Chapter 19 Cassidy
CASSIDY
Alden finds me in the east wing corridor just after noon with my tablet open and three weeks of GPS movement data pulled up on the screen.
"The hunters are getting closer," he says, forgoing any preamble.
He stops beside me and looks at the screen rather than at me, and even that studied neutrality does something inconvenient to my pulse.
"I need eyes on their approach vectors before patrol can reposition.
Can your tracking system cover the southern boundary zones? "
"Not with my current calibration." I scroll to the terrain overlay and tap the dead zone along the lower corridor.
"My trail cameras are still mapped to rogue movement patterns.
I need to recalibrate the GPS nodes for human-scale traffic, different weight, different stride interval, different heat signature on the motion sensors.
" I glance up at him. "Give me an hour on-site and I can have coverage running by nightfall. "
"You'll go at dusk." His jaw sets in the familiar way that means he's already decided and is offering the information rather than negotiating. "Ciaran goes with you."
"I wasn't going to argue that one," I say.
Something almost shifts in his expression. He holds my gaze for half a second longer than necessary, and in that brief moment, I remember his mouth on my skin, blood rising to my cheeks, then he looks back at the screen. "Report back directly."
"Same as always."
He nods once and leaves down the corridor, and I am absolutely not watching him go. No, I’m absolutely watching his god-like physique stride down the hallway with confidence, purpose, and the swagger of a man too attractive for his own good.
Ciaran meets me at the eastern gate at half past five with a tactical vest on and the expression he wears when he considers an assignment beneath his skill level but won't say so out loud.
"Southern corridor," I confirm, patting the side of my field pack. "I've got the recalibration kit and two spare sensor units in case we lose one."
"How long to deploy?" he asks, falling into step beside me as we cross toward the tree line.
"Forty minutes if the terrain cooperates. Longer if the ground is as soft as it looked on satellite."
He makes a sound that means the ground will not cooperate.
The forest swallows the last of the evening light quickly. The canopy is denser along the southern approach, the pines older and taller, their roots breaking the soil into irregular ridges that catch the toe if you're not watching. I set a steady pace.
Ciaran matches it without effort, moving through the underbrush with the quiet economy of someone who has navigated this terrain in the dark and in worse conditions and never needed to think about it.
We work the first sensor node into position near a game trail junction, and I'm sweeping the surrounding area when my boot catches something that doesn't give the way undergrowth should.
I stop, crouch, and clear the leaf litter with my gloved hand.
The steel jaw sits recessed into the soil, trigger plate barely visible, the surrounding dirt carefully disturbed to look undisturbed. It’s a heavy gauge, the kind designed for something significantly larger than a coyote.
"Ciaran." I keep my voice level.
He's at my shoulder in three steps. He looks at it, then looks at me, and the ice-blue of his eyes goes very flat and very still.
"That trap isn’t meant for local bears," I say.
"No licensed bear hunter sets a trap on a game trail at this depth without visible signage.
This is concealed deliberately." I stand and scan the surrounding terrain, switching my field of view to what I know about movement patterns and preferred routes.
"If a wolf is running this trail at speed in the dark…”
"It doesn't see it until it's already triggered," Ciaran finishes.
"In human form or wolf form, that's a serious injury." I pull my field kit and extract the trap disabling tool, a long-handled release bar I carry for exactly this kind of encounter. "We disable everything we find and document placement."
Ciaran doesn't argue. He's worried, and he's not bothering to hide it with his furrowed brow.
We move systematically outward from the first trap in widening arcs, and the count climbs faster than I want it to.
Three more within fifty yards, all set along established wolf trails, all concealed with the same deliberate care.
One sits at a creek crossing, a location any wolf moving fast through the lower corridor would naturally use.
Someone walked these trails and chose placements specifically. Not for bear. For wolves that run specific routes.
"They know your patrol paths," I say, photographing the creek trap before I disable it.
Ciaran's expression doesn't change, but his jaw tightens. "Someone told them."
"Someone walked them here first." I snap the release and set the trap aside. "Or gave them a map.”
He pulls his radio and speaks in clipped, precise sentences, giving trap locations, grid coordinates, requesting a full sweep team. When he finishes, he looks at me. "Alden will want a detail out here before nightfall."
"Agreed." I mark the creek crossing on my GPS log. "We finish the sensor deployment first. I don't want to lose the calibration window."
We move deeper into the southern corridor, and that's when Ciaran stops.
He holds up one hand without turning. The gesture economical and absolute. I freeze behind him.
He crouches slowly, eyes moving across the soil. Fresh boot prints, large and deep, heel impression sharp enough that the soil hasn't had time to relax back into it. Leading east, angling away from the trail and toward pack interior.
"Recent," I say quietly.
"Very." He stands. "This direction takes you away from every legal access point."
I look toward where I haven't yet deployed the last sensor, then back at the prints. The calculation takes four seconds. "We follow it."
Ciaran’s expression suggests he already knows what I'm going to say and has already decided he agrees. "Stay behind me."
The prints lead us northeast along a ridgeline for nearly a quarter mile before the terrain drops into a rocky hollow choked with scrub brush and deadfall. Ciaran slows as we descend, his attention sharpening in the way it does when his senses are doing work mine can't.
The cache is under a rock overhang at the base of the hollow.
Two ammunition crates wrapped in an olive tarp, secured with bungee cords and pushed far enough under the rock face to be invisible from above.
If we hadn't followed the prints directly here, we would have walked within ten feet of it and never known.
I crouch in front of it. "Don't touch anything yet."
I work through the documentation methodically, taking wide shots establishing position, mid-range showing the tarp and cording, close-ups of the crate stenciling.
Military surplus markings, paint fresh enough that it hasn't weathered.
I photograph the boot prints in the surrounding soil, the depression in the ground where the crates have been sitting for at least several days based on the soil compression, and the sight lines from the hollow toward the nearest patrol corridor.
"Whoever placed this knew the patrol schedule," I say. "This hollow has a direct sight line to the eastern ridge approach. You could watch a full rotation from here without being detected."
Ciaran picks up his radio again. When he signs off, he looks at me. "Enforcers are inbound. Fifteen minutes."
The team arrives led by Kieran Rourke, who brings four others moving with the coiled energy of wolves looking for direction.
He barely acknowledges me beyond a brief, assessing glance, then crouches over the crates and begins directing his team to break down the cache with efficient, practiced movements.
I step back and give them room, moving to a slight rise at the hollow's edge to check position against my GPS data.
That's when I see the wolf on the ridge.
Sixty yards out, standing at the crest in full view. Coal-dark coat, substantial, positioned where it can see both me and the hollow below. Not moving. Not hiding. Watching me with the still, deliberate attention of something that wants to be seen.
Then it howls one long, sustained note that rolls down the ridge and through the hollow like an announcement.
Kieran's head snaps up. He's on his feet and gone into the underbrush before the sound finishes, moving uphill at a speed far superior to human biomechanics. Two of his team follow.
Ciaran appears at my shoulder. "You saw it."
"Standing in plain sight on the ridge," I say. "It wasn't scouting cover. It wanted me to know it was there."
He watches the empty ridgeline, then his face changes to uncomfortable frankness. "It was watching you. Not the cache." He pauses. "You."
I know. I've been processing that since the howl faded.
The traps set on wolf trails, the cache positioned with sight lines to patrol corridors, and now this—a deliberate display aimed specifically at me.
None of it adds up to incidental. "They wouldn't bother if I weren't getting somewhere," I say.
"And they wouldn't follow me specifically unless someone told them to. "
Ciaran doesn't offer reassurance. "We should get back."
Alden is at the window when I come in, standing in the still way that means he's been there long enough that stillness became automatic.
He turns as I enter, and the look he gives me covers the whole of me in one sweep before settling on my face.
It's fast, controlled, but I've learned to read the fraction of a second before the control locks down.
I set my camera on his desk and pull up the documentation, and update him on the situation with the traps, ammo cache, and the rogue Kieran went after.
Alden looks at the photographs without touching the camera. The muscle in his jaw tightens once.
"The trap placement required intimate knowledge of your patrol patterns," I say.
"Not approximated knowledge. Which trails, which crossing points, which routes run at speed versus at caution.
" I hold his gaze. "The rogue knows my GPS range.
Knows which corridors I've been mapping.
Knows I'm working with you closely enough to be a threat to whatever this is.
" I let that land. "The attacks have shifted to follow my investigation.”
Alden is quiet for a moment, nodding in agreement.
"Someone inside this pack is feeding information outward," I say. "To the rogue, to the hunters, or both. And they've been doing it long enough to be careful about it."
He looks back at the photographs, and then at me, and this time the look is less controlled than the ones that came before. Something underneath the Alpha composure that I don't have clean language for, something that registers in my chest before my brain finishes classifying it.
"You're not surprised," I say.
"No." His voice is quiet. "But I needed you to say it out loud."
The office is very still around us, the only sound the low creak of the building settling in the evening cold. The pine-and-smoke scent of him is close enough that I notice it without meaning to, and I don't move back.
"Then we agree," I say. "We're not just tracking a rogue. We're tracking whoever is directing one."
Alden holds my gaze for one long moment.
"Yes," he says. "We are."