That caught everyone by surprise, including Brielle. Were they wondering if Hudson was telling the truth? She hoped he was, for Caleb’s sake.
“Well, thanks for that,” Jake said, though whether he believed Hudson or not was anyone’s guess. “And, in the interest of open and honest communication concerning what you’re getting yourself into if you work with us, you need to know that werewolves aren’t the only supernaturals around. There are a lot of other creatures out there in the world, including the ones that were involved in stealing those nukes.”
Hudson sat there with a stunned look on his face as Jake described the things they’d run into in the tunnels below Incirlik and how they’d torn those soldiers—and Caleb to a certain degree—to shreds. This was the first time Brielle had heard the details about the underground fight with the creatures that had yet to be identified. Hearing how they’d hurt Caleb twisted her stomach into knots, and it was all she could do to sit there and listen to it.
They talked for another fifteen minutes, covering everything they had as far as leads on the locations of the nuclear weapons, especially the Surinda clue they’d gotten from her brother. By the end of the discussion, they weren’t any closer to knowing where the nukes were than they’d been at the beginning, at least from Brielle’s perspective.
“Okay, so where does all this leave us?” Caleb asked. He’d finished all his double cheeseburgers and was now nursing his milkshake. “We were wrong about Surinda being a person, and we still don’t have any idea who stole the weapons or how those creatures that dug the tunnel figure into this whole thing. The only thing we’ve accomplished so far is to give whoever took those weapons one hell of a head start on us.”
From where she sat beside Hudson, Genevieve sighed. “We go back to the drawing board, toss out all of our previous assumptions, and look at every piece of evidence from a fresh perspective. I know it feels like we’re wasting time, but it’s the only choice we have. Hopefully, this time, we’ll find something that points us in the right direction.”
“And hopefully before it’s too late,” Brielle said softly.
The longer it took to find her brother, the more the odds worked against her ever seeing Julian alive again. It tore her apart to think that, but the truth was, it had been nearly a week since he’d called her. For all they knew, he might already be dead.
As she got to her feet along with everyone else, eager to head back to the hotel for some sleep after a long, frustrating day, Brielle felt Caleb take her hand, his face earnest.
“We’ll find your brother,” he promised. “Before it’s too late.”
Brielle nodded, touched by his concern. As they walked toward the door, she had to wonder if werewolves could read minds. Because she’d really needed those words of encouragement right then. And when Caleb was the one saying them, she found herself believing them.
Chapter 6
Russia
“Are we sure this is Surinda?” Caleb asked softly, his warm breath frosting the late-night air as he crouched in the fresh snow on the hill overlooking the small village below them. His enhanced hearing didn’t pick up any sounds from the collection of simple wooden houses. “I mean, the place is a ghost town. How many people are supposed to live here, again?”
“Almost a hundred,” Genevieve murmured from the other side of Brielle. “They’re mostly Evenki reindeer herders, along with a few other indigenous groups. At least, that was the number at last count a couple years ago. Maybe they all moved away since then.”
Beside Caleb, Jake let out a snort. “And left the lights on and the fireplaces lit in most of the houses?” he pointed out, motioning toward the smoke coming from chimneys in several of the nearer buildings. “I don’t think they just up and moved away.”
Caleb was tempted to point out that maybe everyone in this sleepy central Siberian village had simply gone to bed. To say this place was on the backside of nowhere was an understatement. On the way here, he’d seen an old man riding a reindeer. A frigging reindeer. He was pretty sure there weren’t any Netflix shows in these parts to keep the people who lived here awake this close to midnight.
He didn’t bother saying any of that, of course, because ultimately, he knew Jake was right. There was something else going on here. It wasn’t even the silence shrouding the town that made him believe that. It was the eerie stillness surrounding the village. The lights might be on, but no one was home; he was sure of it.
It was entirely possible that everyone who lived in the place had been slaughtered.
“Do you smell any blood?” he asked, glancing at Jake.
Harley or Sawyer could have answered that question, but since they hadn’t revealed they were werewolves to Hudson, Caleb sure wasn’t going to out them by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Jake lifted his face to the breeze and inhaled sharply several times before shaking his head. “No blood. But I’m also not picking up as many scents as I should if there are a hundred people living down in that village, either. Something is definitely off.”
Caleb frowned down at the tranquil village below. “Okay, aside from the disturbing lack of people, is anyone seeing anything to make us think the nukes are actually down there somewhere?”
“Maybe,” Forrest said.
Caleb glanced over to see Forrest looking through a set of night-vision binoculars, apparently fascinated with whatever he was seeing.
“Take a look at the east side of the village about two hundred meters to the right of the last cluster of homes and tell me that structure doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb.”
Caleb followed the direction of Forrest’s gaze until he saw the tall chain-link fence surrounding a small building. But it wasn’t the fence or the squat, windowless building that caught his attention. It wasn’t even the dozen or so trucks, some of them with a definite military design to them, that were parked inside the enclosure. No, it was the large metal tower that rose at least fifty feet above that building. That was the structure Forrest was talking about.
“Is that a cell phone tower?” Hudson murmured as he peered through his set of night-vision binoculars. “Behind a high-security fence?”
Caleb had never really paid much attention to what cell phone towers looked like, but he got the feeling this one wasn’t right. It looked too rugged. And those vertical cylinders running straight up through the center of the thing seemed more like smokestacks than anything a cell phone tower needed.
“A cell phone tower in the middle of a Siberian farming village? I don’t think so,” Jake said. “But we won’t know until we get a closer look. Split up into your teams and move in. Misty, I want you going in first, in case there are surveillance cameras.”