Page 59 of Elven Prince

“It is frustratingly similar,” he grumbled.

“But why would they wait this long to kill them?” Tig asked. “Give us enough time to interrogate them before they just wipe them out like that? How does that even happen?”

“Could’ve just been a lucky break for us,” Rebecca said.

“Or that’s how long it took the real culprit to get within range,” Maxwell growled.

In the next split-second glance she shared with the shifter, Rebecca felt she could almost read his mind.

They needed to act quickly.

“Sweep the perimeter,” she ordered before racing across the living room, stopping only to pick up her weapon along the way. “I want eyes on everything. Check the woods in the back. The street. The asshole who did this could still be out there. Let’s move!”

Her operatives burst into action, immediately abandoning the bodies in the living room to head swiftly out of the house.

“Will somebody tell me what the fuck is going on?” Bruce screamed.

Rebecca stopped at the shattered sliding glass door into the gnome’s back yard and turned to point at him. “You stay put. We’ll let you know when it’s clear.”

“You mean there’smoreof them out there?” he shrieked.

“Don’tmove,” Maxwell snarled at him over the clomp of Tig and Lerrick’s footsteps crunching over broken glass and shattered furniture as they headed for the busted front door.

Rebecca and Maxwell slipped out the back to search the area, weapons loaded and at the ready, the high-pitched whine of their magitek mechanisms powering up in their hands as they swept across the ground in the darkness.

They didn’t have to discuss who went where. Rebecca broke off toward the woods behind the house while Maxwell veered to the right to clear the side yard, his footsteps completely silent.

Despite the ache flaring through her again as she and the shifter walked away from each other, Rebecca’s immediate new purpose drove her forward.

They’d entered completely new territory here with this unknown assailant. The prisoners now lying dead on Bruce’s living room floor had only been patsies for the real culprit behind this master plan. They’d been sent to mark one more name off their hit list, but they weren’t the ones behind the other attacks.

Rebecca couldn’t imagine the troll and half-changeling had done this to themselves. Whoever was really in charge must have decided they were merely collateral damage after the failed attempt on Bruce’s life.

Her mind raced as ferociously as her heartbeat as she padded swiftly through the woods behind the house, searching for movement, for evidence of their unknown attacker hiding out back here.

She found nothing.

By the time she fully accepted that whoever had killed the prisoners inside still couldn’t be identified, Maxwell also headed back from the side yard as Rebecca emerged from the woods. The shifter’s dubious glower told her his search had been equally unsuccessful.

She shook her head to tell him she’d also found nothing, then her phone buzzed in her back pocket.

She stopped on the lawn to answer the call from Rick.

“I really hope you have good news for me,” she said.

“Sorry, boss. I wish I could. I’ve just heard back… None of them made it in time. Every name on that list, every vendor and trade partner we’ve contracted, got hit tonight. Everyone we’ve worked with for rations, medical supplies, gear and equipment… They’re all gone.”

When Rick finished his report, Rebecca’s ears were already ringing. The silence on the other end of the line became disturbingly disorienting as she tried to process the news.

“Knox? You still there?”

She cleared her throat. “Yeah. Recall the teams to Headquarters. I want a full debriefing from everyone once we get back.”

“Copy that.”

Rebecca ended the call, shoved her phone back into her pocket, and reminded herself to breathe.

This was bad.

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