When do we leave?Nadine asked.
This afternoon,Conall decided.Gives us time to review the site layout and coordinate with backup.
The meeting dispersed.As they gathered materials for their trip, Conall spoke quietly.
About last night—
Nothing to discuss.The words came out rougher than Nadine intended, and she tried to soften it.That was a professional mistake.It won’t happen again.
Something flickered across his face—hurt, maybe, or relief?
Right,he agreed softly.Professional mistake.
Except it hadn’t felt like a mistake.
It had felt inevitable.
But as they headed toward the briefing room, she couldn’t ignore how his presence calmed her wolf.The sense of rightness that flooded through her when they moved together.
This damned mate bond kept insisting that they belonged together.
Even though every logical bone in her body screamed at her that their connection was impossible.
THE ABANDONED MINE WHEREGregory Torrance had died looked exactly like what it was—a place forgotten by time.A lonely site with a tumbledown shack atop a deep mineshaft, where secrets could be buried alongside broken dreams.
Nadine stood at the edge of the excavated area, the afternoon sun casting harsh shadows.Weeks had passed since she’d found the site of her father’s death, but the scene remained engraved in her memory.
Show me,Conall said quietly.
He fell here,she said, pointing to a bloodstained stone near the mine entrance.The blood pattern indicated he was struck from behind first, then fought back.Got to the ridge before they cornered him.
What happened to his body?
I never found it.But the blood trail led down the mineshaft.His blood—I could tell by the scent.Nadine’s mouth tightened, and her voice went soft.I followed it as far down as I could.There’s no way he came out of that.
Okay.Conall drew the word out as if thinking.How many attackers did you scent?
Three, maybe four?Professional.They knew his movement patterns, his likely escape routes.
Inside knowledge.
I thought so.Gregory was too good to be taken by strangers.
Dr.Chen approached, his electromagnetic detection equipment—a round dish like a small satellite attached to a handle with a readout—held out before him, his expression one of grim satisfaction.
I found definite technological residue,he announced.Neural interface signatures, approximately three weeks old.
Nadine’s stomach dropped.Gregory had an interface?
Advanced technology, I’d guess.Your father wasn’t just killed here—he was activated here sometime earlier.
Activated?As in—
Remote triggering of behavioral modification protocols.From what I can tell, someone turned on his interface, probably to compel specific actions.Chen’s voice carried clinical precision.He may not have been acting under his own free will when he died.
The implications slammed into her.Gregory’s final communications to her, his investigation—all potentially the result of remote neural manipulation.
He was a puppet,Nadine said.Everything he did, everything he told me—it was all programmed.
