sort. The dog stood at her side, his nose twitching with the need to follow the scent.
Max approached the door first, taking the right side. Zeke came up on the left. After a moment they both disappeared inside, each heading in opposite directions.
Julianne stepped up to the doorway, following Max. Brody didn’t like being separated from her, but took the left, following Zeke and Cheetah.
The house was plush, with at least a dozen different rooms, but there was no sign of a captured agent.
In fact, there wasn’t anyone at all. Other than the three guards they’d taken care of, the place was empty.
* * *
Julianne couldn’t believe that Angus Dupree and his henchmen had gotten away. Frustrated, she let go of Thunder’s collar. “Find, Thunder. Find Jake.”
Her partner went to work, nose to the floor, instantly alerting in the main living area. But then he kept going, down the hallway to one of the bedrooms, where he alerted again.
In the kitchen. The bathroom. Another bedroom.
Thunder found evidence of Jake in nearly every room in the entire house.
“He was here,” Julianne said, glancing at Zeke. “Probably recently. We must have just missed them.”
“Julianne, come look at this,” Max called from one of the back bedrooms.
“What did you find?”
His expression was grim. “Blood. Fresh blood along the side of the desk chair.”
She sucked in a harsh breath. “Thunder, heel.”
The dog bounded to her side.
“Find Jake,” she repeated. He’d already alerted in this room, but over by the side of the bed, not the desk.
Thunder put his nose to the floor, sniffing along the edge of the desk. When he got to the side where the blood was, he alerted again.
“We’ll need to test the blood to match Jake’s DNA, but according to Thunder it’s likely his.” She glanced around the room. “Maybe this is where they kept him locked up, either at the desk or on the bed.”
“That’s the picture I’m getting.” Max opened the desk drawers, but they were empty.
Julianne went down on her knees to look under the bed. A flash of silver caught her eye. “Thunder, find Jake.”
The dog crawled on his belly beneath the bed, emerging a moment later with something in his mouth. Julianne gently pried it out of his jaw.
“What is it?” Max asked.
Zeke and Brody came into the bedroom. Zeke took one look at the item she held in her hand and asked, “Where did you find that?”
“Under the bed.” She looked at the heavy silver watch. “Do you recognize it?”
Zeke paled, his expression full of anguish as he nodded. “It belongs to Jake.”
“How do you know?”
Zeke took the watch and turned it over. “See here? I had it engraved.”
J: Proud to be your brother—Z.
She swallowed hard, handing the watch back to Zeke. “The evidence proves Jake was here.”
“Yeah, but where is he now?” Zeke demanded, jamming his fingers through his hair. “And what’s with the blood? Are they torturing him in order to make him talk?”
Julianne shook her head, feeling helpless. She didn’t know where Dupree had taken Jake, or why there was blood on the edge of the desk.
The news didn’t bode well for Jake’s safety.
And worse, they were back to square one.
“Okay, now what?” Zeke demanded, staring at Max. “You must have some idea of what our next move should be. We have to find Jake before Dupree kills him.”
Brody remained silent, feeling the same frustration as the rest of the FBI team. The loss of their agent was clearly taking a toll, especially on Jake’s half brother. Zeke looked mad enough to take on the world.
He couldn’t blame the guy. He’d feel the same way in his shoes.
“We need an evidence team to come in and sweep this place, make sure we haven’t missed anything,” Max said. “And we’ll take the guard into custody, see if we can get him to talk.”
Zeke scowled. “You’re assuming he knows something worth telling us.”
“Zeke.” Julianne rested a hand on the newest agent’s arm in an attempt to calm him. “At this point, we’ll take every bit of information we can get. Have faith, we’ll find your brother.”
Brody knew that Julianne’s faith was strong, while his had wavered over the years. Once again, he hated the idea that she was clearly better off without him. Their disagreement over Lilly’s disappearance as well as her bluntly negative opinion of Nate, had created a rift between them wider than the Mississippi River. Besides, as much as he felt bad for the FBI’s missing agent, he had a bigger problem to contend with.
Finding Nate Otwell and the gunman who’d assisted his escape.
“We’d better get outside,” Brody interjected. “We’ll need to get the guard airlifted out of here, along with the rest of us.”
“Yeah.” Max jammed his fingers through his short blond hair before turning and heading back through the house, Opal at his side.
The two guards they’d been forced to shoot in self-defense were of course lying where they’d left them. But when Brody looked over to the side of the house where he’d tied up the guard he’d bound and left unconscious, the guy was nowhere to be found.
“Where did he go?” Zeke demanded.
Good question. Looking closer, Brody noticed that one of the dead guards’ bodies had been disturbed. Had the guy managed to roll over here to get access to a knife? “I bound his wrists and his ankles, but he may have managed to get ahold of a knife. Still, he couldn’t have gone far.”
“Let’s see if any of the dogs can pick up his scent,” Max instructed.
Julianne took Thunder over to the spot on the ground where the bound guard had been. She pointed with her finger. “Find, Thunder. Find.”
Thunder took his time sniffing the area, then trotted off toward an area of dense brush, where the branches were broken as if someone had recently barged through.
“We’ll go in at another angle,” Max said.
Brody battled a wave of guilt as he followed Julianne and Thunder. He wanted desperately to find this guy. If the guard managed to escape, it would be his fault.
Just like Nate’s return to his criminal past was. If he hadn’t gone into the army...but he had.
So far, he hadn’t exactly been much of an asset to Julianne and Max’s case. Granted, the FBI agents had also searched the fallen guards for weapons, but he still felt responsible.
Thunder stopped for a moment, alerting on the base of a tree. Brody wondered if the guard had paused there to catch his breath.
“Good boy,” Julianne praised. “Keep going, Thunder.” She opened a bag of leaves for him to sniff. “Find.”
In the brief moment of silence, the sound of a tree branch cracking echoed loudly. Brody instantly spun north. Thunder reacted at the same time, heading in the same direction from where the sound had come.
Brody clung protectively close to Julianne. She wasn’t his responsibility