Page 157 of Specter Bred

I circled the building and checked behind it before continuing farther down the path, but there was no sign of her, Redwood, Teller, or Long.

By now, worry had turned into fear. Maeve wouldn’t just disappear in the middle of the night, not with training in a few hours, and she sure as hell wouldn’t wander off with those three assholes willingly.

I turned back toward the center of the compound. Graves had taken the larger search areas, and if he hadn’t found her yet, he’d have a hell of a lot more ground left to cover than I did. I broke into a run, heading toward the training yard to meet back up with him and help search.

I found Graves near the shooting range, crouched low and staring intently at the ground. At first, I couldn’t tell what had caught his attention, but then I saw it too. The dirt looked churned up, and fresh footprints scattered the area in several different sizes. One set was smaller than the others, narrow enough that they could have belonged to Maeve.

Then the tracks converged. The dirt there flattened into a broad, uneven shape roughly the size of a body, with deep drag marks cutting through the soil. They stretched several feet before stopping abruptly, replaced by multiple sets of footprints heading away from the range and disappearing into the woods.

Neither of us said a word. Our eyes met for one brief second, and whatever Graves saw in mine must have matched what I saw in his, because we moved at the same time without hesitation. We followed the tracks into the woods, pushing past low branches and uneven brush as the trail wound farther and farther from the base.

Graves threw up a hand, signaling me to stop, then tilted his head and went completely still. He was listening to something I couldn’t hear, something too far away for my beta ears to pick up. A second later, his entire posture changed. He looked back at me and gave one sharp signal.

Move. Now.

Whatever he’d heard, it was enough. Graves took off through the trees without waiting to see if I could keep up, and I followed as fast as I could, branches whipping across my arms as we tore through the woods. Then, finally, the sound reached me too.

“Fucking bitch!”

A shout cracked through the trees.

And right behind it came Maeve’s laughter.

When we broke through the trees into the clearing, there was no mistaking what was happening. Maeve was hog-tied on the ground, thrashing against the restraints while Alec Teller and Nathan Long fought to drag off her boots. “Don’t you fucking touch me!” she screamed, twisting hard enough to nearly kick Nathan in the face.

A few feet away, Miles Redwood sat hunched over on a fallen log, both hands cupped around his nose. Even in the dim light, I could see it was broken and bent at a sickening angle with blood streaming down over his mouth and chin.

Grizzly didn’t hesitate. Before any of them fully registered who had come out of the brush, he had already raised his pistol. Nathan barely had time to turn his head before a shot cracked through the clearing, deafening in the forest's stillness. Nathan Long dropped where he stood.

Alec immediately released Maeve’s leg and stumbled backward, throwing both hands into the air. “Sir—sir, this isn’t what it looks like,” he stammered, his face draining of color. Grizzly didn’t even blink.

Another shot split the night.

Alec Teller dropped beside Nathan, the bullet striking clean between his eyes.

“What the fuck!?” Miles Redwood screamed, lurching to his feet as he stared down at his two fallen companions. His voice pitched embarrassingly high, thick with shock and fear.

I went straight for Maeve while Graves kept his pistol trained on Redwood. “On your fucking knees,” he barked, the command carrying so much raw authority that even my body almost reacted to it.

Redwood dropped.

“Are you all right, Firecracker?” I asked, crouching beside Maeve and working at the restraints around her wrists.

“Does it look like I’m fucking all right, Farm Boy?” she snapped.

The bite in her voice was familiar enough to loosen the tightness in my chest. And beneath all that fury, I caught a brief flicker in her eyes when she looked at me.

Relief.

“I know, I know what you’re going to say—you could’ve handled them yourself.” I glanced over my shoulder at Redwood’s mangled nose. “Hell, looks like you were already well on your way. We just came to even out the numbers.”

Irritation flashed across her face, but I caught the subtle twitch at the corner of her mouth as she fought back a smile. Once the restraints were loose, I held out a hand to help her up, and she immediately swatted it away.

“I was tied up, not fucking crippled. I can stand on my own.”

Before I could answer, she pushed herself to her feet, marched over to Teller’s body, yanked her boot free from beneath him, and shoved it back on like this was nothing more than an inconvenience.

Once her boot was back on, Maeve gave both bodies a hard kick for good measure.