AllFreeNovel
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In a few more minutes, we’re in a concrete box of an office tucked behind the catering kitchen in the basement, and Kate is pulling up the logs on an ancient desktop.
“You said you were on the fourth floor, right? And what was your room number?” I tell her and she deselects several camera feeds. “Great. This should get us the view outside your room and down the hallway in both directions. We’ll start there, and if we see something, we can always add more cameras into the search. It’ll just be faster if we start small. The system is in solid working order, but the software is older than I’d like.” She glances up at me as the results load with painful slowness. “But we rarely have any reason to look at these logs, so I understand why management is reluctant to update the infrastructure. We’re in a very safe area. The worst crimes we usually see around here are kids skateboarding in the halls or guests stealing cutlery off other guests’ room service carts. You’d be shocked by how many people will snag a used fork or spoon. Not to mention those cute little bottles of ketchup.”
I nod, fighting to keep a pleasantly neutral expression on my face as my beeper begins to buzz with the same frequency as my cell.
The cell is Aaron, threatening to pull my brains out through my nostrils if I don’t call him back and tell him where I am so he can come join the search for Nora. The beeper is Al, no doubt telling me to get my ass over to the cupcake shop and finish this job while his team looks for Nora.
That’s what he told me on the phone earlier, and by now, he’s probably realized that I have no intention of doing so.
At least not until I know Nora is safe.
I could get in a lot of trouble for disobeying a direct order. I’m not sure how much, but I’m pretty sure jail time is on the table. But that’s okay. I’ll gladly serve a year or two behind bars to make this right.
“Okay, here we go,” Kate says as the results finally load. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
She fast forwards for a while, until the doors to the rooms around ours open and people start to emerge. Then, she slows the footage to normal speed. “This is the start of the alarm.” She watches as the screen empties without any sign of movement from our door. After a moment, she glances over her shoulder at where I’m hovering beside her chair, arching a brow.
“Our cat was in labor, and we thought it was just a drill,” I explain, pointing back at the screen as the grainy, black and white version of me pokes his head out the door to glance both ways. “But I eventually decided I should check to make sure there wasn’t a fire. I left my wife and a friend of ours in the room to keep an eye on the cat and went to look around.”
Kate hums low in her throat. “I’d advise evacuating immediately in the future. Better a few minutes of inconvenience than a lifetime of regret if things go wrong.”
And thingshavegone wrong, just not in the way Kate was referring to.
About seven minutes after I leave the room, Kate slows the footage again as two men approach the door. Rex and Wimpy. I recognize them instantly, of course, but I know Nora would have, too.
So why did she let them in?
I get my answer a beat later as Rex lifts a fist to rap at the door only for it to open before he can knock. Bear steps out with the kittening box in his arms and is immediately threatened by Rex, who appears to be armed with his weapon of choice, a high-powered stun gun capable of doing serious damage without breaking his grandmother’s rule about bringing guns into the community.
“Oh no,” Kate murmurs, her spine stiffening in her chair as Bear and Nora are brought outside, clearly against their will. “I think we should call the police.”
“Absolutely,” I say, making a mental note to have Al reach out to the local police before they receive Kate’s call. “But first, can we see where they went? I’d love to be able to give the authorities a vehicle description or, even better, a license plate number.”
“Right,” Kate says, clicking back to the search screen. “I’ll do a wider search for more cameras during the ten minutes after they left the room.”
She does and five more agonizing minutes later, she opens several preview screens and we’re able to watch Nora and Bear forced down the stairs and out a side door leading to a less trafficked section of the parking lot. Thanks to the outdoor camera, with its wide-angle lens, we get an excellent view of an old white van and Nora arguing with Rex as he tries to push her inside.
Bile churns in my stomach at the sight of his hands on her, but thankfully, he doesn’t get rough. Eventually, Nora concedes to entering the vehicle, but not before casually dropping something on the ground that Rex doesn’t seem to notice.
My heart jerks in my chest, but I resist the urge to run to the door in question and see what she left behind. I wait until Kate freezes the video as the van turns, giving us a clear shot at the license plate. I text it to Al, along with a quick description of the van and a heads-up that Kate is going to be alerting the authorities.
“Thank you so much,” I say, backing toward the door.
She turns in her chair. “Aren’t you going to stay while I call the police? Help me explain what happened and who that man is? Is that her brother? The one you said had threatened her before?”
“I have to go find her,” I say, reaching for the door handle. “But thank you. Again. I’m so grateful.”
I escape into the hall, ignoring her calls for me come back, and sprint toward the place where Nora was last seen. I race down the stairs to the first floor, nearly running into a man carrying an ice bucket on my way out into the hall. But I only spare a second to shout a quick, “Sorry,” before picking up speed again.
I crash through the exterior door and scan the ground, spotting Nora’s breadcrumb instantly. The bright yellow of her earring stands out like a beacon against the gray concrete.
I pick it up and reach for my buzzing cell at the same time, answering Al on the first ring as he begins to shout for me to get my ass to Bad Dog.
“I can’t,” I say, my voice rough with emotion. “I have to help find her, Al. I have to. If she’s hurt, I’ll never forgive myself. Or you. Forget the extra days at the hotel, this is all I want for my retirement gift. Help me. Help me find that van and help me help her.”
He exhales an irate sigh. “Christ, you’ve become high maintenance in your old age. Five years ago, you would never have been this much of a pain in my ass.”
“Guess it’s a good thing I’m retiring,” I say, before adding in a softer voice, “Please, Al. Please. I love her. But I haven’t had the chance to tell her yet and—”
