grass outside the bunker. Niko and his squad were heading there now too, to see the place for themselves and to strategize the rest of the night’s patrol with Nathan and the other men.
“Cleared out fast, evidently,” Balthazar remarked, the big vampire’s typical humor absent tonight. “Like rats from a sinking ship.”
Rafe nodded, grim. “Maybe someone warned them we were coming.”
“If they did get a warning we were on to them,” Eli put in, “that would mean they hauled ass outta here less than five minutes after our lead came in.”
“Didn’t take off in a panic,” Torin said. He tipped his head back, long braids at his temples swinging against his sharp cheekbones as he read the energy in the air. “They had time to gather everything they needed. When they left—by the fade of it, my guess would be sometime late morning—they left on their own terms.”
Jax twirled one of his hira-shuriken between nimble fingers, the metal winking with lethal precision under the moonlight. “Doesn’t matter why or when they left. Only matters where.”
“And that puts us right back at square one,” said Webb, the warrior Lucan had put in charge of Mira’s squad after the incident with Rooster not even a week ago. From the sober look on the Breed male’s face, it was a mantle he accepted out of duty alone, not personal ambition. “Can’t believe she hasn’t kicked those rebels’ asses single-handed by now and come strolling back to us like it was no big thing. Shit, the way Mira goes into combat?” Webb shook his head, contemplating. “Fucking Valkyrie, man. Doesn’t matter she’s not Breed; it would take an army of humans to knock her down and keep her there. And I, for one, refuse to believe she’s not still breathing out there somewhere.”
For what hadn’t been the first time, Nathan’s thoughts were going down a similar path. What had they done to Mira to keep her captive for so many days? Had she tried to fight back? And what of Bowman? How had he been able to bring her last night into La Notte, a public place, and she not find some way to break free of him?
A troubling scenario was beginning to take root in Nathan’s mind.
He didn’t like the taste of it. Didn’t want to think that Mira might have gotten somehow unwillingly entangled with the rebels and their criminal acts. Or worse . . . could she possibly have allowed herself to be charmed by Bowman?
The last was almost laughable, it was so incomprehensible. There had only ever been one man for Mira, and he was eight years dead and gone. A handful of days in the company of human rebels—a class of individuals she openly despised—would not suddenly turn her away from the Order and her kin.
And yet . . .
It was that last disturbing possibility—the least logical of them all—that proved the hardest for Nathan to ignore.
There was something he wasn’t seeing. Something he hadn’t yet connected. Something he’d maybe glossed over and dismissed as unimportant amid the urgency of the bunker’s search.
“Problem, Captain?”
He waved off the question without acknowledging who had asked it. His boots were already chewing up earth beneath him, his strides long and purposeful as he stalked back into the damp gloom of the rebel hideout.
He checked each room and corridor again, less rushed this time, sending his gaze over every rustic table, chair, and cot, into every corner and cranny of the place. And he found nothing.
Not until he stepped into the last room, the one situated at the far end of the concrete passageway.
Something crunched under his boot heel. A small piece of broken glass.
He paused, lifted his foot to pick up the sleek, silvery shard. Holding the tiny bit of shattered mirror between his thumb and forefinger, Nathan lifted his gaze and scanned every inch of the lightless room, his Breed eyes keen in the dark.
He cocked his head, narrowing in on an object lying in the center of the tumbled bedsheets. Even now he was tempted to dismiss it. Just a broken mirror, tossed in haste onto the unmade bed as the rebels raced to vacate the premises.
Except they hadn’t left in haste.
Nathan had suspected as much earlier, when it was obvious they’d had time to take weapons and equipment, clothing and foodstuffs. Then Torin had confirmed it, reading the energy of the place left in the wake of the evacuation.
Bowman and his rebels had left with Mira on their own