Angelo turned to see Tanner standing there with his eyes glowing in the green light of the NVGs.
Landon hesitated. “Can you use your nose well enough to track them?”
Tanner nodded. “My nose isn’t as good as Ivy’s or Clayne’s, but now that I have a good bead on their scents, I can find them.”
“I’ll go with him,” Carter said.
Tanner shook his head. “I can travel faster alone.”
“I’m sure you can,” Carter agreed. “But what are you going to do once you find them? Club them senseless and force them to do as you tell them? I speak the language, remember? I can get them to come with us willingly.”
“I’ll go, too,” Gavin said quietly.
Tate’s mouth tightened. “Like hell. We’re out here to find Declan and Kendra.”
“I know that. But there are two locals out there who are as good as dead if they run into those damn hybrids,” Gavin said. “Someone has to go after them. If Declan were here, he’d say the same thing.”
“For all we know, the two locals could already be dead,” Tate ground out. “And as far as Declan agreeing with you, he was the one who let them go off on their own.”
“Because you told him to get Kendra out of here safely,” Gavin shot back.
In the green glow of the NVGs, Angelo could see Tate’s jaw clench. For a minute, Angelo thought he might have to get between the two men.
“Dammit, don’t you think I know that?” Tate finally said. Cursing, he turned and stormed off.
In the silence, Angelo let his gaze follow the man, half-afraid Tate would be stupid enough to go out looking for his missing teammate on his own. But the DCO operative stopped on the edge of the clearing to stare off into the jungle. Tate might not have come out and said it, but it was obvious that he felt responsible for what happened to Declan and Kendra. If they died, Tate would carry the weight of that with him for the rest of his life, and nothing anyone said would ease the pain or the memory. Unfortunately, Angelo had some experience with that.
Angelo gave himself a mental shake and turned his attention back to Landon, listening in as they hammered out what Tanner’s team would do if they found the locals, as well as if they didn’t. The details took a while to work out, but they finally decided that if they found the locals, they’d head in whichever direction seemed the safest. If they didn’t, Tanner and the other men would backtrack and link up with them again. A few minutes later, Tanner and his group went south while Angelo and the others headed west.
“Do you really think it was okay to let Tanner lead the other team?” Ivy asked Landon as they walked.
Angelo had been wondering that, too. He didn’t know much about Tanner, but if half the stuff Landon told him was true, they’d just let a ticking time bomb take charge of a three-person rescue team.
“We didn’t have any other choice,” Landon answered.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement, Angelo thought.
Ivy gave Landon’s hand a squeeze; then she and Clayne ran ahead, tracking Declan’s and Kendra’s scents. They set a fast pace, which forced the rest of the team to commit almost all their attention to keeping up. But Angelo trusted the shifters to alert them if any hybrids got close enough to be a threat.
Clayne came back fifteen minutes later to report that Declan and Kendra had been moving fast, running whenever the terrain would allow it. A few minutes later, Ivy materialized out of the darkened jungle to tell them why they’d been in such a hurry—there’d been a lot of hybrids on their trail.
Angelo swore. He hated thinking of Kendra running through the jungle while a pack of bloodthirsty hybrids nipped at her heels. He’d liked her from the moment they’d met in Washington State and couldn’t stand the thought of something happening to her. She was smart, resourceful, and loyal to her friends. But she wasn’t a soldier, and she wasn’t used to the stress of being hunted like an animal. Angelo prayed Declan could keep her safe long enough for the rescue party to catch up to them. At the pace Ivy and Clayne were setting, that shouldn’t be too long.
But two hours later, their pace slowed considerably until finally the two shifters up front came to a complete stop. Clayne disappeared into the jungle while Ivy doubled back to