Page 179 of Tracked and Taken

Flossie.

Tael, beside me, is awake at the chime.

I take the comm.

“Flossie.”

“Lovey.”

The dispatch voice.

“What’s wrong?”

“Charlie’s gone. Thane is in the wind. The safe house is empty. Twelve minutes of dead air on the perimeter feed at 2241. Petra called it in at 2244.”

A pause.

“There is blood, lovey. By the back door. A great deal of it. Not Petra’s. Petra is on my screen. She is fine.”

“Whose?”

“I do not know yet. There is no body. There is a track from the back door across the service corridor, fast, heavy, one male, and the track stops at the maintenance lift. We have, on the security feed, a glimpse of the male as he goes. Species unclear. Civilian kit, tattoos visible at the shoulder, hand at his side where the wound is, by the volume of the blood, going to need attention in the next hour.”

“And Charlie.”

“Gone, lovey. With Thane I assume. By the boot prints in the corridor, Thane carried her out the south service door at 2240, ahead of the male coming in the back.”

I sit up. The blanket falls. Tael is already up, sitting on the bed, pulling the field jacket over his shoulders in the time it has taken me to register that the comm has not yet ended.

“Flossie. Hold.”

“Holding.”

“Tael.”

“On it.”

He has my comm earpiece in his hand.

“JINX.”

“On the line, Tael.”

“Open private channel to Thane. Now. Override Florence’s joint-coordination archive. This one we are taking direct.”

“Connecting.”

A click. Static. The static lasts two and a half seconds.

Then Thane, on the speaker, voice low. Quieter than I have ever heard him.

“Vosk.”

“Thane. Are you all right?”

A pause.

“I need to tell you a few things and I do not, on this comm, have the time to be careful about them.”