Page 133 of Corpse Roads

“Well, keep your fucking opinions to yourself,” Enzo yells at him.

Lapsing back into a ticking time bomb of tense silence, we let Theo and Kade go to work with their very much illegal software. They talk in low, urgent whispers.

Within half an hour, we’ve got a series of hits on private CCTV footage they’ve extracted from hacked cameras. Facial recognition software catches our perp right in the act.

“There he is.” Kade zooms in the footage and sharpens it with a few lines of code. “He caught up with her just outside of Croyde. She zig-zagged through town on foot towards the graveyard.”

“How did she get through town without our scouts picking her up?” Enzo seethes.

Theo studies another frame of camera footage, where Harlow’s ducked behind a dumpster to hide and catch her breath.

“She’s small, fast and determined,” he observes. “By the time our helicopters arrived, she was already at the graveyard with him.”

“How did he know we were here?” Hunter asks.

Swiftly sliding past the hotel’s flimsy security, Theo runs his facial recognition programme on top of their CCTV camera. It dings with a hit almost immediately.

“Motherfucker,” I bark angrily.

Diablo walked past our hotel on the day we arrived, pausing to glance up at the camera before shuffling back into the darkness. He’s been here this whole time, waiting and biding his time.

“He followed us.”

“Looks like it,” Theo confirms. “Traffic cams place him half an hour behind you on the road down to Devon.”

Enzo looks ready to explode. “Leigh, did you tell this wanker where Hunter and Harlow were going?”

“No!” Leighton blusters. “Of course not.”

“Frankly, I don’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth anymore.” I pin him with an arctic glower. “Diablo has clearly been running surveillance on the team. You put us all in danger.”

“Guys,” Theo draws our attention back. “Look at this. He walked past Giana Kensington’s house after you entered and tailed Harlow when she left. This was unplanned, but it worked perfectly for him.”

“Fuck!” Enzo swears, snatching up his gun holster. “Where’s the GPS location for that video? I’m going to rip him a new asshole.”

“We’re all going,” I assure him.

Hudson stands up. “I’ll fire up the helicopter.”

Quickly packing up and grabbing weapons, we begin to file out of the hotel. Eli and Phoenix opt to hang back, running comms with our team as Theo and Kade track our location from here.

Brooklyn checks the gun in place beneath her leather jacket. “Jude, Hudson and I will follow in the car. Take the helicopter.”

Pulling her into a side hug, Enzo nods. “We can scout out the rough area of the GPS location from the air.”

“Exactly. You’ll find her, big guy.” She smiles up at her closest friend and confidante. “Have a little faith.”

Eyes connecting with mine, I nod in agreement. In many ways, Brooklyn has become the one constant in all of our lives.

She’s spent hours listening to us, cooked us dinner, washed our clothes when grief made it too hard to even lift a finger. The broken phantom of a human we first met has transformed into an incredible person.

Piling out of the hotel, the Cobra team plus Jude load into Hudson’s Mustang, speeding off in a spray of gravel. We take the helicopter, with Leighton quietly slipping in the back as I rush through pre-flight checks.

Within minutes, we’re gliding through the air. The snow clouds are beginning to clear, unveiling Devon’s long, rugged coastline.

“We’re gonna get slapped with a fine for flying without a permit,” Enzo complains into his headset.

“I couldn’t care less about a permit right now.”

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