“Anything interesting happen?” Caleb asked, eyeing her and Sawyer curiously as he walked over to the monitors.
As Erin moved over to stand beside him, Harley couldn’t help but look twice at the odd pair. Ever since the fight in the tunnels below the Central Market in Morocco, Caleb and the abrasive MI6 agent had been acting differently toward each other. They definitely weren’t friends or anything, but the open animosity wasn’t there anymore. Maybe getting tossed around by a scaly-skinned lizard shifter had made the two of them able to see past their differences.
Or maybe they’d declared a detente until the next wrong word screwed everything up.
“Just a lot of construction,” Sawyer said, gesturing to the mountaintop still bright with lights. “No sign of any of the traffickers, but from the looks of it, they’ll definitely have the tram built and ready in time for the auction.”
“Speaking of the auction,” Harley said, hoping to distract Caleb, who was still looking back and forth between her and Sawyer with an all-too-knowing expression. “Has Jake come up with a plan on how we’re going to get up there? It’s not like we can just sneak on the tram when no one is looking.”
“Misty is doing her magic on the computer, sifting through the international arrivals from both air and sea,” Forrest said, checking each monitor to double-check the cameras and recording connections. “Luckily, the people rich enough—and twisted enough—to attend an event like this aren’t worried about hiding their movements. Jake wants her to find some of them who are fairly similar in appearance to us, then Jes will do the makeup thing to make sure we can pass for them.”
In another life, Jes had been into theatrical makeup and special effects. The things she could do with a little polyurethane, latex, and contact lenses were almost scary. But the chances of finding clones for all of them wasn’t going to be easy.
“What about those of us who won’t pass for attendees?” she asked, worried she already knew the answer.
Forrest glanced out at the mountain before looking at them. “We have to hope they aren’t afraid of heights because they’ll be climbing up the monastery.”
Harley groaned. That was exactly what she’d been afraid of.
Chapter 10
Don’t look down.
Sawyer wedged the inside edge of his right boot against a slim ledge of rock, carefully testing it before putting his full weight on it. Reaching up with his right hand, he shoved his fingers into a crevice wide enough for them to fit, then with a heave of his shoulder and arm, he pulled himself higher up the mountain in the darkness.
Just a few hundred meters more to go.
It was an agonizingly slow way to climb, but he didn’t have a choice. The face of the cliff was made mostly of sandstone. One wrong move and he was looking at one long drop to the base. While the fall probably wouldn’t kill him—unless he smashed in his head—it wasn’t something he wanted to experience.
Boots scraped against stone and he glanced to his right to see Jake a dozen meters away, climbing as carefully as he was. On Sawyer’s left, Caleb was at least a hundred meters ahead of them and moving absurdly fast. Sawyer had already come to the conclusion that reckless and out of control were defining characteristics of the omega werewolf.
“Hold your position.” Caleb’s voice was soft in his radio earpiece. “Patrol moving past up top.”
Shit.
Sawyer hugged the cliff face, holding his breath and trying to make himself disappear into a crack not nearly big enough to hide in. Somewhere above him, he heard the tread of heavy boots as guards walked along the perimeter of the monastery. The aforementioned guards were the reason Sawyer, Jake, and Caleb decided to climb the mountain free solo. Going without anchors, ropes, or gear of any kind increased the chances one of them would fall, but all it would take was one metal carabiner smacking against a rock when one of those guards was nearby and they’d have a dozen automatic weapons pointed in their direction. Exposed as they were on the side of the mountain, they’d be dead for sure.
Sawyer was still hugging the rocks when Harley whispered over the radio that she and Misty were in the line to board the aerial tram and about to get their invitations checked. While he was worried about Harley’s makeup and fake ID holding up, he was glad she wasn’t on the mountainside with him. The thought of her dangling by her fingers from a rock ledge the way he was at the moment made him want to throw up.
Thankfully, she’d been able to pass as one of the buyers attending the auction. Forrest, too. Jes had been able to use prosthetics, wigs, and makeup to make them look exactly like the real people they were pretending to be. Sawyer had watched the whole transformation and been seriously impressed with the STAT agent’s work. He hadn’t even recognized Harley afterward.
Misty and Erin were accompanying Harley and Forrest as their personal assistants. They didn’t look nearly as close in appearance to the real people even with Jes’s makeup magic, but hopefully whoever was checking the invitations wouldn’t pay much attention to them.
Since he, Jake, and Caleb were too big to consider getting into the auction as prospective buyers, they’d slip in with the security guards once they made it to the mountain top. With the makeup Jes had done to hide their features, hopefully none of the bad guys would recognize them from their previous encounters in Paris and Morocco. That said, Sawyer wasn’t thrilled with wearing the latex appliances on his face that changed the shape of his jaw and chin. They made his skin itch.
Unfortunately, Jes, Elliott, and Rory hadn’t been able to match the rest of the team up with any of the auction attendees, and because none of them was comfortable climbing the mountain, the plan had been for them to stay down at the base of the mountain and rescue each of the supernaturals purchased at the auction as they were brought down on the tram if things went sideways. Then, a few hours ago, they’d learned Boc was bringing in known criminals from the Athens area to do some work for the night. Sawyer had no idea what the work entailed, but it had been incredibly easy to slip Rory, Jes, Elliot, and Adriana, of all people, in that way. Thanks to a little makeup, no one would recognize them, either.
“The guard is gone,” Caleb said over the radio. “The coast is clear.”
Sawyer started climbing again, moving a little faster now. He didn’t want to get caught out here.
Makeup or no makeup, it was probably crazy to allow Adriana to come with them. But she’d insisted she could help them with the rescue by using her powers to take out the monastery’s power grid, shut down the tram, or even zap a few guards if that’s what they wanted her to do.
“I need to be there for Kristoff. If he dies up there and I did nothing to stop it, I’ll never be able to live with myself,” she said tearfully. “He saved my life. I have to help save his.”