Warrior's Hope (Dark Protectors #16)(6)

Finally, she was going to catch the hacker. They’d been playing a game for years, and she was ready to win it.

Holding her breath, she engaged the computer system and zeroed in on the tracking dust. There he was. For a second, she just stared. He was one little blue dot on her screen. “He’s headed into the tunnels outside the computer store in the old city.” Which was actually camouflaged as a soap-and-sundries shop. “You know your entry points,” she advised the red blips on the screen. Her teammates were already in the tunnels that had been built beneath the old city centuries ago.

Her team was the best.

Adrenaline raced through Hope’s veins. She typed rapidly on her keyboard and scanned the three monitors in front of her before tapping on her ear communicator. “He’s moving west, fast.” She couldn’t believe they might actually catch this guy.

“On it,” Liam said.

She brought up a map of the entire area. “Affirmative. Derrick, I need you and Libs to come in from the south. He’s going through those tunnels underground, the ones we mapped out last year that are about thirty clicks from that tea store we visited during training.”

“Copy that,” Derrick said. “And you went into the tea store. I don’t do tea.”

She could hear the barely veiled excitement in his tone. “Libs? Status?”

“Moving fast. Feel Kurjans in the air. Hate abandoning the original objective and hope the second team can get there soon,” Libby said tersely. “Going dark now.”

Hope frowned. She’d had to switch objectives because this bastard was within reach. For two years, she’d hunted him using every ounce of strategy and technology she could find and had come close several times, but never like this.

The microphone crackled. “You need to report this to headquarters,” Collin said, ever the hall monitor. He and his twin, Liam, might look alike, but their approaches couldn’t be more different.

“I know,” Hope muttered. She quickly fired off a couple of texts to Realm headquarters in Idaho. Not that anybody could get to Nuremberg to help or stop them right now. “Everyone go dark as you move.” The Kurjans had excellent equipment, and if any were in the area, they might be able to hack the comms.

Glancing out the window, she could see the castle in the distance, could hear the sounds of revelry from the Christmas market below, where shoppers were enjoying glasses of glühwein as they browsed the stalls. Was this fate? That she had been on her way to Europe when she’d received the call? Although she had chosen not to believe in fate. Well, much.

An argument in German caught her attention, and she leaned toward the open window. It was early in the afternoon for the alcohol to be affecting tourists already. She listened as two brothers argued about a Christmas present for their mother.

That was cute, even though the men sounded as if they were in their fifties.

Christmas music poured through speakers, and in the distance, the odd droning of a German official vehicle hinted that the police were near.

Movement showed on her screen. “Okay, he’s down one more level in the tunnels. Go east,” she ordered the two teams.

Finally. They’d have this criminal. She could feel it. Then the sound of an explosion ripped through her headset, and she dropped to her seat. “Call in, now. Everyone!”





Chapter Three


“He threw something back. Some sort of flash grenade,” Libby said, coughing. “We made it to cover, but visibility is hampered by debris.”

“Our team is fine,” Collin said. “Where is this asshole?”

Hope swallowed and leaned closer to the screen. “He’s to the north, just ahead of you.”

“We’ll get him,” Liam snapped.

“We’re close,” Libby said. The young feline shifter was one of Hope’s best friends and as stealthy as a missile.

Her team had trained long hours, and they worked hard; she knew each of their strengths better than she knew her own. She typed rapidly and twisted the map on the screen, widening it even farther. “The subject has to turn left by that stack of bricks on the second level down, right under the castle,” she said. “We marked it last year while scouting.” Though many folks were aware of the tunnels, most of them had been blocked off. Not to her people.

Derrick cleared his throat. “I hear tourists buying chess sets ahead. There aren’t supposed to be people in these tunnels.”

Hope took a deep breath. “Go dark and evade,” she said. “Call in when you’re clear.”

“Let us know if you need backup,” Liam said, his voice a low growl like his father’s.

The team went dark again. Hope hated that part, even though she could watch their blips on screen and could engage the cameras in their vests. She did so, flinging those images to the far-right screen. The blips gave her more information right now.

Nervous, she spun the silver band on her right ring finger. Paxton had given the ring to her for her birthday years ago, and she always wore the piece. Gulping, she glanced at the gold band circling her left ring finger. Drake was the leader of the Kurjan nation, and he’d gifted her with it a while back, telling her she’d be his queen and together they’d make peace between the Realm and the Kurjans.

The queen of the Kurjan nation? What did that even mean? He might intrigue her, but was he really her fate? If the male she hunted was a Kurjan, as she suspected, she’d have some leverage in dealing with Drake. She needed answers.