ALEC

A DAY LATER

If there was anything to say about it...between a detective, a seasoned bounty hunter, and a claimed tracker with a dog, he really thought they would have made more progress than they had.

Several hours had gone by, spent working on locating Kishan, with—much to Alec's dismay—not as much to show for it as he would have hoped.

They had even gone as far as to split ways—as much as Alec had first wearied against it. He hadn't wanted to repeat the same mistake that had landed them in this predicament in the first place; being caught off guard while split up. But after a stern reminder from Maize that she could more than take care of herself, and his honest minor concern for Ryder so long as the guy had that deadly canine with him—which he did, at all times—his opinion, though it had never been put to vote, was disregarded. At least it aided them in covering more ground.

They used new cell phones to keep in touch—just one of they multiple wonders from Ryder's underground warehouse of madness that they had allied themselves with. The last he checked, Ryder and his dog had been investigating around the local car shops and rentals, asking to see if anyone—especially anyone fitting Hill's description—had been seen looking for a set of wheels supposedly to leave town. But so far he hadn't reported anything.

Maize...well Maize had gone off to do he didn't even know what. Only every so often did she call in with an update telling them to mark off places that she had already been to. Once she did tell them that it hadn't been logged that any authorities had heard of the fire, or that there was any activity going on in their scanners. How she managed to get access to that information, Alec didn't even want to know. But no reported car thefts. Whether that meant Hill would show up later to do either—get a car or steal one—they didn't know yet. But for now, it meant their search was narrowed down to the town, and whatever small areas surrounded it.

Like he said, they were covering ground. But there wasn't much in terms of actual leads to show for it, merely things to rule out.

As for him, Alec had gone back to the caves—alone, to re-look at the scene they had left there where the abduction of his friend had taken place.

He didn't have a forensics team with him nor did he have a means to preserve the area like might have happened with his regular procedures following up a suspected abduction-case. But it never hurt to follow up on the scene of the crime—he thought that in their rush the day before, there had to be things that they had missed.

He was standing over the same spot he had been hours before, looking down and inspecting the reminiscents of crimson that had long since dried to a stain on the grey rock floor. It was almost like a sense of deja vu. Only this time, his mind wasn't struck into panic, his blood wasn't deranged and pumping from the effects of being shot at, this time he was calm, this time he would be looking at things more closely.

He had light with him, and this time, it was bright enough to illuminate five feet of the tunnel in each direction from where he was standing. Now that he had a full capsule of light, it was easier to see the whole crime scene as it was. And this time, it did not take him long to find what they day before they had missed entirely.

There was blood on the side of the wall, too.

Not as much as had been left of the ground, this was fainter, as if it hadn't had time to properly coat the surface of the rock as the other had. A quick, sudden strike. A faint mental image was beginning to form in the detective's mind; a figure jumps the other from behind, uses the moment of shock to slam their head into the rock and disable them, they the other body falls to the floor with a bleeding head-wound that seeps onto the floor. Creating the stain he was standing in front of.

So that's what happened.

How it all must have played out. Especially since Kishan was not one to be taken down easily, he had combat training, and had most definitely gained more experience as an undercover bureau agent. His attacker would have needed the element of surprise. Unexpected. A jump, and then—out, just like that.

It didn't explain a lot, but it confirmed what Alec had already suspected.

He returned from the tunnels and hour later, having gotten a summon from each of his teammates in their widespread game of manhunt. He found himself leaning against the walls of a restaurant dinner a little while later, standing in an empty parking lot corner. The dog-owner was already there, with cette canine seated calmly at his feet. Now there we only missing one.

"Any leads on your end?" he asked Ryder as the two stood on opposite ends waiting for Maize to show up.

"Nothing significant enough to lead anywhere. You start saying you're looking a for some shady people, and all of a sudden it's like every person they saw that day had something 'suspicious' about them. If I bothered to follow further into any of those, I would be looking at half the residents in this town—a town populated at over three-thousand," Ryder responded. Then he raised his eyes, giving him a look. "What about you? Find anything worth mentioning on your little expedition back into my tunnels?"

"Nothing I'm sure we didn't already figure," Alec muttered. "It helped me see things clearer, but nothing else."

"Shit. So we've got nothing eh?"

"Not quite."

They turned to where Maize stood, now walking towards them.

"You found something?" Alec asked, blatant hope already lining his tone after thinking they had all come up empty.

Maize stopped in front of them. "I did."

"Care to share with the class?" Ryder swept his arm around in a lazy gesture.

"But of course," Maize answered with a touch of amusement as she regarded the both of them. "I think I've found out where our little friends from Zmeya are staying. Bet storming through the woods to kill us really tired them out, I found out from a local realistate owner that her motel had been filled up with a bunch of guys flying in from somewhere. Showed up two days ago too. What a coincidence, huh?"

"But how do we confirm for certain that it is Zmeya?"

Maize gave him a shrug of her shoulders. "Simple; we knock on their door and find out."

The property Maize later led them to was further away from the main roads, near the outskirts on the opposite side they had originally come from Ryder's tunnels. There wasn't much to say about it for starters, other than the fact that it would be accessible on short notice and must have been well in affordability made sense. Alec had seen his fair share of rough buildings, and this one was far from the worst, but it didn't exactly fall under the category of 'best' either.

"This place is trash," Ryder didn't hesitate to point out from where they stood glaringly across the street, inconspicuously studying the building from a short distance away.

"It's fitting then," Maize replied without missing a beat.

The canine owner flashed her a half eye-roll half amused look before he tilted his head down and grinned. "Well, after you."

"Hold on," Alec stopped them with a pointed look, calling attention that the two of them seemed to be disregarding one very important detail. "Look, we don't know just yet how many are in there or what they've got in terms of gunfire left over."

"Then this should be fun," Maize replied.

"Don't we need a plan—or something?"

"Since when do you ever go in with a plan?" she scoffed with a testing raise of her eyebrow, to which he couldn't think of a defensive response at the present time. "And besides, I thought we had one."

"Knock on their door and say hi?" He meant it sarcastically.

"Knock on their door and say hi," Maize confirmed with an upwards lift of her lips.

They stood in front of the door, giving a moment of silence to listen for any indicators on the other side.

"Looks quiet," Ryder commented.

Maize was taking a stance in front of the door. "Then let's greet them with a loud wake up call..."

The door was kicked open an instant later, courtesy of Maize's boot, having been raised and shot forward in a flash with enough power that seem to nearly slam the door right off its hinges. Once flown open with a loud and not at all subtle burst, frantic shouts of surprise and anger rose up as she, himself and Ryder stood in the doorway.

Gang members scrambled to their feet in alarm, completely caught off their guard by this sudden intrusion, and some of them had frozen in shock to stare at the woman who had butchered their front entrance.

Alec couldn't see her face from behind her, but he didn't need to see her in order to know that she was wearing a lethally wicked grin as she took a calm step inside. "Hi there."

Instantly the guys each reached for their guns but Alec and Ryder were faster reacting, training their own weapons on the frozen gang members causing them to freeze in their tracks at this sight of his twin glocks and Ryder's similar pairing, along with his snarling dog of course.

Alec tisked with a threatening upward twitch of his lips. "Not so fast."

Ryder was glaring from his side. "You assholes owe me house insurance," he muttered to the lot of them—earning some odd looks as a few of the gang members shot one another subtly confused glances.

Alec rolled his eyes.

"You and I have a very different definition of what 'knock' means," he pointed out to Maize a few minutes later once they had finished wrangling up all of the Zmeya men into one room—fifteen from his count—with instructions to sit quietly or earn a snarl and a potential bite from the very large dog watching each of them.

"I'm sure we do," the bounty hunter replied with a hint of amusement shining in those burning eyes before her gaze tightened, though she never lost her grin of confidence. She turned to Zmeya. "I hope you fellas are in a chatty mood."

"Not particularly." The one closest to her glared up at her—light hair, and a black ink neck tattoo leaking out from under the collar of his shirt

"Good thing I wasn't really asking then," she replied calmly.

"Where's our agent?" Alec questioned stiffly, passing a cold gaze over each of them.

"What?"

"I wouldn't bother trying to play games with these two," Ryder muttered his input clear enough to be heard as a warning, "neither I find are very patient."

Alec resisted the urge to shoot a glare at the man, but he wouldn't take his eyes off any of the gang members.

Maize strode forward, every coil of her body radiating with the kind of easy relaxation before the inevitable strike, like a wire drawn back prepared to snap forward an hurt you at any second. "He's right, I'm not patient when it comes to things like this—so I'll make this clear once now." Her eyes blazed at the men. "You and your gangle of assholes took someone from us and we want him back. I'm sure you all had a job to do but so do we, so how about a little cooperation? If not, look again behind me and tell me we don't have the right means of prompting."

Eyes flickered back to the guns in each of his and Ryder's hands and a deep rumble vibrated through the air from the canine, some of the guys visibly shuddered, but others held their glared planted firm.

The guy who had snapped arguably up at her the first time wore a glare of anger as he met her gaze head on. "We don't know what you're talking about."

Alec mentally scoffed. "Like hell you don't," he retorted as the guy's attention turned to him. Alec saw he looked as if he was about to say something else when the guy nearest to him cut in, speaking quickly.

"He's telling the truth, man! Look we don't know what you're going on about!"

"Your backstabbing associate abducted our agent—your target—and we want to know where they hell you're keeping him because it sure isn't here," Maize snapped, somehow keeping a lid on the tight fuse that was most definitely riling up inside her.

"What the bloody fuck are you talking about? What associate?"

"Maria Hill—ex-agent. Ring any bells?" Alec said.

Neck tattoo shook his head slightly and snarled furiously from the floor. "That bitch? She turned tail and fled with you lot—whoever the hell she works for, it sure as fuck isn't us!"

Alec stiffened.

"We don't have Karan! Hell, until now we assumed he outran us like you did. You fucking cops show up here out of nowhere spitting this crap!" The gang member snarled.

"I am no cop," Ryder muttered dangerously in response.

"And quite frankly, neither am I..." Maize added solidly. "So...none of you had any idea about Hill?"

"Your ears fucking dead? Our guy said no already!" Another member shouted from the back, but a louder growl from Kota had him shutting up quickly.

Shit. Alec cursed, nearly dragging a hand through his hair though he held himself against it. He had seen this as a possibly—that Hill might not have met up with Zmeya right after the attack for whatever reason. Now confirmed. But that was because they had newly learned that she wasn't working even with them to begin with. That threw yet another wrench into the problem. That meant there was no confirmation the she and these gang members were even working for the same people—or person.

"That's it, tie these guys up," Maize said. "We'll call the authorities here after we leave."

"Hell! No fair!" One guy cried out, earning him a sharp glare from the bounty hunter.

Ryder chuckled humourlessly. "Care to try arguing with the lady again?" he asked as Kota hunched forward and growled threateningly.

The guy who spoke and those around him paled and begrudgingly looked away, muttering a low 'no'.

Alec and Maize walked out together as Ryder begrudgingly did the deed of typing up the bad guys, pulling out his temporary restraints while Kota served as his watchful backup. Though it didn't seem like any of the gang members would try anything. And if they did—Alec felt bad for them.

He and Maize stood just outside the entrance—out of ear shot but still close enough in case they needed to get back quickly. He crossed his arms and Maize stood in front, half facing facing him.

"So...she's working alone..." she began thinkingly.

"Or for somebody else," Alec put in, suddenly slumping against the wall as a new wave of defeat washed over him. He mentally cursed. "Dammit—that means we're back to square one! We've found nothing. The only lead we had led nowhere..." He gritted his teeth. "For all we know Kishan could already be—"

"Don't, Alec." Maize eyes were blazing sternly. "Don't you think like that. Don't do that to yourself."

"Well fuck, Maize, what now then?" he demanded. He didn't mean for his frustration to seep through to her, but it was hard.

She met him with an even gaze, ignoring the escape of the grip he was supposed to have on his temper.

"Simple; we keep looking."

He stared into her un waving gaze for several seconds before finally he sighed. "You're confident."

"One of us has to be," she replied.

That managed to bring a faint twitch of the corner of his lips upwards. "Ouch."

"I promise, we won't give up until we get them—I never quit a mission," she said with more determination that he had, that's as for sure.

"Well...they're not going to make it easy for us, that's for damn sure," he muttered in reply as he ran a hand through his hair tiredly. "I don't like these games."

"Neither do I."

Alec suddenly threw his head back. "Well shit—if they didn't know before, we just told those guys that we lost Kishan and that their target is no longer under our surveillance."

Maize didn't seem all that concerned about it and shrugged. "They'll be in jail soon. That information won't do them much good for a while."

He said, "Unless they can relay it forward."

They met each other's stares as she answered, "Let's hope not."