Understanding that she wanted her to keep playing possum, she gave her hand a squeeze back and closed her eyes.
A light flickered on overhead. Footsteps closed in on them, and she could feel their presence right over them, staring down.
“… what the fuck are these two broads doing up here anyway?” the first man replied. “I thought we were far away from the trails?”
“Maybe they got lost,” a third man said. “Why the fuck did you shoot them, Gordon? They might have just gone away.”
“And what if they didn’t, huh?” the second man—Gordon, apparently—spat back. “What if they saw enough of our little operation here and ran back to those fucking rangers? It’ll be months of work down the drain, and we haven’t broken even yet. You gonna tell our investors we can’t pay back their money, Turner?”
“Fuck. I didn’t spend months living in a cave covered in bear shit for nothin’,” Turner cursed. “Joey—how many have we caught and shipped? Three now?”
“Yeah. Four if you count the doe,” Joey replied. “That’s five grand each.”
“Minus expenses, and we’re still in the hole,” Gordon replied. “Shifter-proofing those doors ain’t cheap, ya know.”
Turner spat. “But what are we gonna do about those bitches? We can’t smuggle them down in our backpacks. That doe alone will be hard to hide if we come across any rangers.”
Gordon huffed. “Tranqs should last until morning. Even if they wake up, they won’t be able to escape. We’ll deal with them tomorrow. C’mon, let’s eat, I’m fucking starved. ”
“Me too,” Turner said with a laugh. “Hunting down these animals is enough to give me an appetite. Let’s lock ’em up and get outta here.”
The sound of heavy footsteps echoed away from them, followed by the sound of metal scraping against stone. When the silence finally settled over them, Dutchy opened her eyes, her vision slowly adjusting to the darkness. “Did you hear—”
“Yeah.” J.D.’s face was twisted in rage. “Those bastards.” Her voice trembled. “We can’t let them get away with this.”
“They think we’re human,” Dutchy said.
“Good.” J.D. braced her palms down and pushed herself up. She sniffed the air. “It smells … damp. We must be in a cave of some sort.”
The rock under her hands as she struggled to get up said as much.
J.D. helped her up. “Are you okay? You—Look!” She pointed to the wooden beams above them.
“What are those?”
“Supports. I know what this is!” She snapped her fingers. “It’s an old mine. For blackstone.” The Blackstone Mountains were named for the hardest mineral on earth—which could only be found here and mined using dragon fire. It was what made the Lennoxes one of the richest families on earth. “I bet this was one of the earlier sites Lucas Lennox mined when he first discovered the blackstone. I wouldn’t be surprised if he just abandoned it when the deposits dried up and no one’s been here for decades. Those guys must have found it.”
“And now it’s some sort of hideout for what … a poaching scheme?”
“Poaching for shifters,” J.D. concluded. “Goddamn bastards! I’m going to tear their throats out then feed whatever’s left to Matthew and Jason Lennox!”
“What do we do, J.D.? They said they’d take care of us in the morning.” Dutchy could guess what they mean by that.
J.D. put on a determined face. “Not gonna happen. We’re gonna have to find a way out.”
“There’s light coming from that way,” Dutchy pointed out. “But that’s probably where those poachers went.”
“Let’s try the other way first, then. C’mon.”
They walked along the cramped mine shaft, using one side of the wall as a guide. However, they didn’t get very far and ended up at a solid stone wall.
“Dead end,” Dutchy guessed.
J.D. put her ear to the wall. “Solid all the way through. Let’s see what the other way is like.”
Turning around, they ambled in the opposite direction. When they reached the end, it was blocked by something solid, but a small shaft of light poured through a gap underneath.
“Steel,” Dutchy said as she touched the obstruction. “I don’t think we’ll be able to move this out of the way, even if we worked together. And they said it was shifter proof.”
“Huh.” J.D. knelt down and pushed her hand under the gap. “All right, I’m gonna break us out of here.”
“You are? How?”
She stretched her neck and rolled her shoulders. “How else? I’m going to shift.”
“Into your animal?”
“Exactly.” A smile spread over her face. “I’ll have us out of here in no time.”
What was J.D.’s plan? Was