Page 44 of Atlas and the Traitor

They. Multiple souls who’d contacted the medium. Multiple deaths.

“How long ago?”

“Two hours.”

“And you just called me?” he barked, frustration turning up the volume of his voice. Unjustifiably so, and Robin immediately regretted it, lifting his hands, palms out. “Sorry, that was unfair.” Jenn’s wide eyes made him smile, but the multiple deaths, the reaper on Abigail’s shoulder, the despair that had drained all color from his cousin’s face, flattened the curve of his lips. “Take me to the bodies.”

Liam led the way into the woods to where three bodies lay covered by blankets. Robin kneeled beside the smallest mound and pulled back the blanket. Olivia, his youngest cousin, in human form. The ground and leaves beneath her were dark from the blood that had seeped from the gunshot wounds to her chest and head.

Execution style.

He leaned closer, sniffed, then recoiled as silver stung his nostrils.

Beside her was another body, the shape of a coyote beneath the blanket. Pulling it back, he recognized Bruce by the dark patches of fur on his shoulders. His face, though... Robin had to look away. Bruce must have been mid-attack, protecting his cousin, when he’d taken a bullet to the face, the silver going clean through.

Robin glanced the few feet to the last coyote-shaped mound. His chest tightened with certainty, the evidence indisputable. Jenn’s heightened distress, the reason she hadn’t been with Pati and Pax, the uneasiness Robin had felt the closer he got to this place. It all made horrible, devastating sense.

He bowed his head, Jenn hiccupped a sob, and he had his confirmation. He didn’t need to look under that third blanket. He stood instead and drew his cousin into his arms, holding her tight as they grieved for the man who’d been a father to both of them, to their pack. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured into her hair.

“I should have?—”

“You are the pack leader,” Robin told her. “You did exactly what you’re supposed to do. Jasper knew that. They all did.”

He held his cousin while she sobbed, while he struggled to get his own emotions under control. His heart ached for his pack, for his uncle and cousins who’d been slaughtered. Ached worse for Jenn, understanding all too well the depth of her grief and the weight of the survivor’s guilt bearing down on her. Crushing. His gut burned with rage at the person who’d injured his family, at Jasper for not taking more backup, at himself for leaving things the way he had, at Nature and Chaos for this whole fucked-up situation. Blood churned in his veins, urging him to run, urging him to exact mighty vengeance on all the people who’d done this to him and his.

More than anything, though, his soul longed for the one person who could settle the storm inside him.

He closed his eyes and recalled Atlas sitting across from him earlier in the night, the contemplative set of his elegant features, the weight of Altas’s foot against his, the spring of his gaze and scent.

The acceptance and understanding that grounded Robin.

He inhaled deep and felt his soul settle, the instinct to run stayed for a little while.

He waited for his cousin to likewise settle, for her sobs to fade to sniffles, before he drew back. It wasn’t nearly enough time for them to grieve the way they should, but they were up against a ticking clock none of them could afford to ignore. Pati and her son, the key to ending this awful game that kept taking from them, were missing.

“Did anyone hear the gunshots?” Robin asked.

“Nothing,” Jason said. “And I would’ve been the closest.”

Silver, plus a silencer.

The killer—or killers—weren’t taking any chances. They’d covered their tracks too, no sign of footprints in the mud. But there were other signs and smells a tracker of average skill could follow. Bent tree limbs, broken stalks of winter weeds, bad coffee. Handing a steadier Jenn to Abigail, Robin followed the trail to the service road that snaked through the property. Tire tracks in gravel gave some direction. “They went south,” he told the others once they joined him. “Likely a van, given the size and spacing of the tracks.”

“We think we know where they’re headed,” Abigail said, as Jenn dug something out of her pocket.

“We found these in Olivia’s room.” She dropped two game chips into his palm, branded with the name and logo of Dyami’s casino in Nipomo.

Fuck, Atlas had been right; there’d been a traitor in the pack. He should have argued harder to keep Pati and Pax out of their lands, but where else could they go and still get the rest of the team there in short order? Still wasn’t close enough.

He checked the time on his phone. “The kidnappers can’t have made it to Nipomo yet.”

“Mac was already here,” Jenn said. “Came to the same conclusion. He’s on the horn with other departments. They’re putting up roadblocks.”

“What did the van that took Atlas look like?” Abigail asked.

“Mangled metal, when I was done with it,” Robin replied, but he followed her train of thought. Maybe there were more like it connected to Dyami’s business or the people he employed, though Robin doubted this was the work of hired muscle like the goons who’d come after Atlas.

He doubted this was Dyami’s work at all. It wasn’t Evan’s either. Not flashy enough, and by now, Robin would recognize Atlas’s twin’s scent, would never forget it. There was no trace of Evan on the air.

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