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“Maybe. I did mention they should, but Tori was supposed to be home hours ago. We were supposed to leave for the airport twenty minutes ago,” Adrien replied.
“You think the mole took them?” I finally asked.
“We don’t know, but we’re worried,” Celeste answered.
“If they left the pack grounds they knew to take guards with them, right?” Cory asked, looking at all the parents.
“I don’t know what she knows right now. She’s been there physically for all the conversations, but mentally, I’m not sure how much she took in. Kara won’t stop pacing, and it’s freaking me out, Cory. That’s why we’re here,” Celeste said, looking over at me.
“You want me to look for her?”
“Like you did with Xochil.” She nodded.
“I’ll find them,” I said, grabbing my phone and looking at Cory. “I need to go to the lab. It’ll be faster.”
“Go.” He nodded. “We’ll be right there.” I was leaving the room when Cory asked the worried parents, “Did you guys check with the guards to see if they saw them leaving?”
I considered shifting but ran instead, trying to avoid spending unnecessary time shifting, removing and putting on clothes. The elevator dinged, and I was running before the doors were fully open. Celeste wasn’t one to worry easily, nor was Kara, and that alone was enough to make me feel the urgency.
I powered up the computer and instantly went into the command prompt to pull up the tracking software. I went into my phone and looked for pictures of the girls. Just as I realized I didn’t have a current one of Tori, my phone dinged, and Celeste was sending over a picture of both of the girls. I quickly uploaded the pictures to the software and set it to run. While the software began its scan, I started looking for the feeds to the mall and CCTV of storefronts. I rewound them back to noon, spread them out across my monitors, and played them on fast forward.
Cory and the four parents walked into my office a few minutes later, and I waved them over so they could help me look. We watched each feed in silence for minutes until Elias pointed to the top right feed.
“That’s them!” he rushed out, relief clear on his face. I pulled up the feed to the front and center of the monitor and watched Violet and Tori walking with two men behind them.
“That’s Roger and Eddie,” Cory pointed out. “They took guards with them.” The relief in the room was palpable. Roger was the girls’ age and Jo’s brother, while Eddie was a reliable older warrior with experience.
We watched the girls go into the movie theatre around two and come back out laughing a little after four. That was almost two hours ago, so my concern mounted when I saw them heading toward the exit and disappear.
“If they left the mall at four, where did they go?” Markus was the first to break the silence. I looked for parking lot feeds and found some, but not as many as there should have been. I knew from experience that I’d seen them all around the lots, but apparently, half weren’t working. I fast-forwarded through the feeds until we got to the time stamp when Tori and Violet had left the mall.
We watched them exit and followed their path as best as we could.
Why did they parked so far away? I thought as my trepidation increased. I lost them when they walked past some structure, disappearing into the corner of a camera.
I felt a sudden dulled pain in my chest, and I looked up at Cory, seeing the fear in them as he rubbed his chest.
“Where’d they go?” Adrien asked, panic rising in his voice, his eyes going everywhere.
“I don’t know,” I said, pausing all the videos, trying to see if they were somewhere on the videos and we’d just missed them. When none one spotted them, I pressed play again and set the speed to time and a half speed, but they still didn’t show anywhere.
“Fuck this. I’m going to go find them,” Markus growled and ran out of the room. Adrien and Elias followed quickly.
“I have to go help,” Celeste said before she dashed off, her face pale.
I looked up at Cory.
“Go. I’ll keep looking.” I assured him. He hesitated but nodded, gave me a rushed kiss and ran out.
‘Cory, take Aunt Nat,’ I mind-linked him while I started looking around for business cameras of storefronts surrounding the mall. ‘I’ll find which quadrant of the mall they were at and text you the location.’
‘Good idea,’ Cory answered, though I could hear the anguish in his voice as we accepted the possibility that they were hurt. Once I had the location of where we’d lost them, I texted the information to Cory and began hacking the feeds in the cameras around the mall near that area. It was tedious work. I hadn’t spent much time there since I’d been back, and in my panic, couldn’t remember any of the names of the businesses around there. I ended up having to pull up a map for guidance. Then I had to look for the feeds, hack into them and finally find the time stamps.
Three of the four feeds showed nothing. The parking lot of the mall was obscured from the feed because there was too much stuff in front of it from across the street, but I could see the fourth one across the parking lot to the entrance. I saw the moment they exited the mall and reset the play speed of the feed.
My worry grew when I immediately noticed something across the street from the storefront. Two sets of men were walking from one side of the street to the other, only to turn back around and continue walking as if they had just turned the corner.
I could feel my knee jerking up and down with anxiety as I watched Violet, Tori, Roger and Eddie walking toward one of the pack’s SUVs, unaware they were being watched. Eddie tensed, looking around but seeing nothing out of the norm. He patted Violet on the shoulder and bent down to tell her something. The four men chose that moment to disappear from view, and I couldn’t see where they’d gone. Violet nodded and looked around before grabbing Tori and walking a little faster. They were close to the SUV now, and I hoped to see them make it in and take off. My heart sank when they passed the structure I’d seen in the original video, which turned out to be a trash bin enclosure.
