Page 66 of Robb

“Come on, slowpoke!” she yelled as she saw Liam come bursting out from the scrub, shifting mid-scurry and dashing into the small hangar in his human form.

“Give me a break,” he groused as he jumped inside the helicopter. “We can’t all fly, you know.”

Tahnee rolled her eyes. “Then what good are you?”

“You’ll be sorry the next time you need someone bitten really hard,” he muttered, hitting the button on the wall that opened the hangar to the sky.

He jumped into the helicopter, strapping himself in faster than Tahnee would have thought possible, before going through his pre-flight checks – and the next moment the chopper was airborne, and they were heading south at breakneck speed.

The helicopter was top of the line, able to make the journey to Melbourne in one go – if only just. It didn’t hurt that her team had souped it up just a bit beyond its original specs. Probably it wouldn’t have been certified if they’d tried to run the modifications past anyone in authority, but Tahnee wouldn’t have been where she was if she’d overly concerned herself with things like that.

They thundered into the rapidly darkening evening, not saying much, with Tahnee’s nerves returning at full force now that she had nothing to do but sit and wait. Patience had never been her strong suit to begin with, and the stakes had never been so high.

“What was it you wanted me to do again after I drop you off?” Liam asked suddenly, his voice buzzing through the intercom, and Tahnee felt a surge of gratitude. She knew that Liam knew exactly what to do… but she also knew that he knew that she was in dire need of a distraction.

“Refuel, then head to Sydney if you haven’t heard from me within three hours,” she said brusquely, all business. Ugh, I sound like Robb! “I haven’t been able to get in touch with Robb’s team, and I’m concerned about what might be going on there. Keep trying to get in touch with them.”

“Aye aye, cap’n,” said Liam. “And if I make contact with them?”

“Find out why the hell they’ve been avoiding my calls,” Tahnee said. “Help them out if they’re in trouble, and then get their assistance with me and Robb if possible. And avoid calling me unless absolutely necessary – chances are I’m going to end up as Hargreaves’s prisoner, and it seems like they might have some kind of voice imitation tech.” Her jaw tightened. “If you call, it might not be me on the other end. If you ask how I’m going and I say I’m just peachy, then you know you’re talking to me and I can talk freely. If I say I can’t complain, then I’m in trouble and you can’t trust anything I say. Anything else, it’s not me.”

Liam was quiet a moment, and she could sense how tense he was. He clearly didn’t like the plan, but also knew that she wasn’t going to be talked out of flying headfirst into whatever situation was going on down there.

Which might be nothing, Tahnee tried to remind herself. Maybe the strange phone call from Robb really had been him wanting to keep things formal while he tore their mate bond to shreds. Maybe he’d told the rest of his team they weren’t to take any calls from her, just so she’d know how completely persona non grata she’d really become to him. Maybe when she got to Melbourne, she’d be greeted coolly and told by Robb that he never wanted to see her again.

But…

But she really didn’t think so. Her gut was telling her something was wrong.

“I know I can’t talk you out of this,” Liam said quietly, after a minute or so of silence. “So as long as you’re set on doing it, open the little compartment next to your seat there.”

Glancing down, Tahnee saw what he was talking about – there was a small, square-shaped box attached to her flight seat, and she flipped it open without questioning him. Inside there was a small assortment of things – some she recognized as tiny cameras or other surveillance equipment, but others she didn’t recognize at all.

“What should I be looking for?”

“Small red box – like a ring box,” Liam answered her, not taking his eyes off the helicopter’s windshield.

“Why, Liam, I never knew you cared,” she cooed, though she knew the joke was weak to start with, and Liam didn’t laugh. She saw the box right away and lifted it out, opening it up.

Inside sat a tiny silver disc, flat and round, almost like a small button. It wasn’t a complete circle, however – it had a small slit cut into it, from the edge to the middle. Tahnee lifted it up, inspecting it. “What’s this?”

“A new, state-of-the-art tracking device,” Liam said. “Aliir has been working on it for a while, but it’s not completely finished yet. Still, we’ve had a lot of success with the trials we’ve done with it. And it’ll let me know where you are at all times if you slip it on underneath one of the buttons of your shirt.”

Tahnee understood immediately. Taking the top button of her shirt in one hand, she slid the tracking device into place underneath it, the slit cut into the circle sliding around the thread that attached the button to the shirt and keeping it in place. Once she let go of the shirt, the tracking device was completely invisible.

“It’s pretty basic,” Liam continued, once the tracking device was in place. “We can’t communicate or anything like that. It’ll only tell me where you are.”

He didn’t have to elaborate. Tahnee felt a flood of gratitude – she’d been in such a rush she almost couldn’t believe she’d overlooked such an obvious flaw in her plan.

Her plan, which basically hinged on getting captured and then winging it from there. It wasn’t exactly something she was looking forward to… but she had to do it. Robb’s life, and the safety of the sanctuary, depended on it.

And she wasn’t exactly loving the idea of getting the Agency involved, either. Frankly, she would’ve preferred to leave them out of the situation entirely and not have cops all up in her business, but she knew that they were the best option for breaking her and Robb out of Hargreaves’ lair. As much as she loved and trusted her people, she knew that when it came to dealing with Hargreaves, Robb’s team was the best in the field.

Still. The idea of bringing the Agency into this gave her the heebie-jeebies. It was likely that no one there knew that she and Robb were mates, and she didn’t want to jeopardize his job by revealing that knowledge, or get him in trouble for not arresting her all those years ago.

And moreover, she didn’t want to end up behind bars because of all this. Especially since in this instance, she was actually trying to help, rather than hinder, Agency operations.

Of course, it would just be the icing on the cake if it turned out that she was putting her life and her freedom in jeopardy, and Robb really had just been calling her up to break it all off.