bags of O-Neg.”

A beat. Then August said what we were all thinking. “Please tell me you’re sleeping with a clove of garlic under your pillow.”

“Hard to see how a vampire could get in. The walls of the compound are shielded to prevent anyone dematerializing in or out. Plus, we would have caught it on the security feed.”

“Maybe it’s their frat night,” I said dryly.

“Unfortunately, that’s the best theory we’ve got at the moment. We’ve got units working to make sure the new security measures are being implemented across the Southern territory, as well as install upgrades where needed, but we’re running into outdated tech, Alphas who think they know better when we tell them we really do need everyone to follow the same protocols, and the moment we finish working up one case, we get a text that someone else has been taken.”

“I thought the abductions have been isolated to three or four cities. Austin, Houston—”

“New Orleans and Little Rock,” River finished. “We’ve got a high priority alert out to all packs warning them that shifters are being targeted, that everyone needs to have Wolfguard up to date and installed on their devices. In some cases, the vampires have been going for primarily female shifters, but not always.”

“Any intel on why?” Brody asked.

“None that we’re prepared to share at this time.”

“Helpful.”

August sighed. “We’re testing the software for the tracker. Should have another update ready to go soon.”

“You analyzed the data from the Hudson Smith case?” I asked.

“Yeah. Took the bloodsuckers seven minutes to find it.”

“Interval’s getting better,” River said.

“Right. You want to be the one to tell that to his mom?”

Wolfguard was an app August and a team of engineers had been tasked with developing in response to the new threat of Eclipse. A bio-implant was supposed to automatically activate if the user’s pulse and other bio-markers spiked above a certain threshold and transmit data back long enough for Tracers to send in a rescue team. They’d been working on it for nearly a year.

“We’re still missing something here. Topher, you don’t have a security detail. Why not grab you after you’re getting off a shift? Why not materialize straight into your apartment like they have in all the other abductions, grab you and ghost back out? Clean and simple. What are they waiting for?”

Topher folded his arms. “I get a few seconds warning when one of them is going to jump in on top of me. It’s like this itching I can’t explain in the back of my brain. The night I escaped, in the alley after I lost control and bit Hayden, two vampires materialized right on top of us. I wasn’t going to be taken back there alive. And I couldn’t let them take her. So I stabbed them through the heart before they could solidify.”