Page 97 of Ensnared

“Ifthat’s what you’re into,”Ijoke, weakly, and he grins crookedly.

“Yougoing to head up to bed now?”

Hesitatingfor only a moment,Isay, “I’llgo upstairs.”

Relieftouches his smile.Givingme one last kiss, he leaves me alone, just like the others.

Asmall while later, my eyes drift to the carnage at the table.Tomy lovely, terrible rage.Then, quiet as the mouse they believeIam,Icreep out of the dining room and up the stairs.

Enoughis enough.Ineed answers.Ineed the full truth ifI’mgoing to stay.Formy own sake,Ican’t accept anything less.

Beaudoesn’t see me as well as he thinks.

Chapter24

Dominic

Survivaltip #146

Peopleare your biggest weakness.

Nonemore than yourself.

Thisis the last damn thing we need.Multiplescreens take up two walls of the surveillance room—it took us months to adapt the room fromJasper’sstudy.Theserver power and capacity needed to store a week’s worth of footage from thirty-seven cameras is no joke.Fortunatelyfor us, betweenJaykob’sprevious work as a mechanic, the military tech that was sitting around for the taking, and our extensiveRangercomms and equipment training, we managed to rig it up.

Inthe large, center screen, four men, armed to their pits, creep through the forest.Thecamera tracks their movement steadily until they move out of range.Theyhave the same rangy, tanned look of the men we tangled with the other day.Thatin itself wouldn’t be enough, but...

“Playit again.”

Jaspertaps a few buttons, and the men creep forward again.

“There.”Thefigures pause. “Righthand.Tattoo.Theothers had the same mark, like a coiled snake.”

Grimunderstanding lines my men’s faces and something inside me settles, just a fraction.Thisisn’t the place for the petty squabbles we’ve been descending into lately.Thisshit is a problem.Abig one.Andthey’ll face it like soldiers.

Beauis taking longer thanI’dlike, butItrust him to deal with the girl.Despitehis crush, he’ll follow orders.He’ssmarter than me.He’salways been smarter than me.

Hewon’t make the same mistakeIdid.

“Howdid we miss this?”Luckyasks seriously, studying the screen. “Wehave cameras all through these woods.They’restill meant to be five days south, right?Howare they now a day and a halfnorthof us?Couldthey be leftovers from the ones we scattered whenEdenwas with us?”

“Ididn’t miss this,”Jasperreplies with a hint of snap to his tone. “Theydidn’t come from the south.Thatencampment is still there—I’vebeen watching the cameras around them the most.Noneof the motion cameras were set off until now.Idon’t know how they could make it around the woods near us without being caught by our sensors.Notunless they knew where they were.”

It’sonly knowing him as well asIdo thatIcan see the worry in the tightness of his jaw.Theslight defensiveness.He’sbeen distracted these last few days.Weall have.

Andthere’s only one reason why.

Luckyturns to regardJasper, with surprising evenness for him, maybe even a hint of chill.Hedoesn’t even blush. “Ididn’t say you missed anything.I’mjust wondering how they did it.Arewe going to suddenly have more guys crawling up our ass?”

Jasper’seyes narrow, butIspeak up before he can cut intoLucky.Thisis not the fucking time.Soldiers.We’remeant to be soldiers.

“He’sright,”Isay seriously, funneling my irritation into the problem, the solution.Oneof us needs to keep our head. “Pullup the motion cameras—we have two more in the north region.Thenpull up four of the closest static cameras on screens four to seven.”

Thinlipped,Jaspernods once and bends over the keyboard.Thescreens around us flicker to life.Thetwo other motion cameras peer into silent greenery.Leavesflicker in the light breeze, but that’s not enough to set off the sensors.

Ofthe four static cameras, only one screen shows an image.

Thecameras need a decent amount of maintenance—about half our trips are just to keep them functioning and free of wildlife—so it’s not that unusual for one to go down every now and then.

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