-felt his stomach drop when Quinn suddenly appeared in front of him.
“Find her!” Shayne snapped as he made his way through the small crowds that were starting to form throughout the ballroom as the music suddenly stopped.
“We tried,” Declean said, appearing by his other side as Shayne moved, pushing anyone that got in his way aside as he kept his gaze locked on the small table where he’d left Ashlyn only to feel his stomach drop when he spotted the broken champagne glass on the floor.
“She’s not here,” Quinn said as he rammed his fingers through his hair even as his panicked gaze searched the room again.
“Then fucking find her!” Shayne snapped, startling the couples around him as he quickly scanned the room, searching for her.
“Ye’re not fucking listening! We tried, but every fucking time we try ta go ta her we keep getting hit with that fucking black fog!” Quinn snapped.
“Ye were supposed ta keep an eye on her!” Shayne snapped back, barely aware of the couples sending him terrified glances as they quickly moved away from him.
He looked from the double ornate doors that led to the lobby before quickly dismissing them and shifted his focus to the balcony doors overlooking the lake. He took a step towards them only to find himself taking in the unmarked door halfway down the room on his right. He watched as a waiter tried to go through the door only to get stopped by an officer before he took in all the security cameras around the room.
“Get Aidan and have him check the security cameras ta see where she went and check the trails,” Shayne said as he made his way across the room to the door. Before he reached it, the officer was holding his hand up and-
“He’s with me,” Tristan said as he joined him.
With a nod, the officer stepped aside so that Shayne could pull the door open and head into the long hallway with OSHA posters secured to the walls and stacks of extra chairs, trash cans, coolers filled with bottles of champagne on ice, and linen carts lining the hallway. He quickly made his way down the hallway, pausing to check every door, closet, and cabinet as he went.
“What happened?” Tristan asked as he checked a closet before letting the door slam shut and moved with him down the hallway.
“No fucking clue,” Shayne said, already knowing that there was no way in hell that Ashlyn would have willingly left theballroom, not when she wasn’t armed. He tried not to panic, but with every passing second that he didn’t find her, Shayne felt the panic threaten to bring him to his knees.
He couldn’t lose her.
Not now.
Not again, not when he never got to tell her that he loved her, Shayne realized as he found himself moving faster, needing to find her so that he could pull her into his arms and spank her adorable ass for scaring the shit out of him. He-
“It’s too late,” Quinn said, looking fucking devastated as he appeared in front of them. “She’s gone.”
“We missed something,”Shayne said, ramming his fingers through his hair as his gaze flickered between the flatscreen monitors secured to the wall that they’d been staring at for the past two hours.
“Go back,” Liam said as he pointed to the large monitor in the middle.
Without a word, Aidan moved the progress bar back and hit play. In seconds, they watched as Ashlyn was carried out of the delivery bay to an unmarked white van and loaded in the back. They watched as the driver kept his head down, ensuring that none of the security cameras monitoring the back of the building could see him. They watched as he climbed in through the back of the van before closing the back doors behind him.
A minute later, he was pulling away as Shanye found his gaze once again dropping to the license plate and-
“The plate was stolen,” Quinn announced as he popped into the security office that Tristan arranged for them to take over.
Jaw clenching, Shayne shifted his attention back to the monitor to the right and watched as the waiter smoothly stepped up behind Ashlyn when she stumbled back and grabbed hold of her. He watched as the waiter carefully averted his gaze as he moved, something that he’d managed to do since the moment he set foot in the hotel.
“He had the cameras memorized,” Shayne said as he slowly took in all the monitors, noting that the asshole always kept his head down as he moved.
“Ashlyn didn’t drink the champagne,” Aidan said as he replayed the video.
“Which means that she didn’t consume whatever he gave the rest of the women,” Liam said as they watched the video of the asshole pulling several bottles of champagne from one of the linen carts and made quick work of filling the glasses on his tray before making his way inside the ballroom where he spent the next half-hour handing them out to all the young, happily married women in the room.
“Tristan is searching the grounds,” Quinn said as Shayne stood and slowly taking in the monitors. “Go back ta the day we checked in.”
Nodding, Aidan quickly typed something into the computer and clicked a few things before the images on the monitors changed. A few clicks later, Ashlyn appeared on the screen. They watched her make her way through the lobby, watched as she took in everything from the bellhops moving about the lobby to the guests. He watched the moment that she clocked the couples, and could see her expression as she quickly dismissed several of them before settling on the two couples that he’d spotted as soon as he walked into the lobby.
They watched as Ashlyn made her way up in line, as she spoke to the front clerk, the look on her face when she spotted him, and the way that she glared at him. A few minutes later,they watched as she followed him to the elevator, her eyes narrowing dangerously on him and-
“What the hell are ye doing?” Shayne snapped when Aidan suddenly stopped the tape and went back.
