Webb’s brother let out a low whistle and moved to collect his weapon. “Now, a ballsy blonde with mile long legs? That I can totally get on board with.” He gave Ten a wink which made her scowl in response.

I rolled my eyes. “That apparently runs in the family.” I huffed out a breath and gave him a hard look. “Don’t you want to let your fellow agents know that your partner is at the camp, and that he’s armed?”

Ten gave me a look that was bright with agreement but the shine went diamond hard when Wyatt shook his head. “This is a quick strike and there isn’t a way to alert them to the fact Grady is on the ground. They’ll move in and sweep him up with the rest of the grow crew. The team is going in silent and fast, no radios, so no way to signal a change in plans. We need to move if we want to intercept them before they mistake your friends for enemies and we have deadly friendly fire on our hands.” His grin turned rueful and he looked up at the sky like the vast blue held answers to questions he had been asking for a lifetime. “I will never understand how my idiot brother manages to make every bad situation he stumbles into even worse. It’s like his superpower.”

Ten let out a huff and jerked her head to the side, indicating she wanted us to follow her around the rock formation and back toward the trees. She said we could circle around to the opposite side of the camp where Cy had disappeared with Emrys, but her tone was tense and her words came out tight and sharp. She turned her back on the intimidating special agent but not before she told him, “That idiot just took on a hail of bullets and an entire cartel camp because he was determined to find you, dead or alive. I think brotherly love is probably his superpower and his kryptonite.”

Thoroughly chastised, Wyatt snapped his mouth shut, straightened his broad shoulders, and started after her. They were moving fast in front of me, but the serious weight of what was going on around us and the real threat looming ahead of us didn’t mean that Wyatt bothered to hide the fact that his gaze was trained on Ten’s long legged gait rather than the surrounding area. I might have found it funny, if I wasn’t occupied looking for Emrys and praying that Cy hadn’t dropped her somewhere he deemed safe so he could run back to the drug compound that was about to be under government siege. Ten was right. There was no way in hell Cy would leave Sutton in that camp, no matter the condition he was in. I didn’t want to think about the reasons the men might have had for pulling Emrys out so quickly, while leaving the middle Warner brother behind. It didn’t sit right and it had me in knots made up of all kinds of anxiety and concern for Cy.

We hit the tree line, and once again I was dodging branches and twigs that pulled at my clothes and stuck in my hair. It didn’t take long to fall behind the two in front of me, both of whom were practically jogging over the uneven terrain. They were trained for this and I was not. Their focus on moving through the woods as quickly and as silently as possible prevented both of them from noticing a barely discernable X carved into the bark of one of the millions of pine trees we were racing past. I stumbled to a stop and put my hand on the rough bark right below the mark so I could catch my breath. Desperately, I looked around for some other indication that Cy or Emrys had been in this part of the woods, but I couldn’t see anything obvious.

Ten and Wyatt were quickly getting out of eyesight as they kept moving through the trees, unaware I had halted behind them. I was sucking in lungfuls of air, preparing to sprint to catch back up to them when I heard a soft sound from somewhere above my head. I told myself not to get my hopes up, that it was probably just a squirrel or a pinecone falling but when I looked up I was startled to see a square, metal platform secured high into the tree. It was easily a hundred feet up in the air and there was no mistaking the sound of a woman moaning.

I took a few steps backwards and tilted my head so that I could whisper-yell, “Em, is that you?” I knew I was going to be in trouble if anyone else poked their head over the edge of the tree stand, but deep down in my gut, I had a feeling this was the safest place Cy could find to stash my best friend. When her dark head poked over the edge I had to school my expression into one of relief rather than horror.

Her face was covered in blood and there was a makeshift bandage covering half of it that was stained a furious scarlet. Her black hair was a tangled mess around her head and I could see, even with the distance between us, that her normally golden complexion was shockingly pale and ashen. She didn’t look very good, in fact, she couldn’t look worse. As grateful as I was that Cy got her out of the camp alive, I was furious that he had left her alone and unreachable in her current condition.

“Em, I’m gonna figure out how to get up there so I can help you, okay?” I circled the tree and couldn’t for the life of me figure out how Cy had managed to make his way all the way up there while carrying Em in his arms. There were no steps nailed into the tree, there wasn’t a rope or any kind of staggered branches that I could use to shimmy my way up the trunk and Em wasn’t helping. She moaned again, and I watched her upper body collapse onto the tiny platform she was perched on.

“Emrys!” I didn’t bother to whisper this time when I called her name. Frankly, I didn’t care if an army of drug running bad guys came bursting out of the woods with weapons drawn. I was frantic over my friend and determined to get to her. “Em, you have to tell me how to get up there. How did Cy get you up the tree?”

There was no response and I panicked because I thought she might have passed out. I couldn’t tell the extent of her injuries but she had been whimpering softly and there was enough blood on her face for me to be justifiably alarmed. I was contemplating if I could hug the tree with my arms and legs and work my way up to the stand like a monkey when there was the rattle of something that sounded like chains overhead.