Page 108 of Darkness of Mine

I sigh. “You ready to go, Oz?”

“Yep. Alpha team lost him for a second, but Beta picked the tail back up.”

“Right. Let’s go.” I slam the back door shut and round the car to the driver’s side.

My cheek throbs and adrenaline hums underneath my tactical gear. “You got Freya’s tracker bracelet up?” I ask Oz as I put the car in drive.

He hesitates.

“Oz,” I snap.

“It’s not connecting.”

In the back, Jude hits the side of his fist against the window.

“What do you mean?” I ask through gritted teeth.

“It’s probably just a signal error. Give me a second.”

The leather of the steering wheel creeks under my grip. The rumble of the tires on the road and the sound of Oz’s tapping fill the car as we all wait.

After a minute Oz curses. “Riv, put your comm on.”

My gaze flicks over to him, taking in the lines straining his face and I slip one hand off the wheel to hook the comm device back over my ear.

“Agent Park here, report.”

The rough voice of the Alpha team leader crackles into my ear. “We’ve lost him. Beta team too.”

“How?” My voice drops to a deadly hum.

“He knows how to lose a tail. Used every trick in the book.”

“License plates?”

“We’ve given them to Agent Reynolds but, sir, they were covered in mud. The cameras might not be able to pick them up.”

I battle down the flurry of curses that wants to rage from my chest.Mud on the fucking plates.It’s simple and old school, and far too fucking effective. We can use the cameras to search for make and model but we’re now relying on human eyes being able to manually pick out the right van. It could take hours.

“Oz, tell me you’ve got the signal from the tracker bracelet.”

Oz continues typing.

Jude leans forward from the back, his face still tinted gray from the drugs. “Ozzie?”

Oz shakes his head and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Something’s blocking the signal.”

Allie looks up from her lap. “That’s bad right? What does it mean?”

I stare at the road ahead. The dread and nausea I’d been pushing back since I figured out Freya’s plan flood through me in full force.

Eli grips his neck.

“It means Freya’s on her own,” Jude answers, his stare drilling into the back of my head. “Until she can figure out how to get her tracker working, we have no way of knowing where she is. Nofuckingway.”

I meet his gaze in the rearview mirror. Jude glowers at me like he wants to kill me, but if Freya doesn’t make it out of this alive, he won’t have to.

I’ll drown in my own fucking guilt.