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“Tarley?” Mattias called, jumping from his horse. Jessamine echoed him.
Tarley’s things were in disarray around the grounds, the tent never even assembled, all of it in a heap near a blanket strewn away from the firepit bright with waning embers. This wasn’t Tarley, and perhaps he didn’t get to be an expert in Tarley in as little time as he’d known her, but he’d learned, observed, and had been taught by her. He knew without a doubt, she wouldn’t have ever left her campsite like this. Something was wrong, which was confirmed when several feet from the blanket they found a body—a man—coated in in blood, eyes wide, and mouth open in a silent scream.
“What the–” Jude said, kneeling to get a closer look at the dead man.
Brinna’s comment echoed in his mind:bring weapons.What had she known?
“How did you know to come looking for Tarley?” Lachlan asked, attempting to focus on something other than his rising fear that Tarley was in worse danger than he’d realized. He turned to look at Mattias who stood slightly back, eyes fixated on the body, face pale.
“Mattias. Look at me,” Lachlan said. He was equally terrified but needed to hold himself together. He needed Mattias—their guide—focused too. He stood.
“Mind your steps,” Captain Johesha called.
Mattias’s eyes jumped to Lachlan’s. He swallowed and sputtered, “Brinna dreams.” He looked over at Jessamine standing at the edge of camp holding the horses, then back at Lachlan. “She’d had one, about Tarley. That’s why we came to the inn. To make sure she was okay.”
“That’s why we’re here. For Tarley,” he reminded Mattias, who nodded and took a deep breath.
Once Mattias appeared more cognizant and focused, Lachlan slowly moved past the horrifying spectacle, taking in everything as he did, careful where he stepped, hoping to find something that would lead him to her. “What do you think could do that?” he asked Jude. “A bear?”
“No,” Jude replied. “The body would be more mauled. This is–” But his words dropped away. “I don’t know what this is. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“A wolf?” Lachlan asked.
“Wolf attacks are rare,” Mattias said moving toward the tree line. “I’m not sure—if it were a wolf pack—they’d leave the kill like this.”
“Oh fuck.” Lachlan stopped moving and took a breath. He closed his eyes, then opened them to be sure he was seeing what he thought he was. “Tarley’s boots.” They were tied together with a rope. His throat closed. Someone had tied her up. Someone had killed a man. His heart was water-logged, swelling with horror and anger, slowing under the strain of his fear.
Jude joined him. “This.” He pointed at smudges in the dirt. “Someone sliding here.” The tracks stopped a few feet from the boots.
“Her hands are tied,” Lachlan guessed.
“Good bet.”
Lachlan pointed at the boots. “She couldn’t get them out, so she removed them and ran?”
“Worked her feet out.” Jude stood and looked back at the body and then over his shoulder. “The river?”
Mattias walked past them further into the brush. “Tracks,” he confirmed. “Not only hers.”
“There were others,” Johesha said. “Here.” He stood on the other side of camp near Jessamine and the horses.
“How many?” Lachlan stopped, his gaze zeroed in on a set of tracks, a slide through the dirt. He pictured Tarley putting up a struggle—he knew she would and his heart drained, squeezing itself dry in his chest, then aching as it raced with trepidation.
Johesha trailed the tracks he’d found, his steps slow and precise. “Best guess—two or three, maybe a fourth.”
“One dead.” Royal Guard Brendsen pointed at the body.
“Tarley,” Jude added. “The others?”
“Two sets disappear this way,” Johesha said in the opposite direction Tarley went.
“Should we split up?” Brendsen asked.
“No,” Captain Johesha said. “We track Tarley.”
Leaving their mounts tethered at the camp, Lachlan and the party walked the trail to the river. His mind vacillated between frustration to awe to fear. First because he just wanted to go back in time, fix what had happened with his father, and ask her to wait. He also recognized the futility in it. He couldn’t slip back in time. And Tarley was her own person. He should have known she’d run. She was wired to act. The woman was a force. That pride gave way to fear, afraid for her should she decide to do something that might endanger her, his fear alive and writhing inside him.
When they finally cleared the tree line, bloody rocks, slick with footsteps, led them to the river’s edge.
