woman he’d ever seen outside of his best friend’s wife through the jungle on a whim was a good idea. But Ivy didn’t give them a chance to talk it over. One second she was there; the next they were all running after her.
Keeping everyone together at the same time, they maintained a defensive posture, and trying to stay with the much faster shifters was tough. With Carter’s cracked ribs and all their other injuries, they simply couldn’t move that fast. And the woman they were chasing was flat-out scary fast. Within a few minutes, it was damn near impossible for the others to keep a visual on Ivy.
Beside Angelo, Landon swore and ran faster.
“You two go,” Tanner shouted. “Get ahead of us and keep an eye on Ivy. I’ll make sure we catch up with you.”
Angelo hated splitting up the group, but Tanner was right. He took off with Landon without hesitation. Within sixty seconds, they made up enough ground that they could at least see Ivy and Clayne and the mystery woman they were following. Though Angelo got the feeling she could have left them in her dust if she wanted to. He’d seen several of the DCO’s shifters in action, but he’d never seen any of them run like her. Hell, she wasn’t even running most of the time. She was bounding and bouncing like a frigging gazelle. It was like she was playing with Clayne. Every time he got within twenty feet of her, she kicked into another gear and extended her lead. He could hear Clayne’s growls of frustration from where he was.
Up ahead, the woman disappeared from view. Angelo’s stomach knotted as Clayne followed her over the slight rise, Ivy right behind him. If someone was planning to ambush them, this was the place to do it.
He and Landon had been doing this kind of shit together for so long that they didn’t even have to tell each other to pick up speed; they both just instinctively did it. But when Angelo topped the hill a few minutes later, he skidded to a stop, which kept him from tumbling headlong down the sharp, rocky slope on the other side. A few feet to the right, Ivy and Clayne were crouched down behind several large boulders. The wolf shifter motioned for them to get down, too.
Without a word, he and Landon dropped and found cover while still moving carefully toward the two shifters.
“Where the hell is that human superball we were chasing?” Landon asked, breathing hard.
Clayne pointed to the right without taking his eyes off whatever he was looking at below, at the bottom of the slope.
Angelo looked in the direction Clayne had motioned, and gulped. Shit. There was nothing over there but jagged rocks and scrub trees covering the edge of a cliff that skirted the ridgeline above the valley. Below that was a steep drop of at least a hundred feet. The only path the woman could have taken from here would have required her to jump from rock to rock in order to reach the top of the cliff, where it merged once again with the jungle. There was no way she could have traversed that path in the mere seconds she had between disappearing from sight and him and Landon getting here. It was suicidal.
“She pointed us toward the bottom of the valley, then skipped away across those rocks like a frigging mountain goat,” Clayne growled. “I didn’t bother to follow.”
“No shit,” Angelo muttered.
Ivy laughed. “I think Clayne is just pissed that a woman he probably outweighs by a hundred and fifty pounds outran him.”
Clayne ignored the jab. “Yeah, well it looks like it was a good idea to follow the human superball.”
Angelo guessed so. Below him, shrouded in trees and mist, were a collection of buildings surrounded by a patchwork collection of chain-link and low-stacked rock fencing. Even from here, Angelo could see hybrids. And right below the rocks where they were currently hiding, there was a goat trail that wandered through the trees toward the bottom of the valley. Whoever the woman was, she’d not only led them to the hybrid camp, but she’d also parked them right in front of the path that led up to the front door.
The sound of boots on rocks alerted Angelo that Tanner and the others had finally caught up. Ivy darted off to bring them in quietly, leaving Angelo with Clayne and Landon to recon the hybrid camp.