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My lip quivered, and she took my hand and gave it a squeeze. I contacted the doctor on shift about having a room ready by the time Cory arrived and whatever they needed to flush out the silver in Roger’s system, then I finally reached out to Jo.
‘Jo, can you and Melinda meet us at your parents’ house?’
‘Sure. Is everything alright?’ he asked.
‘I’ll tell you when you get there.’
‘Evie?’
‘Please, Jo. Just hurry,’ I begged him.
Uncle Gillian and Aunt Camila’s house was close to the pack house, so Meli was walking inside when we caught sight of their house, while Jo remained outside, waiting for us.
“What’s going on, Evie?”
“I’ll explain inside,” I assured him. He wanted to argue but instead held the door open for us to enter. Aunt Camila and Uncle Gillian were sitting on the couch. Mario, the youngest of the Quinn’s children at 18, was leaning against the wall. Jo went and sat on the loveseat, pulling Meli onto his lap so Zi and I could sit on the opposite loveseat.
“Roger was out on assignment with Eddie this afternoon,” I broke the silence. Roger was fairly new to the warrior group. He’d begun training after getting his degree in forensics. He wanted to serve the pack and enrolled in the warrior program. He passed his training and had only started taking on jobs under Eddie’s supervision a few months before I got here.
“Oh, Goddess, no.” Aunt Camila’s eyes started watering, thinking the worst, so I pushed through the lump in my throat and explained everything that happened.
“They should be here in less than twenty minutes. We’ve got a room in the hospital, and the doctors are waiting for him. We should be over there when they arrive.”
At the hospital, Uncle Gillian paced the waiting area. Dr. Hersh and Everett were close to the doors with a stretcher ready. Uncle Danny and Aunt Maya came running minutes later, going straight to their friends to offer support. James and Zi were sitting with Jo and Meli.
‘We’re a few minutes out,’ Cory mind-linked me the moment they drove through the pack borders.
“They passed the gates.” I let the room know, and everyone stood up expectantly.
Markus was out of the SUV with Roger in his arms before the vehicle had come to full stop. He deposited him on the stretcher, then grabbed Celeste and pulled her close to him as they walked inside to meet with everyone. I ran to Cory, who buried his head in my hair and inhaled, shuddering out a breath as he tried to keep himself together. After we were told all we could do was sit and wait to see how fast Roger reacted to the treatment, some of us went back to the pack house to make a plan to get the girls back.
Jo came with us despite Cory insisting he stay with his parents as they waited for news of his brother. Uncle Helios took Eddie’s body where James had people to clean him up and get him ready for the pyre. Cory and I walked over to Eddie’s house to have the difficult conversation with his mate.
Dad returned to the pack house from his date with Mom shortly after we were done with the conversation. Mom ran over to wait with Camila while Dad took over a conference room, and fitted it with monitors and computers so we could set it up as a headquarters to begin looking for Tori and Violet.
Once Dad finished setting everything up, he moved to the side and let me get to work.
I pulled up the clip, and we watched it in silence. Celeste whimpered when they knocked Violet unconscious, and I felt a pang of guilt at having to make her watch this.
“I’m sorry Celeste, but that’s the part I need,” I said, pointing to the partial plate visible on the screen when they brought their vehicle in range of the camera to load the girls. It was blurry, but I set my program to look for an attached address for a few variations of what I thought the plate showed.
I pulled up the software already running the facial recognition on the girls, grabbed the blurry pictures of the four men, and did the same. I set the range to look within Arizona for now. Once I saw which way they drove, I could expand the area from there without sending the machine to look at every state in the country.
I opened the emails to look for the surveillance dump of the Vegas headquarters. I didn’t think we’d get anything from it, but I wasn’t missing any details that could lead to the girls’ rescue. I even hacked into the security feed of Uncle Helios’ company in California to see if there was any uptick in activity. I doubted it since Nickolas had blown it to pieces, but I was grasping at straws.
“What’s the plan here?” Uncle Helios asked the question we all wanted to know.
“Find my sister and my niece. And we need to find the damn mole!” There was restrained anger in Cory’s voice. He looked down at me.
“I’m monitoring twelve possible suspects’ incoming and outgoing communication. We’ve got a few under surveillance.” I replied as calmly as possible, explaining how we narrowed it down to the group along the way.
“We need to bring them all in for questioning,” Markus growled.
“You know we can’t, Dad. If we’re wrong, the real mole will run.”
“Then let them run! At least we won’t have to look over our shoulders anymore if they do!” Markus roared, punching a hole in the conference room wall.
“We need to question them,” Cory said calmly while Celeste tried to calm her mate. “Finding Violet and Tori alive will require a calm, thought-out plan. One wrong move, and we’ll be building more pyres.” A sob got stuck in Adrien’s throat as his words and Cory looked over apologetically.
