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Nodding, Hunter called for an all-clear before proceeding inside.
The newly constructed office sat where the Millers’ house had once stood. It pricked at my heartstrings. The Millers had been great people and were a large part of the Haven community. I didn’t personally know them, but I knew plenty ofpeople who did. The thought that Delta would murder an entire family for their land had me seeing red. What kind of monsters did that?
“Hunter,” I murmured, knowing he could hear me even with my low tone. “Take Gunner to the safe in case it’s warded. I’m going to look for a personnel roster.”
“Got it,” he whispered back just as low. I veered off toward the sign that led to the human resources department. It was eerily quiet, and the lights were out. I hadn’t been lying when I said I would have expected an ambush if they’d been expecting us. I wouldn’t put it past them to blow us up while we were in the office, but I doubted that would gain them anything but having to rebuild like we intended.
So why was there no one here?
Granny had said the Silo and office had been built in two months, but no one had mentioned seeing any kind of construction going on here in those months. Then I sniffed the air, letting my wolf senses take over.
Scentless.
Tapping the piece in my ear, I asked, “Anyone picking up other scents?” A chorus ofnosgreeted me. Just like the ambush of my cousin’s men. Was Delta behind killing those men and taking our weapons?
Why?
Sighing, I dug through the filing cabinet located in the corner of the office. It was sparse. It contained only a few files, and there were a few invoices for contract work as well. That explained why there was no one here. They had been using an outside company to build the silos. No one had noticed because Delta had used a subsidiary company to purchase the land and build on it. The Millers’ farm wasn’t in Haven’s jurisdiction, and the name of the subsidiary wasn’t on the list for the county’s land assessor to blacklist.
They’d slipped right through the cracks.
“Jonah Kleine.” I read the name aloud. Fuck, this guy was bad news. Army special forces and Harvard Law grad. On paper, he was clean, but a few things caught my eye. His eyes had flashed when the picture was taken, and I could just see the golden hue of his wolf peeking through. Shifters had to be careful when photographed.
What concerned me even more was the small stamp at the bottom left-hand corner of the page. It was the same design that Hunter had branded into his chest by the Collective. A reminder of who owned him. Over the years, Hunter had gotten a myriad of tattoos that covered his chest and his scar. He didn’t want to be reminded of what he had become. Who he had been, and under the surface, who he still was.
Hunter still looked at himself as if he were a monster.
I saw something far greater.
A survivor.
If the Collective was involved with Delta, the sick humans and rabid shifters made sense. They believed in the purity of shifter blood. Human-shifter mixes were an abomination to them. Not that it stopped them from using those half-breeds to further their agenda.
They wanted a world governed by shifters. To go back to a time when shifters were the dominant species. That could have happened some hundred years ago. But now? Now there were too many of us who would stand up against them. Both human and shifter. There would be anarchy.
Unless…
“Switzerland,” I said into the radio. “Grab me some samples from each of the Silos.”
“Already on it, prez.” I could hear the boy smirking through the earpiece. Little shit. Grabbing up the folders in the filingcabinet, I shoved them into the bag. One slipped from my grasp, its pages fluttering to the floor.
I’ll be damned.
River girl.
The picture couldn’t have been taken too long ago. She was wearing the same dress we’d found her in on the banks of the river. Several other photos lay with hers—all girls, and all in matching white dresses. They were happy, smiling, their cheeks rosy and their eyes sparkling.
Except River girl…
Her deep, stormy gray eyes held things I recognized—fear and defiance. A stark juxtaposition. And just above her breast, nestled near her collarbone, was the brand of the Collective.
Son of a bitch.
“Boss, time to go,” Switzerland urged. “Charges are planted, but Lookout heard over the radio that the cops are heading our way.”
“Roger that,” I responded, stashing away the file in my bag with the others as I dashed out of the office. “Let’s wrap this up and meet at the rendezvous point.”
Gunner and Hunter were waiting for me by the front door, wearing matching smiles.
