Chapter Twenty-One
HORVAN’S SKIN was like ice. “That’s impossible.”
“They know , I tell you. The camp commander told me last night. I had to wait for the first opportunity to call you. So now I have to ask. Who knows about this mission?”
He thought fast. “It can’t be any of my team. I’d stake my life on it. Aelryn knows, of course.”
“And who has he told?”
That was the question Horvan wanted answered too. “So what do you know?”
“They have no idea when you’ll be here. They’re waiting to learn what your schedule is, and once they know that, they’re bringing in extra guards. The plan is that not one of you will live.”
Horvan froze. “Waiting to…. But where are they getting their information from?”
“I don’t know! All I’m telling you is the talk around here isn’t about if you’re coming—it’s when .”
Horvan had a call to make. “Let me know as soon as you hear anything, okay?”
“You got it.” Milo disconnected.
Brick gaped at him. “ What can’t be any of the team? What information? What the fuck is going on, H?”
Dellan was pale. “The Gerans know we’re coming. No specifics, just that.”
Horvan’s mind was already trying to come up with a logical answer. But there was only one possible conclusion, and he didn’t like it one little bit.
He scrolled and hit Aelryn’s number.
“I take it you’re in Maine. So are we.”
Horvan recognized the voice at the other end. “Scott, I need to talk to Aelryn, and it has to be a private call. I’m not talking about you—you’re his mate, for God’s sake. I mean no leaders, no counsel, no one , okay?”
There was maybe a second’s hesitation. “I’ll get him.”
“And what are you going to tell him?” Dellan said in a low, urgent voice. “‘Hey, Aelryn, you’ve got a traitor’? We can’t prove that.”
Horvan clutched his phone to his chest. “I think we can.” He brought it to his ear.
“Horvan, what’s wrong?”
He filled Aelryn in on Milo’s call. The shocked silence that followed was no surprise.
This has to hurt him. One of his trusted people had just stabbed him in the back.
“Could it be one of your men?”
Horvan’s heart went out to him, but there was no way to paint this in any other color. “No. Okay, so we have newbies, but Saul’s vetted the fuck out of every last one of them.” He wasn’t about to mention Eve’s past—time was of the essence, and besides, he didn’t see how that could be possible, not with Roadkill and Hashtag as part of the equation.
“But it can’t be anyone at this end. I’d know if we had that kind of snake among us.”
Horvan forced himself to be calm. “Look, I’ve got an idea how we might learn the truth. We can’t try it yet—we need to wait on Milo—but I think it’ll work.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“When we get the go from Milo, you call a Zoom meeting, and you inform your leaders—everyone you’d usually inform, all right?”
“With you so far.”
“Then once we’ve worked out our timings, you email every leader—but individually, you got that?”
“I get it, but why?”
Horvan outlined his idea. It was a spur of the moment kinda thing, but it had worked for a friend of his. He was banking on it working for them too.
Screw that—he was praying it would.
“So what do we do in the meantime?” Aelryn demanded.
“What we were going to do. Get the drones up, do a recon, take pictures…. We follow the plan. We’re still going in, remember? Only we’ll do it when they’re not expecting us.”
“If you’re right. And to be honest, I’m hoping you’ve got it all wrong and there’s some other explanation.”
Horvan would give anything for that to be true.
“One last thing. In any of your briefings, have you mentioned the source of our information?”
Please, tell me you haven’t said a goddamn word about Milo. Because if that was the case Horvan didn’t even want to think of the consequences.
“No. I simply told them we were acting on information received.”
Horvan let out a sigh of relief. “Okay, good. Let’s keep it that way.”
Milo was their only hope now.
THE MOMENT he got the message to go to the camp commander’s office again, Milo was on a mission to get his heart to calm the fuck down.
Don’t let them be onto me.
Don’t let them be onto me.
Don’t let them be onto me.
He knocked at the door, his pulse racing.
“Come in.”
Milo stepped into the small, cramped room. Everything about the commander was thin, from his tall, lanky form to his long face and long, sharp nose. He glanced up from his desk as Milo came to a halt in front of it and saluted.
“Keppler. Two things I need you to deal with.”
“Yes, sir.” Inside, he relaxed.
I’m still safe.
“Our VIP will be arriving Friday afternoon, by plane. It’ll be your job to sort out sleeping quarters for him.”
Milo removed his phone from his pocket and tapped the screen. “Certainly, sir. How many nights will he be staying? And will I need to accommodate any staff that might be accompanying him?”
“He’ll be leaving here Monday morning.” The commander peered at his monitor. “And he’ll have two guards with him. I don’t care if you have some of our men sleeping outside—he must be shown every courtesy and consideration, and that means providing him with his own room.” He glanced at Milo. “Can you arrange that?”
“Yes, sir.” Milo could sound confident when he needed to.
“Excellent. And now for the other matter….” The commander leaned forward, his long fingers steepled. “Who is our best marksman in your opinion? I need a sniper.”
Milo frowned. “Walsh is good, sir, and so is Bradley, but for accuracy, I’d have to say O’Neill every time.”
“That was my thought also. We’ve been asked by our VIP to perform a small task, for which we will require O’Neill’s expertise. One of the prisoners is to be eliminated.”
Milo gave him an inquiring glance. “I don’t understand, sir. Why use a sniper for the job? Why not simply give the prisoner a lethal injection?”
“Because, Captain Keppler, our VIP wants to make an example of him. His instructions are that the prisoner will be taken out with a single shot while he’s on the exercise yard. No one else is to be harmed. This is to be a lesson for the others. A little fear is no bad thing. A reminder that everyone is expendable.”
“And when is this to take place, sir?”
The commander sat back in his chair. “Ah, now that I don’t know yet. Apparently the timing has to be right. I’ll know more when we receive further intelligence about the Fridan raid.”
“We still don’t know when they’ll be making their move?”
He shook his head. “Although I have it on good authority that it will be within the coming week. As soon as I know, I’ll share the details. You’ll need to bring in reinforcements.” He smiled. “They’ll be walking into a trap, and not one of them will leave here alive.” He glanced at Milo. “That’ll be all, Captain.”
“Sir.” Milo gave a sharp salute, then stilled. “Excuse me, sir, but I’m missing one important detail.”
“Which is?”
“The name of the prisoner to be executed?” Milo forced a chuckle. “O’Neill needs to know who to aim at, after all.”
The commander laughed. “Good point. His name is Jake Carson.” Then he frowned. “I’m not sure I understand the reasoning behind killing one of their most successful experiments, but I’m sure the powers that be know what they’re doing. As they say, ours is not to reason why.”
Milo gave another salute and marched out of the office, the following line of the quotation ringing inside his head.
Wasn’t it something like ‘ours is but to do and die?’
Except if Fielding got his way, it wouldn’t be the Gerans who were dying, but the Fridans.
And Dellan’s father.
He hurried out of the block and into the open air. It seemed incongruous to feel the warmth of the sun on his face, to see the clear sky above the canopy of trees, and to have to give the order to end a life for no reason that he could fathom.
Milo took a deep breath. Jana? Can you hear me?
A heartbeat later, her sweet voice was in his head. Yes, Milo.
I can’t tell you when exactly, but I’m going to keep my promise. I’m getting you out of here. He swallowed. And I’ll be going with you.
His career with the Geran military was about to reach an abrupt end.
Really?
He smiled to himself. Really .
When?
You’ll know when it happens.
Everyone would know.
Milo waited until he was alone to send a message.
F arrives Friday PM. Leaves Monday AM.
Horvan’s reply was swift. Thank you. Will send details ASAP.
He hesitated before typing again. You need to know. F has given orders to execute Jake.
WTF? When?
No clue. Seems it depends on your arrival.
With every second that followed, Milo could only imagine the pain Dellan was going through.
Not gonna happen. Not if we can help it.
Milo typed fast. I’ll send details as soon as I get them. He pocketed his phone, then headed to the barracks.
He had to find space for a certain VIP.
Then he remembered. He had another job to do. Horvan wanted to know about the deliveries schedule.
Timing would be everything if this was going to work.
HORVAN WAS bone tired, but that didn’t matter. The important thing was to discover who’d betrayed them.
He clicked on Call, and Aelryn’s face filled the screen.
“You seem to be having the same issues I’m suffering from. Both of us need our beds.”
Horvan snorted. “How does the saying go? Sleep is for the weak.” He tapped the sheet in front of him with his pencil. He’d gone from a mass of scribbling to a neatly written plan. “Okay, the attack will be Sunday night. At least, that’s what you’re going to tell all your leaders, with the exception of Johan.”
Aelryn studied him. “And when do we actually go in?”
“Early hours of Saturday morning, before dawn. We’re gonna time it to coincide with the delivery. So three teams, not two.”
Aelryn nodded. “So I share the false information with all my leaders, exactly as you described.” His face hardened. “And then we wait.”
“As soon as I hear back from Milo, we’ll know which bastard sold us out.”
“I’d better start putting emails together.”
“Milo is also sending us files,” Horvan told him. “Photos of every inmate and every guard, so no one can fool us by claiming to be a prisoner. I’ll forward them to you for your team.”
“Thank you.” Aelryn grimaced. “I still cannot believe someone would do this.”
“Hey, I feel ya. We were in the same boat for the first school mission. Brick, remember? They had his parents. And we all know how that ended.”
Aelryn straightened. “I’ll get to work. We’ll be talking later, I have no doubt.”
No doubt at all.
Rael came into the command tent. “You appear to be a man in need of some loving.”
Horvan gave a weary chuckle. “You have no idea.” He wrapped his arms around Rael’s waist, his ear pressed to Rael’s chest, listening to the reassuring beat of his heart. They stayed that way for a few minutes while Horvan let his mate’s scent fill his nostrils, Rael’s calm seeping into his bones. “I needed this.”
Rael kissed the top of his head. “I know. Why do you think I’m here?”
“Where’s Dellan?”
I’m with Aric. He had a dream where Seth told him we were about to walk into a trap.
Horvan sighed. Tell him we’re not. In fact, we’re about to turn the tide in our favor.
Rael pulled up a camp chair and sat beside him. “What’s this plan of yours? You’ve been careful to shield us from it.”
Horvan leaned back, stretching out his long legs. “One of my former military buddies retired a while back and took up writing as a hobby. Mostly about his experiences. But when he finished his first book, he decided to publish it himself.”
Rael smiled. “Was it any good?”
Horvan grinned. “It was fucking awesome. But he had to learn a whole bunch of stuff along the way. One of the things he hated most was the way his book got pirated.”
“That happens a lot, I hear.”
Horvan nodded. “Okay, Leon had a team of beta readers. Military guys, mostly, who read what he’d written and gave their thoughts—stuff he’d missed, impressions, that kinda thing. All this was before it reached the publication stage, and he trusted these guys. But he also had an ARC team. That’s Advance Reader Copy to us nonpublishing mortals. These were people who got sent advance copies, and their job was to write a review to boost the book’s release. So before his second book came out—and to cut down on pirate copies—he had an idea.”
“He thought one of his ARC team was uploading the book to pirate sites?”
“Yup. So what he did was this. He sent a copy to every ARC reader—but each copy had a slight variation. A different word here, a typo there. No two copies were the same. And he had a list of which reader got which version. So when the book released and ended up on a pirate site―”
“He downloaded it and checked to see which version it was.” Rael chuckled. “That’s inspired. Did it work?”
Horvan snorted. “No. None of the ARCs were uploaded. Someone obviously bought a copy on release and then decided everyone should read it for free. But it gave me the idea. Aelryn is emailing every leader our attack plan, but with one subtle difference—the timing of our initial attack varies from email to email.”
“So when Milo gets back to us after he’s seen the plan, we’ll know who sent it to them.”
“Exactly. And right now Aelryn is sending out our false plan to see who bites.”
“Then we wait?”
Horvan sighed. “Then we wait.”
Dellan strolled into the tent. “Then might I suggest you get a few hours’ sleep in the meantime?”
Horvan huffed. “I would, but that camp bed ain’t gonna fit all three of us.”
Dellan smiled. “Who says we need a bed?” He started to remove his clothing, and Rael copied him.
“I hate to tell ya, boys, but I’m in no mood to fuck.”
“That’s fine, because we had something else in mind.” One minute Horvan was looking at Dellan’s lean naked body, and the next, a beautiful tiger stood there, joined seconds later by a gorgeous lion.
“Now you’re talking.” Horvan stripped and shifted, and the three of them lay down on the ground sheet, Horvan in the middle, his mates on either side, snuggled against him.
He could manage a few hours.
HORVAN’S NOSTRILS twitched, and he opened his eyes.
Time to shift, H. Because no way can those paws hold a coffee cup.
He chuckled and shifted. Dellan held out a cup to him. “Feel better?”
“Much.” He drank the cup’s contents, and Dellan took it from him.
“I’ll get you some more.”
Horvan reached for his fatigues. “How long did we sleep?”
“Put it this way. Tuesday is almost over.” Rael handed him his boots.
Horvan’s phone buzzed, and he grabbed it. “Milo,” he told Rael.
“And?”
He scanned the message. “Looks as if it worked.” He called Aelryn, who answered after two rings. “Good evening.”
“Is it?”
Horvan sighed. “No, it isn’t. I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but it worked. Which means… you’ve got a traitor.”
“Seems that way.” Aelryn’s grave tone sent a shiver through him.
“What will you do if you find the person?”
Aelryn sighed. “Even though there’s been no formal declaration, we are at war with the Gerans. This act compromises our people. That means there’s only one thing we can do. Execute them.”