Chapter 16

" A ren't you curious about how we found you?"

Rhys looked around from where he'd been staring at the horizon, as if he could somehow make the boat go faster with the power of his mind. Trent was steering the boat cheerfully, as if he didn't have a care in the world. He probably could've gone undercover as the kind of douche who'd go swanning about in a pleasure yacht, no sweat. Rhys was mildly surprised to see that he hadn't cracked a beer.

He supposed that he was kind of mildly curious about how they'd known to come here… not that he'd admit it to Trent. Encouraging him in literally any kind of endeavor only made him worse.

"Not really," he muttered.

Apparently even that was too much encouragement, because Trent barged straight on.

"Hec called us. Apparently he'd gotten some sort of panicked message from your secret friend Michael – who really isn't all that secret, by the way – saying that you were under attack while on a luxurious tropical getaway. So we asked Robb if we could come out here –"

" I asked Robb. You were already halfway out the door," Euan interjected.

"– And now here we are, come to save the day! We're old hands at the whole ‘meet your mate and immediately encounter some kind of ridiculous peril' thing," Trent went on. He paused. "I assume you only just met?"

"Yeah," Rhys said. No point in trying to cover it up – and Trent would get the truth one way or another, anyway.

Trent continued to yammer on, re-telling the story of how he met his mate Zina for the millionth time – London, secret mission, she shot him, helicopter ride, same old, same old – as Rhys tuned out, watching the green hills of the Whitsundays rising from the sea as they sped past, thinking about all the ways he would destroy those fucks who'd dared to take Maisie.

It was beyond comprehension. How could anyone think that Maisie was a spy?

His griffin provided him with a helpful visual representation of what exactly it planned to do to her captors, and Rhys was less put off by that kind of thing than he normally would have been. Griffins could be pretty bloodthirsty once their anger was up, but he knew he'd have to be very careful, given that it was the Agency he was going up against – he couldn't just let loose. Even the best possible outcome would still probably end up with him in even deeper shit than he already was in.

Still, if it came down to it, he'd forfeit his position at the Agency in a heartbeat if it meant Maisie was safe. There was nothing more to it than that.

Euan's phone buzzed.

"Hey Michael," Euan said as he answered it, and Rhys was suddenly giving him his full attention. "Yeah, we just left the island on the Agency boat –"

"Superyacht," Trent called out.

"– And we're on our way to Brisbane now with Agent Richardson, in pursuit of a helicopter with his mate on board."

Euan frowned at Michael's apparent answer.

"They've taken her to Townsville?"

The boat did a sudden veer to the right as Trent swung it northward, and Rhys wondered what the hell was going on.

Townsville was a weird choice… though at least it was closer, so they would catch up quicker. And he knew that any boat belonging to the Agency would have a few not-so-legal bells and whistles that would make it go faster than it probably should, and that Trent would be familiar with all of them.

It also probably meant that these guys were acting in a less than official capacity, if they weren't going back to headquarters. Rhys's jaw clenched.

"Where are you? Are you somewhere safe?" Euan continued into the phone. His eyebrows went up slightly, which for Euan was about the equivalent of a scream. "You're at the zoo? "

"Give me that," snapped Rhys, grabbing the phone. He had no patience for this second-hand conversation.

"You're at the fucking zoo?" he exclaimed.

"Hello to you, too," sneered Michael. "I'm safe, thanks for asking. After we had to make an emergency dash through the streets after my home office got raided and trashed. Thanks to someone , who didn't have the good sense to realize he was being tracked, obviously."

"Obviously," Rhys muttered, but he did feel a bit contrite. He'd be up shit creek without Michael and Shaz, and he knew it. He sighed. "Sorry. I really didn't mean for you to get caught up in this mess. I take it you have a good reason for being at the zoo?"

"Of course I do," Michael replied. "Shaz is taking cover at the cassowary enclosure, while I've been hanging out with the quokkas."

"Of course," Rhys said, biting his tongue to keep from yelling. There had to be more to it – Michael was an idiot, but a very particular type of idiot. In some ways, as much as Rhys hated to admit it, he was competent.

"I don't expect someone like you to understand it," Michael went on, "but the zoo is an excellent place to go when you don't want to be found by whoever it was that raided my home office and trashed it. Did I mention that someone raided my home office and trashed it?"

"Yes, you did," Rhys snapped, and resisted the temptation to add, How would you even know if someone trashed that filth-encrusted den? "And what do you mean, someone like me? "

But after a moment, he did get it. He was so used to keeping his griffin hidden that sometimes he forgot that other shifters could hide in plain sight. Even if they were quokkas and cassowaries.

"We're just laying low for a bit," Michael said. "I've popped out and shifted occasionally so that I can call my contacts and keep track of what's going on."

Rhys was pretty sure that Michael had gotten around the whole ‘your clothes and anything in your pockets shifts with you' part of being a shifter by getting Shaz to make him a jacket that stored at least three laptops and a series of chargers. The only other option was that he literally had electronics as part of his human form. The guy was never without a laptop, no matter how improbable the situation.

"They're taking Maisie to the Hotel Silver," he continued, and suddenly Rhys was all ears. "They've booked out the sixth floor."

We will turn this Hotel Silver into a pile of rubble, his griffin screeched. There will be naught but ruins once we are done with it!

I'm not going to commit murder and mass property destruction if I can help it! Rhys snapped back. Besides, have you forgotten that Maisie is in there?!

After we have rescued her, his griffin said confidently, though Rhys could detect the slightest hint of embarrassment.

"Great, thanks," Rhys said – and he meant it.

"Oh, and Aaron Merrett's the one who's been setting you up, by the way," Michael added, almost as an afterthought.

Wait – what?!

"Could you repeat that?" Rhys asked, his voice catching slightly in his throat.

Aaron?! No. No way.

Not that he knew Aaron all that well, but he knew him well enough. He'd always been one of the good guys.

Or so he'd thought. There were a lot of things that Rhys had thought he'd known.

"What's your source on this?" he demanded. "I need to know."

"I'll send you through some encrypted documents in a minute." Michael hissed. "But do not – and I repeat, do not reveal where you got this. I sent everything about you to Hector in the hope he'd come rescue your dumb arse, but I didn't realize he was out of the country. But this stuff on Aaron Merrett I've sent to no one else. I really don't need the Agency knowing I've been digging around in their shit. I'm passing it to you so you can get it where it needs to go, but if you ever tell anyone where it came from, I'm never doing you a favor ever again, you got it? You can just pay for your Netflix subscription and your luxury hotel rooms and first-class flights. Understood?"

"I never asked you to do any of that stuff in the first place," Rhys hissed back, keenly aware of both Euan and Trent's eyes upon him while Michael made him out to be some kind of freeloading scammer.

"You still took the holiday, didn't you?" Michael snapped, before muttering, "Shit. There's a tour group coming. I've got to shift back."

"Wait!" Rhys said. "You're in the enclosure? You're, what – just hiding behind a bush?!"

"I'd like to see you do better, griffin boy," Michael sneered, and hung up.

Rhys stared at the phone for a long second, trying to take everything in. Maisie was being taken to a hotel in Townsville for interrogation. Michael was in a quokka enclosure at the zoo, performing for tourists. Aaron was… a traitor?

He turned to the others. "Did you catch all that? he asked, still in disbelief.

"Enough," said Trent grimly. It was rare to see him anything other than happy-go-lucky, but apparently the idea of a traitor in their ranks was enough to make even him act serious. "I really don't know what to think about all this, but I guess we have to act on the assumption that it's true until proven otherwise."

Rhys shook his head. He was having a hard time believing it, but clearly someone had been setting him up, and if Michael had found evidence of it then he had to take it seriously, once he'd had a chance to look into it.

I found that photo of him, though, the one that could have made him into mincemeat, he thought, his mind spinning furiously. It looked like he'd been compromised. But what if he'd given the arms dealers that photo, to prove he really was with the Agency and could get them the info they wanted?

He frowned. It seemed far-fetched, but it would explain how they'd gotten the photo that gave Aaron's true identity away. It was exactly the kind of thing a bunch of crooked arms dealers would ask for, too – not only because it'd be proof, but also because it could be used as blackmail against Aaron later, if he got sick of playing the double agent.

And then, he called me while I was at the resort. He didn't say why, he just wanted to know where I was…

Why would he have called? They didn't know each other well. And Aaron shouldn't have been talking to him at all, considering he was the subject of a suspension and investigation.

Put all together, this is looking pretty fishy.

Rhys looked at his phone, but there were no documents from Michael as yet. Probably he hadn't had a chance to send them before he had to shift. Rhys could only hope that he didn't curl up in his quokka form and go to sleep for the day.

Rhys sighed. "So, Townsville," he said. "Not what I was expecting."

"Yeah, seems a bit dodgy," Trent agreed. "Definitely not procedure, at least as far as our office goes. But at least we'll get there sooner."

Euan put his hand on Rhys's shoulder. "We'll get her out safe and sound, Rhys. You have our word."

He nodded. "Thanks, guys." Even if everything else had gone completely to shit, at least Rhys knew that he could one hundred percent rely on his team.

"They'll know we nicked the boat, of course," said Trent, as he expertly steered clear of a barely visible shoal. "And they'll know that we'll be able to find out where they've taken her. We'll be walking into a trap."

"Well," said Rhys, "I guess we'd better try for the element of surprise, then."

Not that he really knew what that would entail. He supposed that he would probably just wing it – so to speak – when he got there. Sometimes it was better to let the griffin's instincts take over.

Still, it probably wouldn't hurt to have at least a vague idea of what he'd be up against – and so he pulled out his phone, looking up images of the Hotel Silver so that he could get an idea of the building's layout.

The boat – sorry, the superyacht – sped along, and Rhys stared at the water as it zoomed past, lost in thought. The thoughts were mostly along the lines of I'm coming for you, Maisie and I'm going to kill these arseholes , with some griffin rage thrown in for good measure. He just wanted to be there already – he'd never been great at exercising patience at the best of times, and times were definitely not at their best right now.

At some point Euan passed him some food that he'd presumably taken from the boat's supplies, and Rhys ate mechanically, not feeling at all like eating but knowing he needed all the energy he could get. It killed a few more seconds, anyway, and distracted him from thoughts of what might be happening to Maisie right now. He had to keep a clear mind. There was no room for error.

After what felt like an eternity, the boat started to pull in closer to the shore, and Rhys could see Townsville approaching on the horizon.

He tensed, adrenaline coursing through his veins, his fingers twitching against the edge of the console, his griffin screeching in anticipation.

Hang on, Maisie, he thought. I'm almost there.

Finally the boat pulled up at the dock, and Rhys was jumping down onto it before the boat had even completely stopped. Euan must've been close behind, because he grabbed Rhys's wrist, an unstoppable force holding a breakable object. Rhys winced as the hold tightened even further.

"Hang on," Euan said firmly. "We'll have a better chance of succeeding if we work together."

"Yeah," Trent said as he hopped down. "You've helped us all enough times in these situations – now it's our turn to help you."

Rhys wasn't sure he needed Trent's particularly annoying kind of help – but, he supposed, they had a point. Not that he was about to admit it.

"The hotel's about five hundred meters west of here," Euan said, pointing, and Rhys took off, leaving the others running to catch up.

They hurried along the foreshore, and quickly the hotel came into view. If Rhys hadn't recognized it from the pictures online and the signage, he would've recognized it by the agents hanging around outside, still in their expensive pleasure yacht clothes, trying very hard to look like they were here to enjoy milling around some budget-price accommodation with no particular goal in mind, rather than trying to keep anyone from getting to the alleged spy they were interrogating.

Whoever does their undercover training up here should be shot.

Rhys started forward, but Trent grabbed his shoulder.

"Leave it to me," he said with a grin that Rhys knew most people would describe as ‘charming'. Rhys was not charmed, but, he had to admit, Trent was probably the best person to send in to deal with these clowns.

Rhys slid in effortlessly behind a pillar, doing a much better job of looking nonchalant than these guys, while Trent and Euan went up to them, Trent already yammering on before he even reached them.

"Hey guys!" Trent said loudly. "I've brought your boat back! You guys forgot to take it back with you when you left Burr Island, so I thought I'd do you a favor and grab it for you!" He grinned, flashing his perfect white teeth. "It's okay, no need to say anything now – you can thank me later."

The agents stared at him flatly. "You're the one who stole our boat."

" Returned your boat," Trent assured him. "You forgot it! Someone could've just waltzed on board and run off with it. You're lucky me and Agent Hawkins here were around to keep it safe for you."

Euan nodded in solemn confirmation, and Rhys had to keep from rolling his eyes. He wasn't sure why the two of them seemed to enjoy their little odd couple routine so much – or even why they were friends at all, given they had almost nothing in common – but it seemed to work for them.

"Uh-huh," one of the agents said, peering at them from over the top of her oversized sunglasses. "You were just acting out of the goodness of your heart."

Trent shrugged. "Well, we would've taken our helicopter home, but someone ran off with it. You wouldn't happen to know who that was, do you?"

The agents, to their dubious credit, looked mildly abashed at that, and Trent went on, "So, do you wanna do some swapsies? Our helicopter for your boat? I think you're getting the better end of the deal, to be honest."

"I think," said the other agent, lifting up a walkie talkie, "that we're going to call our boss, and let him sort it out."

Rhys realized that this stupid charade wasn't going to last much longer – he'd have to act fast. He peered up at the sixth-floor windows from his vantage point, calling on his griffin's eagle eye to enhance his already-sharp shifter vision, and – there.

There was no mistaking that incredibly unflattering flat-top haircut.

If that guy was there, then surely Maisie couldn't be too far away.

Our mate, his griffin hissed.

"Nah," Trent said sunnily. "I don't think you need to call your boss at all. We don't need to involve the brass, right? Let's just sort this out, agent to agent. What happens on Burr Island stays on Burr Island, if you catch my drift." He winked.

Rhys didn't think he wanted to catch Trent's drift, but he did have to admit that he was doing a pretty good job of keeping the agents occupied with his idiotic chatter.

It's now or never.

Rhys leapt into the air before he'd even finished shifting, propelling himself upward. He was vaguely aware of the yells coming from the agents below him, but he didn't care. He cared slightly more about whether any civilians had spotted him, but, he hoped, any reports would be waved off as tipsy holiday-goers having had one too many mojitos by the pool. In any case, it wasn't enough to stop him.

The only thing that mattered was Maisie.

I'm here. You're safe.

He circled past the window again – and there, sitting across from Flat-Top, was Maisie.

I'm coming for you, he vowed. And I'm going to make them pay.