Chapter 192 The Right Way
ELIJAH
We stood at the perimeter for most of the night watching the tunnels and the answer turned out to be no one.
Or rather no one during the window we were watching. Whoever had used the tunnels had done so hours earlier, which Hazel confirmed at some point past midnight.
“The passage was used around nine this evening,” she said. “A single figure was seen moving fast, carrying what looked like a small pack. A few guards on the eastern post didn’t stop him because Shawn’s dismissal paperwork hadn’t been formally logged yet.”
“And he simply walked out,” I ran a hand through my hair, fighting the urge to tug at the ends.
“He knew the tunnel predates the kingdom’s current security infrastructure and that most of the current guard rotation didn’t know it existed.” She paused. “He knew about the tunnels because you told him. Because he was Beta.”
I stood with that.
“Yes. The tunnels exit well outside the standard patrol boundary. Any group using them would bypass everything we have at the gate.”
I thought about eighteen months of Shawn in position. Eighteen months of access, of information, of knowing the pack’s patterns and rhythms and vulnerabilities. Eighteen months of me giving him the benefit of the doubt because the elders had recommended him and I had been managing other things and had not wanted to see what Adriana had been telling me was directly in front of me.
The restraint it must have taken her to manage Shawn the way she had. With the measured, composed dignity that had protected me from my own blind spot while also protecting herself. She had been right about him from the first conversation, and she had carried that rightness quietly for a year and a half while I chose not to look at it.
“We need to find him,” I said to Hazel. “Whatever resources you need. I want to know where he is and who he’s been communicating with inside Golden Blade and for how long.”
“Already started,” she said.
Adriana appeared beside me. She looked exhausted after the journey she made tonight— more than the usual bit since Leo was taken, but she wasn’t backing down. She still stood upright.
“Go home,” I said. “You need sleep. And you need to eat something. I need you functional more than I need you here in the dark.”
She gave me the look she gave me when I said things that were correct and she had already decided to do them and didn’t need me to say so.
“Hazel,” I said, “I want every person who had access to our departure plans tonight identified and accounted for by morning. Anyone who can’t be placed at a confirmed location during the window when Landon was warned — I want to know about them.”
“Understood.”
“And I want someone looking at the tunnel exits. All of them. Map every place a group of thirty children could have been moved through without triggering our perimeter, cross-reference with Landon’s known territory, and give me a list of possible new locations.”
“Also already started.”
I looked at her.
“When did you sleep last?”
“When did you?” she said.
Fair.
The soldiers settled into a holding pattern and Adriana and I walked back to the palace through the early morning dark. She was quiet as she usually did when she was thinking rather than when she was upset, which I had learned to distinguish years ago.
I was also thinking.
Leo was somewhere in Landon’s new location, in a new facility, having been moved in the night. He would know something had changed. He would be assessing the new space with the same systematic attention he applied to everything, building his map, looking for the things that mattered. He was doing his job and he had been doing it well and we needed to do ours.
“I should have listened to you about Shawn from the beginning,” that was still on my mind.
She was quiet for a moment.
“Yes,” she said. “You should have.”
It was not an accusation. It was just true, delivered in the clean honest way she delivered true things.
“I’m listening now,” I said.
“I know.” She touched my hand briefly as we walked. “When we get back, I need to tell you something I’ve been thinking about Landon. About why he’s doing this the way he’s doing it — the letters, the invitation, the way he’s been handling Leo.” She paused. “He’s not actually confident. He’s performing confidence. And that’s a different problem than the one I thought we had.”
I looked at her.
“Tell me.”
“When we get home,” she said. “When I’ve eaten something and washed this forest off me. Then I’ll tell you.”
We kept walking.
Somewhere behind us, Hazel was already working. Somewhere ahead of us, Leo was mapping a new room and waiting. And in between, Landon was managing a situation that had not gone the way he planned and was deciding what to do next.
We were going to bring our son home.
We were just going to do it the right way.