Page 105 of Dark Sky

100,0000 First-Class Shares of Aloft Corp.

Signed,

Steve-2 a.k.a. Steven Price, CEO

He slid the envelope into the back pocket of his Wranglers and stiffly climbed out of the helicopter to solid ground. He was stunned.

Joe thought,Won’t Marybeth be surprised?

THIRTY

Nate drove home in the borrowed pickup with the now-empty horse trailer clattering along behind him and raising a cloud of dust. As he did, he dug out the cell phone Liv had insisted he take along and powered it up.

The screen showed four missed calls, all from Liv. They’d come within a five-minute stretch two hours before. None came after. She’d not left a message.

Livneverdid that. Something was wrong. He jammed the accelerator to the floor while calling her back. She didn’t pick up and his call went to her voicemail.

—

Even from a distance, as he topped the hill that led to his compound in the sagebrush prairie, he could tell that things weren’t right at home. The symmetrical lines of his falcon mews were crooked and the wire mesh that had been stapled to the frame of it was torn away.

The Yarak, Inc. van Liv usually drove was parked in the open outbuilding next to his home. Meaning she was there but not picking up.

Two of his red-tailed hawks strutted around on the roof of his house. Their hoods had been removed and they’d been set free but had apparently returned.

He blasted by the mews with a sidewise glance as he passed by. There were no live birds inside sitting on their stoops, but there were at least three lifeless falcon carcasses on the ground, their feathers rippling in the wind.

With a flood of adrenaline and outright dread roaring through his body, Nate slammed the pickup to a stop in the front yard and bailed out with his weapon drawn. There was no movement from the closed drapes in the window, because no one was looking out.

He followed his gun through the front door, ready for anything.

Liv was seated in a kitchen chair in the middle of the front room. Her eyes were swelled shut, but he could see her pupils on him through the slits. Her face was bruised and the left side of her hair was flat with matted blood. Her ankles were duct-taped to the legs of the chair and her wrists to the arms of it. Silver duct tape had been wrapped around her head so she couldn’t speak.

He was enraged.

“Are they still here?” he whispered.

She emphatically shook her head no. He shoved his revolverinto his shoulder holster and removed the tape from her face. It left a two-inch mark and indentations in her cheeks.

“Kestrel,” was the first word she said.

He went cold. “Did they take her?”

“No. I think he would have, but he didn’t know about her. I hid her before he came in.”

They’d discussed their safe place before, a place Liv was to hide in if danger came to their house. He closed his eyes for a second in relief that both Liv and his baby girl were there.

“I heard him out there in the mews,” Liv said as he cut the tape from her wrists and ankles. “When I looked out, I saw him loading the falcons he wanted into his vehicle. He took a bunch of them and he snapped the necks of those he didn’t want. That’s when I called you the first time. You didn’t pick up.”

“I’m sorry,” Nate said.

“Nate, he scared me. He had a really cold look in his eyes and I think he would have taken Kestrel if he’d known she was here.”

“You did the right thing. Are you hurt?”

“I think I’m okay, but he beat the shit out of me,” Liv said. “He must have tied me up when I was unconscious.”

“Who was it? How many?”