Page 101 of Visions, Paws, and Claws

“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 itcan’tbe 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’dusuallyinform, all right?”

“With you so far.”

“Then once we’ve worked out our timings, you email every leader—butindividually,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 MOMENThe 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.

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