Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [884]
The reconnaissance would have gone a lot faster if he’d been able to do it alone, but Kade was inwardly relieved to have Alex with him. At least this way she was in sight and within arm’s reach. Back in town by herself left her vulnerable, a concept that made his heart squeeze a bit tighter in his chest as he navigated the dark, frozen tundra at her side.
Up ahead of them several hundred yards, floodlights washing over the snow, the mining company’s compound was alive with activity. As had been the case when Kade first surveilled the location, tonight a handful of uniformed workers continued to empty one of the two parked cargo containers outside the mouth of the mine itself. Guards with automatic rifles patrolled the barricade out front; mounted security cameras were trained on the land surrounding the tall chain-link perimeter fence.
Kade paused, putting his gloved hand on Alex’s arm. “This is as far as we go.”
“But we need to get much closer to see what’s going on in there,” she whispered, her breath clouding as it penetrated the fleece mask that protected her face.
“Too dangerous for you to get any closer, and I’m not about to leave you here without me.”
“Then let’s go back to Harmony and get my plane. We can fly over for a better look.”
“And risk letting them identify you from the ground?” Kade gave a curt shake of his head. “Not even if Harmony had a hundred pilots who owned little red single-engines. No, there is another way.”
He inhaled deeply, letting a low howl build slowly in his throat. Then he sent it skyward in a long, searching summons. It took only a moment for a wilder reply to answer from somewhere not far off toward the west. Kade sought the lupine voice with his mind, then, with a wordless command, he called the wolf out from the night.
Alex startled when the silver-furred animal stepped into view from the woods and walked directly into their path.
“It’s okay,” Kade told her. He glanced at her, his mouth curving at her open astonishment. “You have your talent; I have mine.”
“Yours is way better,” she murmured on a breathless whisper.
He smiled, then fixed his gaze on the wolf’s bright, intelligent eyes. It listened to the silent instructions he gave, then it dashed off in stealth motion to carry them out.
Alex gaped at him. “What did you just do? And, um … how?”
“I asked the wolf to help us. She’ll get closer to the site than we can, and through the link she and I now share, she will show me everything she sees.”
Alex got quiet as Kade focused on the temporary connection that put him inside the wolf’s senses. Kade closed his eyes, feeling the rhythmic fall of its paws in the snow, hearing the soft huffs of its lungs, the steady, rapid beat of its heart. And through the keen night-sharp vision, he saw the webbed fence and heavy-security outbuildings, the workers—Minions, all of them, he realized now—shuffling in and out of the mine’s cavernous entrance, wheeling crated equipment and large, unmarked cartons of God knew what kinds of supplies.
The new management had moved in, all right, and from the looks of it, they wanted to make damned sure that no one got too close to see what they were about.
And speaking of the mining company’s new management …
The wolf’s ears pricked to attention, self-preservation instincts pushing her down into a low crouch as a large male with fair hair and expensive taste in suits strode from within the mine. Although Kade had never seen him before, he didn’t miss for an instant that the male was Breed. If his size and demeanor hadn’t given him away, the extensive network of dermaglyphs would have. The markings tracked out from the rolled-up cuffs and open throat of his white dress shirt, in patterns that clearly declared him an elder of the Breed.
Easily powerful enough to turn