Page 18 of Dark Gambit Reliance

"We will take her with us, of course." Eleanor pulled out a mesh backpack from her satchel. "I'll strap her to my chest and carry her like a baby."

For the next hour or so, the tense silence in the car was only interrupted by the cat's purring and from time to time, by Morgan's calls with updates about the Honda. The Guardians had deployed a small drone to follow it from a safe distance.

The tail had no reason to get close. The tracker informed them where Sofia was, or rather where the tracker was. The question was whether they would follow on foot once they could no longer follow with the car.

When Asher stopped at the designated spot, the four of them got out of the car, Marcel and Asher put their earpieces in, and Eleanor put the cat in the backpack.

"Sorry about this, kitty." She strapped the backpack to her chest and patted Cecilia through the mesh. "That's the best I could do on short notice."

It was getting dark, and as they started the climb up the rugged mountainside, Marcel took Sofia's clammy hand. "I won't let you fall."

"I'm not afraid of falling."

"It's dark, and you can't see as well as we do."

"I know you will keep me safe. What I am worried about is whether they will follow on foot. There is nothing on this mountain. They might think that we are just getting some exercise."

Eleanor snorted. "Right. A human with a heart condition and a crazy lady with a cat climbing a mountain in the dark for fun. No one would think that."

"They are out of the car," Morgan said in Marcel's earpiece. "Two guys. They look human."

That was a disappointment. Hopefully, they were at least hybrids and not some humans Igor had hired to follow Sofia.

"We will wait until they are a good distance away before we check the car," Morgan said.

When Marcel repeated that for Sofia, she let out a breath. "Thank the Mother. It worked. They took the bait."

"Don't thank her yet." Eleanor stopped to readjust her backpack. "Let's see if we can catch them. They might hear the drone and bolt."

"With all the noise from the ocean, I can't hear myself breathing," Asher said. "When they hear the drone, it will already be too late. Morgan and Bradley are right behind them."

That was why they had chosen that exact spot for their deception. The mountain practically rose up from the water, and the surf crashing to shore was loud.

"We need to keep going." Marcel tugged on Sofia's hand. "They need to focus on catching up to us."

The hope was that the guys following them would suspect that they were taking Sofia to a secret location hidden in the mountain and that they would follow to find out where the entrance was.

Straining his one free ear, Marcel tried to identify the drone's buzz, but he couldn't hear a thing over the surf. The higher they climbed, the noisier it became instead of getting quieter.

They were nearly all the way to the top when Morgan spoke in his earpiece. "We got them. You can come back down."

14

SOFIA

"What if they have trackers on them? Or in them, as may be the case." Sofia had her hand on Marcel's shoulder, using him as her guide on the way down. "Don't we need to take them to the clinic first to remove them?"

The moon was out, so it wasn't entirely dark, but the lava rocks the mountainside was made of were nearly black, and there was very sparse vegetation. She could barely see where to put her foot down.

"We can't remove the trackers," Eleanor said. "We need those guys to appear intact and to go back to reporting to your grandpa."

Sofia gritted her teeth. Eleanor hadn't realized that referring to Valstar as her grandpa was painful to her. They were blood, as the Kra-ell called their pureblooded relatives and sometimes to the hybrids, but never their human descendants.

She was nothing to Valstar.

"Tom's place is not far from here," Asher said. "Morgan and Bradley will carry them over so it will appear as if they walked there."

"Isn't that dangerous?" Sofia asked. "Igor will know where to find Tom."

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