Chapter 16
Saoirse
The trees pressed in like sentinels, their branches crowding the overgrown path as we hiked single file through the woods.
I’d lost track of how long we’d been moving, but my calves burned, and my shirt clung damply to the small of my back.
Ajax moved ahead of us, silent and sharp-eyed, nose to the ground.
Finn followed behind him with a focus that had narrowed to a single, forward line.
We hadn’t spoken in a while.
The silence hadn’t grown uncomfortable, merely taut.
Coiled. As if the wilderness around us was holding its breath again, the same way it had at Isla’s camp.
Something was off in the air. Maybe it was the way the light filtered green-gold through the pines, or the way the birdsong had gone scattered and infrequent.
We weren’t being watched. Not yet. But we weren’t alone out here either. I could feel it.
Or maybe that was my own paranoia.
Ajax’s ears twitched. Finn slowed slightly, gesturing for me to drop back a pace as he moved forward to examine a scuff in the moss.
He crouched low, fingertips brushing the earth, eyes scanning the underbrush.
His lips parted, as if he might say something, then closed again. Not worth speculating aloud.
I didn’t interrupt. I knew better than to talk when someone like Finn was working. Not because he couldn’t multitask, but because every ounce of him was in the process of building the story the trail told him. You didn’t ask a surgeon to explain while they were cutting. You let them cut.
Still, I studied him as he moved. The careful, deliberate way he shifted his weight. The faint limp he didn’t think anyone noticed when he thought no one was watching. The way he clicked his tongue once—softly—and Ajax immediately pivoted to the left, redirecting their arc.
This wasn’t hiking anymore. This was a pursuit.
The adrenaline that had carried me through yesterday had long since burned off, but a new kind of energy had taken its place. Something slower. Heavier. Determined.
Isla had run from something here. That much was obvious now.
We were following her last known path—the one she hadn’t meant to leave behind.
The forest swallowed signs quickly out here, but Finn and Ajax moved with unshakable focus, reading broken twigs, disturbed moss, and minute impressions in the soil like breadcrumbs only they could see.
Every step took us farther from Isla’s deserted camp and deeper into terrain she must have fled through.
And the farther we followed, the more certain I became that she hadn’t run blindly.
She’d run because someone was chasing her.
We crested a low rise without a word, the incline giving way to a gentle dip in the terrain. Ajax stopped first, posture going rigid. Finn was only a breath behind, lifting a hand in a signal to halt.
The air had gone wrong again. That too-quiet stillness that made the hairs lift at the back of my neck. I dropped into a crouch beside Finn, following his gaze down the slope.
Past a tangled copse of rowan and pine, across a shallow ravine, was a clearing. In it, was a cluster of tents.
I froze.
They weren’t like Isla’s. These weren’t scrappy, weather-beaten things patched and repurposed with years of fieldwork.
These were clean. Sturdy. Angled tents in muted, matte fabric that caught no light.
Set up in careful rows, evenly spaced. Not military, exactly, but structured in a way that didn’t belong in a place like this.
Finn passed me the binoculars without a word. I adjusted them with damp fingers and focused in.
Four men. Maybe more beyond the trees.
They didn’t look like hikers. Nothing about them suggested casual or even rugged outdoorsmanship.
Their clothes weren’t matching, but they were all of the same ilk—practical, streamlined, dark in tone.
Jackets cut to move in. Durable trousers.
New-looking boots. Everything they wore looked chosen with purpose, not thrown together from a kit list or bargain shelf.
No bright colors, no reflective strips, nothing that would catch the eye on a trail.
Each man carried a heavy pack. Larger than necessary for day trekking, and far too full to suggest they were only passing through. They’d come prepared to stay.
And then there were the weapons.
Not long-barreled hunting rifles. Not anything I could picture on a licensed stalker’s shoulder during deer season.
Which it currently wasn’t. These were compact.
Clean lines. I didn’t know enough about guns to name them, but even I had the immediate, visceral understanding that whatever they were carrying, it didn’t belong here.
Not in these woods. Not under any lawful pretense.
One of the men stepped forward, adjusting something at his chest—maybe a strap or a small pack-mounted device. I couldn’t see the details, only the ease of the motion. Like someone accustomed to wearing that kind of kit. Like muscle memory.
He turned slightly toward another figure beside him, head angled in conversation. Calm. Comfortable. Like there was nothing unusual about any of it.
My breath caught.
I knew that face.
Not well. Not personally. But well enough.
I’d seen it across linen-covered tables, at banquets and black-tie galas my mother insisted I attend during the school holidays.
Usually standing beside a son who was even more unbearable.
He’d been loud. Opinionated. Laughing about game stocks and fox hunting and how conservation was “good PR” but bad business.
Victor Sandhurst.
That was his name. I hadn’t thought of him in years.
There was no reason for him to be here.
And yet… he was. On this slope. In the heart of protected land. Armed and at ease, like he owned the place.
I lowered the binoculars, hands gone cold despite the sweat at the back of my neck.
“Finn.” I jerked a chin in the direction of the camp. “That man. The blond. I know him.”
He turned his head enough to catch my tone. “How?”
“Fundraisers. My mother’s friends. That sort of circle.”
A pause. I didn’t need to say more. Finn’s jaw ticked once.
He nodded, already backing us down the rise, into the trees again.
Once he was satisfied we had sufficient cover, we dropped to a crouch behind a fallen log slick with moss.
My legs ached from the hike, but the pressure in my chest made it hard to feel anything else.
Finn slung his pack off and pulled out the satellite transmitter—sleek and matte like most of his gear, with a stubby dish antenna and a scuffed casing that spoke to heavy use.
Not a phone. A data unit. Built for uplinks, not conversation.
He crouched beside me, fingers moving fast and sure as he pulled out the tablet and connected the two devices with a short cable.
He slid in the memory card from his camera, not one of the old trail cams from Isla’s study but his own—likely loaded with the zoomed-in binocular photos he’d snapped right after I identified Sandhurst.
“We’ll try to send these,” he murmured. “High-res is too risky with signal this thin, but compressed stills—maybe we get lucky. Echo might be able to work with faces, gear, timestamps.”
That made more sense. The trail cam footage had gone through last night. This was something else—new, urgent, immediate. Not proof, exactly, but evidence. And something to chase.
I didn’t ask what Echo—Alex—could do with it. At this point, I didn’t need a breakdown of whatever hacker capabilities he possessed. I needed someone who could take what we had and make it mean something.
Finn tapped quickly through a few menus, then adjusted the antenna, angling the dish toward a narrow break in the canopy.
The trees here were dense, and the terrain had begun to slope again, pinning us against the low forest rise.
He shifted to one knee for elevation, bracing with one hand as the other adjusted the orientation.
I could see the tension in his shoulders, the frustration in the tight set of his jaw.
He wasn’t panicking.
But he was trying very, very hard to keep ahead of whatever clock had started ticking.
And him .
Victor Sandhurst turned half toward the lens, the faintest trace of a smirk on his face like he knew no one would stop him. Like he never had to worry about consequences.
My stomach twisted.
This wasn’t some stranger in tactical gear. This was a name I’d seen on donation plaques and hospital wings. This was a man who’d once waxed poetic about the “thrill of the chase” while sipping a thousand-pound bottle of Bordeaux.
He was here. With a gun. On protected land. And Isla was missing.
I tried to slow my breathing. Inhale. Exhale. But the forest tilted, and I couldn’t tell if it was the altitude or the memory or the sudden collision of past and present that knocked something loose inside me.
They couldn’t be connected, could they?
And yet… how else did someone like him end up out here?
Finn made a sound low in his throat. A curse, maybe. The communicator flashed red— UPLOAD FAILED.
“Signal’s bouncing. Too much interference,” he muttered. “Might be topography, might be weather. Or both.”
He stood, lifting the dish slightly, trying to aim it toward the clearest strip of sky.
I stared at the screen, fists clenched around my knees.
Victor Sandhurst was a walking emblem of everything I’d left behind. Everything I thought I’d severed when I chose muddy boots and animal breath over clean pearls and white wine smiles. He didn’t belong here.
Except clearly, in some sense, he did .
And that terrified me more than I was willing to admit.
Because if men like him had found a playground in this forest—this wild, sacred place—what hope did Isla have?
Finn dropped back beside me, one hand bracing the device against the uneven earth as he tried another angle. I watched his brow furrow, saw his lips press tight in frustration.
We were trying. Working. Moving fast. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were already too late.
Ajax went still.
Not scenting something interesting. This was different. Frozen, hackles barely raised, ears sharp and forward. Every muscle in his body hummed like a live wire.
Finn noticed it the same second I did.
Without a word, his body shifted—low, tense. Hand sliding automatically to the side of his pack, where I knew his emergency gear was stashed.
Then I heard it.
A voice.
Distant. Too distant to make out the words, but definitely male, and far too confident for someone on a casual hike. No accent I could place, but the rhythm was wrong. Not hurried. Not confused. Someone used to being obeyed.
Then came the unmistakable crunch of boots on forest debris. Not the quiet press of someone walking carefully, but the heavy cadence of someone moving with purpose.
They were close.
My breath caught. Finn met my eyes for half a second, and that was all it took.
Run.
He yanked the communicator and the tablet in one smooth motion, shoving them into his pack with practiced speed. His voice was a whisper, fast and tight: “Stay close. Don’t stop.”
We moved.
Ajax surged ahead of me, silent but swift, slipping through the trees like a shadow. I followed him, barely aware of the branches that slashed at my arms, the uneven ground clawing at my boots. Behind me, I could hear Finn—barely. Not the sound of panic, but of control. Focus. Movement.
But also urgency.
I didn’t look back.
I could feel the space behind us narrowing.
Another voice rang out, sharper this time. A word I didn’t understand, but the tone didn’t need translation.
They’d seen us.
Or heard us.
Or sensed enough to know something was out of place.
My lungs burned. My thighs screamed. The pack on my back suddenly felt like a boulder. But I kept going, because the alternative was unthinkable.
The forest blurred into streaks of green and shadow, light flashing through the canopy like strobe effects.
Somewhere ahead, Ajax barked once—short and sharp—and then I was stumbling down a slope, half-controlled, half-tumbling.
I slid the last few feet into a shallow gully, landing hard on my hands and knees in the wet moss.
Finn hit the ground behind me a second later, his pack slamming into the dirt beside him. The sat transmitter skidded out in the impact, bouncing once before coming to a stop against a rock with a dull, final-sounding crack.
I scrambled toward it, but he was already reaching, already swearing under his breath.
The housing was split along one side. The screen—small and embedded into the side panel—was spider-webbed with fractures, the dish antenna half-sheared from its hinge. He didn’t waste time trying to turn it on. One look was enough.
“It’s dead,” he said, voice tight. “That was our uplink.”
Ajax growled low and deep, planted firmly at the top of the slope above us, watching the tree line.
They hadn’t followed yet. Not that we could see.
But they would.
And without the transmitter—and with no time or cover to risk a sat phone call—we were cut off.
No backup, and no way to reach anyone.
I pressed the heel of my hand to my chest, trying to calm my pulse. It wasn’t working.
They weren’t just out there now.
They knew we were here.
And they weren’t the kind of people who left witnesses.