discounted just because she doesn’t have enough months on a calendar.”
Cipher suspected Pierce’s rant was about more than his reluctance to chase after Brook. He had heard rumors about Ella and Dizzy’s friend who lived in the tunnels under The City. She had gone missing after a raid and hadn’t been seen or heard from since. She had saved Pierce at least once, and he seemed to have decided he owed her a debt.
Or, maybe, he wanted to pay her back with a collar and his care.
He started to ask if that’s what this was about, but Pierce stepped away to answer a message coming through his earpiece. Cipher continued on his way, stowing the final box on the cargo transport loader and signing off on the chain of custody with the load master and the forensics tech. When it was done, he stepped toward the medic station for a cold bottle of water and ice packs for his neck.
“You need a ride back with us?” the medic asked and indicated their craft idling nearby. “Saw the rest of the SRU team head back with Torment.”
“I might,” Cipher said, wondering if Pierce needed him on scene much longer. He had done what he came to do and was looking forward to a shower, a meal and collapsing into his bunk.
Pierce strode toward him, his usual arrogant swagger gone, and his face a mask of worry. Cipher’s gut clenched, and he asked, “What happened?”
“Look,” Pierce sighed, “there’s no easy way to say it. The girl? The asset?”
“Yeah?”
“She never made it to the rendezvous point.”
His heart skipped a beat. Refusing to panic, he tried to think logically. “Did they check the cabin?”
Pierce nodded. “The fixer scoped it out. It’s locked up, and there’s no sign of our girl anywhere.”
He turned his gaze toward the mountain. All manner of possibilities flashed before him, some better than others. She might have gotten hurt while traipsing back up the mountain to the rendezvous point. She might have been attacked by wildlife. She might have been caught by a Splinter lookout after she placed the explosives. She might have been abducted by moonshiners or the skin traders she mentioned.
His gaze flitted back to the mine, and he grimaced. She might have been caught in the ventilation shaft before the explosions. The thought of her mangled and crushed threatened to drop him, but it was the possibility that she may have been taken that worried him most.
“If she was in the mine, we would have found her when the techs did their radar sweep,” Pierce reasoned, as if reading his mind. “If she was taken by the Splinters, she would have been brought out when they fled the explosions.”
“Your guys had drones onsite?”
“We did.”
Cipher rushed to the command ship and ran up the ramp through the cargo deck to the logistics unit. He shoved a tech out of the way and sat down in front of his console. Tapping at the touchscreen, he activated his access to the highest level of security clearance with a swipe of his wrist over the chip reader.
Once he was inside the logs, he pulled up the recorded feed from before the explosion. There wasn’t a clear shot of the ventilation shaft access point she had used, but there was enough of it in the wide shot that he was able to zoom. The images were fuzzy, and he silently cursed the shithead tech who had configured the camera on the drone.
“Is that a fucking bear?” Pierce asked, leaning over his shoulder for a closer look at the grainy image.
“Yes.” He swallowed down the very real fear that he was about to watch that gigantic creature maul Brook to death.
“Fuck me,” Pierce murmured in awe, his gaze glued on the screen and the sight of the massive bear jumping and clawing at the grate covering the ventilation shaft. “If that thing gets through the grate—"
“I know,” he ground out, not wanting to even go there.
“Wait. Look!” Pierce pointed out the bear lifting up on its hind legs to sniff the air. “It’s found something that smells better.”
Cipher exhaled a ragged breath as the bear lumbered into the woods and disappeared. Despite the blurriness of the image, he could tell it was Brook who crawled out of the shaft, replaced the grate and then staggered off into the woods behind the bear. He had no idea where she was headed, but it was likely a higher vantage point, somewhere she could see the