Page 52 of Dark Gambit Reliance

"There are pluses and minuses for both ground and airborne vehicles," Kian said.

"None of the three guards I interrogated mentioned a helicopter or an amphibian," Toven said. "But then none of them mentioned a tunnel either. It's possible that the tunnel is known only to Igor's inner circle, and if he has a helicopter, it is stashed deep inside the hunting grounds where it's not visible from the compound."

"What about the message to Jade?" Turner asked. "Did you compel him to deliver it after you learned about the explosives?"

"I scheduled the meeting for Friday at two o'clock local time."

"I hope you're not walking into a trap."

"I hope so too." Toven sighed. "There is more bad news. The pureblood was immune to thralling and to shrouding, which means that I can't seize the purebloods' minds."

Kian shook his head. "This is progressing from bad to worse, and I'm inclined to abort the whole thing. I don't want you there, and I don't want Mia and William there either. Without your mind manipulation ability, you can't protect them."

"I still have my compulsion power, and with Mia enhancing it, I can command the attackers to stand down. I ordered the pureblood to stop asking questions before I removed Igor's compulsion, and he obeyed immediately."

"That's good," Turner said. "Freeing Jade from Igor's compulsion is still our best chance of eliminating him without committing fully to taking on his entire force."

Kian drummed his fingers on the desk. "She might know about the explosives and where the detonation switch or switches are. If she can disable them, we can still proceed with stage three of our plan to free the compound."

Turner huffed out a breath. "Aborting the plan is also a viable option. Sofia can meet up with Tim, and he can draw a portrait of Igor that we can feed to the facial recognition software. Igor must leave the compound from time to time, and he can't fool cameras with his compulsion powers. If he goes through an airport, we might catch his trail and eliminate him when he's not behind the protective shield of his compound." Turner crossed his arms over his chest. "He might be able to detonate the explosives remotely before we manage to disarm him. I don't think he would, but it's a possibility that we need to account for."

Kian frowned. "Why would he do that? The compound wouldn't be under siege, and he would hope that his cronies would rescue him. He's not going to blow them up along with everyone else, and he wouldn't have time to give them a warning to use the escape tunnel. We can liberate the place after capturing him."

"Instead of detonating immediately, Igor's signal could initiate a sequence," Turner said. "The inner circle purebloods would know to evacuate, and the rest wouldn't know that anything was going on and would stay."

37

SOFIA

When Marcel's phone rang, Sofia knew it was news from Karelia.

It didn't require intuition or precognition.

Marcel was on an enforced vacation, so he didn't receive calls about work, and it seemed that he didn't have friends because his phone never rang with personal calls either. He'd told her that his mother lived in Scotland and that they spoke on the phone about once a week, but she hadn't heard him talking to his mother even once.

They didn't seem to be close.

If Sofia could call her father, Helmi, and her aunts, she would be calling them daily, but no one was allowed phones in the compound. Every time she'd returned home, she'd had to deposit her cell phone in the security office.

"Thanks for the update. I'll let Sofia know." Marcel ended the call and regarded her with a frown.

Her gut squeezed. "Bad news?"

"They caught a pureblood guard, and he told them that Igor has the entire compound rigged with explosives."

Sofia felt the blood drain from her face. "Dear Mother of All Life. Why?"

"So no one is caught alive, I guess. Kian thinks that Igor has an escape tunnel. It doesn't fit his profile to go down with his people."

"The mission has to be aborted." She waved at his phone. "Call your boss and tell him to pull his people out of there."

"Toven already sent a message with the guard to Jade. They hope she will have a plan. In fact, she might know about Igor's secret tunnel. The fable she wrote to Emmett talked about the rats digging a tunnel to save the lions, so maybe it was a hint for him to find the tunnel and use it to infiltrate the compound."

She frowned. "What are you talking about? What fable?"

Marcel smoothed his hand over the back of his head. "In all the commotion, I forgot that I didn't tell you how Jade had contacted Emmett. She wrote a fable for a writing competition. It was written very cleverly so only he would understand that it was from her. Even if Igor saw it, which I'm sure he did, he wouldn't have known that it contained a secret message. I can show it to you."

He sat on the couch next to her and scrolled on his phone. "I saved it in my notes." He handed her the device.