If you see images ^ they shouldn't be there and I'm not sure why they are.

ALEC

They ran around for what felt like hours searching, until they were forced to stop.

"The scent trail ends here."

The canine owner and his dog stopped dead ahead, standing in the mouth of an open cave as light from the outside flooded through and flashed in Alec's eyes. His reaction was to shield them, after too long of having been adjusted to the dark. On the ground, the black shepherd had his nose prowling across the ground and soil, but whatever scent had led them here seemed to have disappeared or gotten mixed in with the scents of the forest that it was becoming too difficult to sort out. And he knew why.

Smoke. The smell of burning and ashes still rested heavily in the air around them. And that's when Alec realized, they were close to the house. He could smell the reminisce of the burning fire in the air, still see the cloud of ugly grey vapour rising from not too far off in the distance above the trees.

"Where are we?" Maize asked, looking around. Her body language was tense, her eyes edgy, as if prepared for another onslaught of attackers to suddenly find their way towards them, but there was nothing. Silence. They were the only ones there.

"This is the same entrance I brought your agent friends to escape through, before coming to save your asses that is," the dog wrangler said, his eyes hard as steel as he stared blankly through the trees ahead. "I told them to keep heading the way we came, which means, for whatever reason, they chose to ignore my instructions and doubled back..."

"They might have had a reason," Maize started, her voice holding an ominous tone that instantly made Alec's mind flashback to the discovery they had made halfway through the tunnels. If the look they shared when she met his eye was any indication, she was thinking the exact same thing.

"They might have been attacked, jumped in the dark, taken by surprise," he suggested, running through possible scenarios that would fit an explanation for the blood they found. A non-lethal amount, but enough that it was clear someone had been hurt in those caves. "Whoever did it probably smashed their radio to cut communication. That would explain the damage and would have given Kishan and Maria a reason to get out of there. We just need to find out where they went and why we can't find them now..." he trailed off, casting a gaze in an arc around them, not sure what he hoped to see. Every tree looked more or less the same to him, he was no woodland tracker, he wouldn't even know the first way to start tracking two people in a forest this size.

The dog owner cut his thoughts short with a low hum of contemplation.

"Yeah..." he murmured quietly. "That's one theory."

Alec turned and furrowed his eyes into a scrutinizing glare, not liking the condescending tone behind the other's voice. "You have another?" he questioned.

Ryder looked up and met his eyes, deadly calm. "That depends..." he said slowly.

"On what?" Alec's patience was running thinner and thinner with every second.

"How well you think you know those agents of yours."

Alec heard the words and narrowed his eyes while Maize regarded her friend with hinting suspicion. "What are you getting at, Ryder?" she asked.

"Look," the other began steadily, shoving his hands in his pockets to appear less on the offensive. "I don't want to derange any confidence you have in those two federal agents of yours...but your detective's theory holds one major wrong-factor."

"Oh yeah? And what's that?" Alec asked with a prick of annoyance.

"No one else was in the tunnels."

Alec was caught off guard. Maize seemed the same as she asked in disbelief, "What?"

"How can you possibly tell that?" he questioned, thinking the steel-eyed rifle carrier was just trying to mess with them.

But he wasn't.

"I can't," Ryder began, unfazed by their lack of belief in his claims. "But Kota can."

Right, the shepherd. "And I'm supposed to assume you speak dog now?" Alec drawled sarcastically.

This time Ryder did flash him a look of irritation. "No, but he's trained for this sort of work; scent detection, tracking, etcetera. I can tell no one we know passed through these tunnels because Kota would have given an indication otherwise. How else do you think I make sure that these things stay a secret and that random far-distance hikers don't accidentally stumble through one?"

"Great, and your point?" Alec said.

"That is my point. The only people whose scents have crossed through these tunnels have been our own and theirs," Ryder finished in a low voice. "So, I'll ask again, how well do you think you know your agents?"

"I've known Kishan for years," Alec snapped instantly. He felt like he was in the middle of an interrogation, although for once, he was on the other side of the table, handcuffed and without a way out as questions were thrown at him left and right.

Ryder didn't falter. "And the other?"

This time, Alec was not so quick to respond.

A sudden damp and icy feeling spurred somewhere in the pit of his stomach, clenching uncomfortably.

"Ryder, you think that..." Maize trailed off, her eyes glazing over slightly as the rest of her question could be read through her expression.

The canine owner met her eyes, not harshly, but he also lacked any touch of gentleness. To him, this was all just stating facts, and he spoke as such. "Is it not a possibility?"

"Are you saying you think Maria might have been the cause of why they disappeared?" Alec started disbelievingly. "That what? She somehow injured Kishan and smashed the radio?"

Ryder shrugged. "Perhaps."

"Why would she? She's a federal agent," Alec argued.

Ryder actually snorted with a roll of his eyes at that. "Oh yes, and the badge and title mean you're automatically trustworthy and immune to things like, oh I don't know; corruption."

Alec glared. He knew exactly what the guy was insinuating happened. "I didn't say that," he argued. "But she was Kishan's partner, on the same job that landed him in the situation he's in now, she's—"

"Yes, yes, I've heard the story." Ryder stopped him, waving a hand in dismissal. "I also heard that she was the one who found you on your little mascaraed back in Mexico. Not the other way around." He paused to give Alec a mocking look. "And you weren't suspicious about that detail at all, Detective?"

Alec felt his temper rise at the steel-eyes man. "Course I was," he replied truthfully. "But I also heard her side of the story, to see if she was even the real Maria Hill that she claimed to be when I met her, since we were told she hadn't made it—"

"By that other agent, right? The one you are initially protecting?"

Alec nodded to confirm. "Kishan, yeah," he said. "But he also identified her as the real thing. And then she explained her story and how she got to where we were and all."

"Which was how exactly?"

Alec narrowed his eyes into a sharper glare. "I thought you said you heard the story already," he stated pointedly.

"I did." Ryder didn't falter. "I'm just making sure you look over all your facts."

"What makes you so sure that she did anything?"

Ryder held his gaze for a moment before her shrugged. "Someone was in my room yesterday."

"Are you kidding me? What the hell does that have to do with anything?!" Alec exclaimed disbelievingly.

"Because—someone was in my room while we weren't there, messed around with stuff, looking for something from my guess. And they made a mistake, that's how I know I'm right. There were only two people in the house while we were away, an since you said you trust your friend agent so profoundly, where does that leave the other?" Ryder questioned, but his tone implied that he didn't care for their answer, his mind was made up on the subject.

Alec turned to Maize, who, if he was being completely honest, he had expected to have barged in by now. "Maize..." he started, staring at her expression with a twinge of worry. "You're being awfully quiet over there."

She didn't respond, not right away. Her eyes were distant, almost reluctant as she finally looked up to meet him, speaking firmly.

"Alec...maybe Ryder might be going somewhere right about this," she started slowly.

Ryder scoffed quietly from the side. "There is no 'might be'. I am going somewhere right with this," he stated.

"You mean your accusations saying that what? Hill was the one who attacked Kishan and made them disappear?" Alec turned back to Maize. "And you believe him?"

"I think it's entirely possible," she began seriously. "Listen, I didn't tell you this before, but back in Mexico, after we found Hill and had heard her out, Cassandra had got me alone and warned me about her. She said there was something possibly off about her story—"

Alec interrupted, his body frozen. "And you didn't think to tell me that before why?" he questioned with disbelief as he regarded her through narrowed eyes. "Don't you think that would have been something I would have needed to know? You're telling me you suspected her of being capable of something like this and you didn't think to clue me in at all?"

"No, not the whole time," she corrected him, "just at first. I thought I had it under surveillance, I was cautious, I kept a lookout for any odd behaviour that would point to anything untrustworthy. But everything about her seemed fine, she was close to Kishan, she didn't talk much but she wasn't malicious...I didn't think she was faking—"

"They were both undercover agents for a reason! They were trained to know how to live a lie and keep a straight face!"

"So, you are starting to see it," Ryder commended snidely.

"No, I—" But Alec quickly stopped himself when he realized; he was contradicting himself. And Ryder seemed to see the gears of that realization click in his mind at just the right time.

"You saw the blood, you found the radio the way it was. What happened is clear. I told you the facts; no one else was in there. The only reason they would be gone now is if they both agreed or if one forced the other—and from the blood spatter, I highly doubt it was the former. Now, you're the detective, you may be a pain in the ass, but you can't be that blind to not see what's right in front of you. There's no other way to look at this, you were crossed." Ryder paused just enough to cross his arms and give him a daring look. "Tell us we're wrong."

Alec clenched his fists tightly but he didn't do as Ryder said. The guy was right. Alec wasn't blind.

His mind was clouded, but everything they were saying...hell, everything he had seen. It all pointed to the same thing. He just didn't want to believe it, because of what it meant for them.

It meant that Kishan was gone. Taken. And the only person they could suspect was the person they had originally believed to be on their side.

Agent Hill.

They had been betrayed, that fact sunk in like the steel of a cold blade. Unmerciful and cold.

A game had been played, Alec knew with a feeling of hopelessness. And they had just lost their most valuable piece.