Kaede knew they had been deceived.
He simply did not know by whom.
For two days, his squad had followed a trail with evidence that had appeared convincing at first.
Broken branches.
Small footprints.
Occasional drops of blood.
Signs of hurried movement from someone attempting to reach the Land of Fire before pursuit could close around them.
Yet the farther they travelled, the less sense the trail made.
The footprints vanished upon hard ground, only to reappear several hundred meters away. Blood was found upon branches that had not been disturbed. Broken vegetation suggested someone had passed through, but there were no corresponding marks upon the earth.
By the time Hanako discovered that several of the footprints had been pressed into the soil from above rather than formed by someone walking, they had already lost an entire day.
Someone had manufactured the trail.
That discovery only strengthened their original conclusion.
Karin Uzumaki had not escaped alone.
A frightened eight-year-old girl would not possess the experience necessary to mislead an elite tracking squad.
Someone skilled had taken her.
Someone who knew precisely how Grass shinobi conducted a pursuit.
Kaede halted upon a thick branch and raised his fist.
Riko, Taro and Hanako stopped behind him.
"We return to the last confirmed point," Kaede said.
Taro scowled. "That puts us another day behind them."
"We are already behind them."
"And if they cross the border?"
"Then charging farther along a false trail will not bring them back."
Taro said nothing more.
The squad changed direction.
They moved rapidly through the forest, abandoning stealth in favor of speed. Riko extended her sensory field whenever they stopped, searching for any familiar trace of chakra.
There was nothing.
No frightened child.
No powerful infiltrator.
No group of foreign shinobi escorting a valuable prisoner toward the border.
Only animals, travellers and distant Grass patrols.
When they finally returned to the area outside the village, Hanako began the search again.
This time, she ignored the obvious signs.
Whoever had created the false trail had wanted them to see those.
Instead, she searched for what had been concealed.
A patch of moss pressed slightly lower than the growth around it.
A thin scratch upon a stone.
The faint impression left when a small foot landed upon the exposed root of a tree.
The signs were scarce.
They were also heading south.
Hanako raised her hand.
Kaede landed beside her.
"You found something?"
"Possibly."
She pointed toward a shallow stream.
Hanako followed the bank.
After several minutes, she stopped beside a section of exposed stone and crouched.
A tiny thread of red fibre had become trapped beneath a splinter of bark.
Hair.
Kaede examined it without touching it.
"Karin?"
"It could be."
Riko approached and placed two fingers near the strand.
A faint trace of chakra remained.
Her eyes opened.
"It belongs to her."
The squad became silent.
Their target had gone south.
The false trail had sent them east.
Kaede's expression hardened.
The supposed infiltrator was more capable than they had estimated.
"Follow it."
The pursuit resumed.
Progress was slow.
Whoever travelled beside Karin understood tracking well enough to avoid mud, soft earth and thick vegetation. They moved through streams, crossed rocks and used fallen trees to conceal their passage.
Several times, Hanako lost the trail completely.
Each time, Riko used the faint residue of Karin's unusual chakra to regain it.
Even then, the trace was strangely inconsistent.
At some points, the Uzumaki girl's chakra clung strongly to the surroundings.
At others, it vanished as though she had ceased to exist.
Riko could not explain it.
Transformation Techniques could alter appearance, but they did not erase a person's chakra signature so completely.
Suppression techniques existed, but Karin had never been trained in them.
That left the unknown captor.
Kaede increasingly disliked the mission.
They were not pursuing some impulsive bandit who had stolen a valuable child.
They were following someone who understood Grass procedures, tracking methods and sensory techniques.
Perhaps someone who had studied their village for years.
By the afternoon of the following day, the trail led them to a wide river.
Hanako stopped among the trees.
"There was a camp here."
The area beneath an old tree had been carefully cleaned.
Too carefully.
The remnants of a small fire had been broken apart and scattered. Disturbed earth had been smoothed over. Fish bones and fruit skins were absent.
Only faint discoloration upon several stones proved that a fire had ever existed.
Taro folded his arms.
"They cleaned everything."
"Not everything," Hanako said.
She pointed toward the ground.
Several darker patches remained in the soil.
Blood.
A considerable amount of it.