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Tess waited for Brantley to get over his rant. She wanted to shove him out of her office so she wouldn’t show a crack in her armor in front of him.

She was doing a hell of a job just by not throwing up.

He complained, “This is going to cost us our funding.”

She didn’t snap back at Brantley, but this was his fault. He was the one who’d ordered the truck and sent the two shifters to deliver Colin.

Now Colin was dead.

Even he couldn’t have survived the burned truck. The brutal containment system in the cargo area would have ripped him apart as soon as he tried to escape.

All of this was Brantley’s doing.

He’d been so excited to send Colin off in his new toy that it made Tess sick.

She faced Brantley’s anger and unleashed some of her own. “You have yet to tell me what your driver and guard were doing on an unmarked road in the mountains, going in the wrong direction.”

“What?”

“Did I mince any words?” she snapped. “I want to know what that truck was doing so far off track.” To avoid wasting time arguing whether the information was accurate, she added, “I received a report that firefighters and police were sent to a burning truck in the mountains north of here. They traced the vehicle VIN to SCIS.”

Brantley glared at her. “How should I know what happened? You were standing there with me when I sent them off. Someone clearly sabotaged the transport. My best guess is that we have a mole, someone sympathetic to shifters. I’m thinking the Black River pack hijacked the truck and it went bad when our people fought back.”  He paused with a thoughtful expression. “Or maybe that freaking wolf shifter tried to escape and somehow caused the truck to wreck.”

“Colin? You think he did all that while he was stretched like a guitar string?”

Cocking his head to look at her hard, Brantley said, “Don’t tell me you’re defending him?”

Careful, she warned herself, but she was not backing down. “I’m not even going to acknowledge that ridiculous comment. This is huge. We will lose funding if they think we can’t maintain custody of someone that important. I’ll be facing the congressional committee to convince them SCIS is making progress. O’Donnell was the closest we’ve come to anyone who might be able to tell us about the Black River pack—”

“No, we’ll be facing that committee and O’Donnell was with the Black River pack even if he didn’t admit it,” Brantley said, cutting her off. “I know you think that tensioning system in the truck was an inhumane way to transport him, but it was the best plan my security team had come up with to manage someone like Colin. I hadn’t planned on using it yet, but seeing what he did to our two jackals when he shifted changed my mind. I agree that he couldn’t have gotten himself out on his own, but that leaves the Black River pack behind this. If that’s the case, we have a hole in our security. There’s no telling what happened until I get a team out there to investigate.”

She understood the words coming out of Brantley’s mouth, but her gut screamed that he had edited out a few significant things.

He was hiding more than he was telling.

Only a few people had known about this transport and they were all security.

Who on Brantley’s team would undermine him?

Or had he set her up to take the fall for losing Colin? All failure for today would fall on her head. Because while she believed in sharing success with everyone, even giving Brantley credit at times he hadn’t exactly earned it, the responsibility for failure belonged to her. That’s how she operated as a leader, plain and simple.

That driver and guard had been in on it, but she’d get no answers from them. Why had they gone into the mountains if the Black River pack was behind all of this?

If none of that was true, then who had ordered Colin’s death?

She looked hard at Brantley.

Would he actually go to the extreme of killing people to force her to step down so he could take over her position as lead on this investigation?

Okay, she was starting to sound paranoid even to herself.

She’d known, as a woman entering a primarily male work arena, that she’d be up against prejudice. She’d been prepared for those challenges, and always wanted to believe that working with professionals meant a level playing field once she’d proven her worth.

She agreed with Brantley on one point.

They had a mole. She had to figure out who it was and follow that trail to whoever was pulling the strings.

Killing to get ahead was cold-blooded murder, even if some thought less of a shifter’s death than a human’s. During the past months of working with Brantley, she’d seen his true colors about women in his field, but otherwise, he’d been professional, if annoying, with his innuendos. When she’d rebuffed his attentions though, he’d been pleasant about it and never acted as if he intended to make her pay for rejecting him.

She couldn’t equate that man with one who would kill just for professional advancement.

He stopped his pacing and huffed out a deep breath. “Sorry if I’m ranting at you when this is not your fault. I’m just sick over losing a major prisoner, two of our staff and that new truck, which I’d hoped would prevent deaths. I feel like we’re losing ground with the Black River pack.”

Now she felt like a slug for being so suspicious of him, but she actually hurt over the thought of what had happened to Colin. She couldn’t explain the odd connection she’d made with the wolf shifter, but right now she had a difficult time holding back her emotions.

She would not crack. Not here.

Colin had died a horrible death and it was as much her fault as it was Brantley’s.

She had final say. She could have refused to send Colin to the holding facility chained that way, but a sense of duty had forced her into what she’d thought had been the right decision.

Then Colin had said he forgave her even before all this happened.

How could he forgive someone who had sent him to his death? He’d predicted it, in fact. Had known he was going to die.

Her head felt like the ball at a national ping-pong match with so many conflicted thoughts slamming back and forth. She’d figure it out later. For now, she still had an investigation to see finished.

Feeling as if she had to extend an olive branch to Brantley, she said, “I share your frustration and we’ll keep pressing harder on the Black River pack.” 

So much for taking time off.

She mentally ripped up the form she’d been planning to submit today for a four-day weekend. She needed to know more on Colin for any hope of putting this behind her.

Ready to forge ahead, she said, “I sent Colin’s DNA to be matched in the shifter database, but it could take days or weeks. In the meantime, let’s offer a reward for anyone who might have recent information on a rogue wolf in the area. Did we get any facial shots?”

“Nope. The team who put the mask on him didn’t waste a second after seeing what he did to the jackals.”

“I understand.”

Brantley perked up. “We should offer a reward, though. Those people will sell out their own mother with enough incentive.”

She cringed at the ‘those people’ shifter reference for now, but she’d have a conversation with him soon about the need for everyone on their team to at least show a modicum of respect for all people ... and sub-species ... once things settled down. This conflict had to end or she’d need a new supply of aspirin.

Her assistant knocked on the door, then opened it to say, “We just got an initial police report about the destroyed truck.”

Tess steeled herself for the news. She’d been prepared to accept that she’d never see Colin again, not alive, but hearing someone verify his death would carve up her insides.

Brantley asked, “What’d they say?”

“The bodies of our driver and second guard are being sent to the coroner, but there’s no sign of the prisoner’s body.”

Tess stared in shock.

Brantley snarled, “What? How’d he get out?”

“They didn’t say. The only detail they gave me was that the chains in the back appeared to have been cut with a torch.”

Regaining her composure quickly, Tess fought to keep her relief from showing, but it wasn’t easy. She wouldn’t wish death on the two jackal shifters, but Colin ... might be alive.

Her relief took a swift nosedive when she realized she would have been better off facing the committee with his death than with his escape.