ROYAL ROCK(69)

I sighed. “Get them here faster.”

“I will do what I can,” Max said, and he disappeared.

As far as we could tell, Nicolai Corvin was actually Freddy Adub, a native of the real Corvin’s village. We didn’t know much about Adub, aside from the fact that he grew up poor and was likely working for Corvin when Corvin actually died.

Bryce was in the hands of some politically motivated madman and we barely knew anything about him. That was one downside of Starkland: We weren’t that great at keeping records, and the records we did keep were very general. I didn’t know what motivated Corvin besides the rebellion or what had made him turn to the rebels to begin with. My men were hunting down leads in his home village, but that could take days to bear fruit, and I didn’t have days.

I had hours at best. Otherwise, something bad could happen to Bryce, and soon.

There was a knock at the door. “Come,” I called.

Al stepped inside. “Sir,” he said, “I have good news.”

“That’s very welcome right now,” I said, sighing.

He sat down and connected a storage device to the computer system. He used the touch pad and pulled up a video. “One of the drones caught this.” It was grainy and dark, but it was clearly a black van driving down one of the back service roads.

“What is that?” I asked.

“I think it’s Corvin,” he said. “This isn’t authorized. It’s one of our vans, but it was supposed to have left hours ago, according to the logs at least.”

“Where does it go?”

“The drone didn’t follow it beyond the property,” he said. “They’re not programmed to do that.”

“So we lost them?”

“Not exactly.” He did some more typing and then another screen pulled up. It was another grainy, top-down view of a road with forest on either side. Al got up and pointed. “Here,” he said. “This is the van.”

“Satellite?”

“Yes,” Al said. “We managed to find their exhaust signature and linked them up with their tire tracks.”

“Good.” I nodded. “Very good. Now I see why my father invested so heavily in technology.”

“It’s very useful,” Al agreed. He scanned through a series of imagines that all followed the van as it moved down a heavily wooded road.

“What is all this?” I asked.

“It’s your land, technically,” he said. “You own most of the forest land around here, or at least the crown does. It’s kept pristine as a park. Locals hike there.”

“Where did they go?”

“Here,” he said, and he flipped to one more image.

It was a series of connected buildings. It was hard to tell what exactly it was from the grainy image, but I got the sense that it was large and industrial. There was a central building with a few structures connected to it, forming spokes coming from a hub.

“What am I looking at?” I asked him.

“I did some research. Apparently this is an old warehouse.”

“They’re in there,” I said simply.

“Yes, they are.”

“How far away is it?”

Al paused. “Not far, sir,” he said.

“How far?”

“That structure is maybe a half hour drive from here.”

“What?” I asked him, outraged. “They’re a half hour from here?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “They could have driven all night, but instead they went there.”

“They’re trying to hide right under my nose,” I said, getting angrier and angrier. “They’re trying to embarrass us, Al.”

“It seems that way to me, too, Your Highness.”

I clenched my hands into fists and had to take a deep breath to keep from destroying something. I wanted to lash out, but I knew I had to keep myself under control. My people looked to me to be a leader in times like this, and I needed to show them that I was capable of stepping up.

“Gather our men,” I said to Al.

“The army hasn’t arrived yet,” he said.

“Everyone left is coming.”

He nodded. “That will leave the estate unguarded.”

“Leave a few token men behind to watch over the place, but yes, we’re taking the bulk of anyone left.”

“Very well, sir.” He stood up.

“And, Al? Prepare my bio suit. I’m coming.”

He simply nodded, bowed, and then left.

I paced about the room, anger warring with the need to get out and get moving immediately. I knew we couldn’t strike this second, since we had to get everyone together and prepared. It was probably wisest to wait for the return of the army, but they were hours out and Corvin was so close.