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“I can speed things up.” Uncle Theo stepped up. “How many of the women are part of Guardian Moon and Crescent Moon?” He asked me.
I pulled up the list, and everyone looked on. “Nine of them.”
“Send me the list. I can find them and talk to them, ask questions to see if they’re hiding something. They’re all warriors, so if I feel anything concerning, we can say we’re sending them out on a special assignment and question them properly without anyone else knowing they are being questioned.” His phone dinged moments later as I sent him the list and addresses.
“I’ll go through the security feeds beginning the day Tori arrived,” Dad said. “See if any of them were around Tori, Violet, Eddie and Roger. No one knew where they were going. Not even their parents. They must have heard the girls talk about it.
“I’ll try to hack into the Vegas feeds. See if I can find anything useful.”
“What am I supposed to do until then? I can’t just do nothing.” Markus deflated into a seat, dropping his face in his hands.
“You have to let the experts work, Dad. We’ll get them back,” Cory promised.
“Evie...” I looked over to Adrien. “Put me to work, please,” he begged, pain in every feature of his delicate face. His eyes were red, his fangs were out, and there was hair bursting from his arms. He was losing control. He needed to do something before he lost his shit.
“I’ll set you up in my lab and pull up all of the cameras around town. If we can tell what direction the SUV went, I can narrow the search for facial recognition, so we have better chances to find them faster.”
“I’ll help too. I can look.” Markus said, standing up. I hesitated but nodded.
“I’ll build a few PCs we had planned for some new hires and set them up for you. I’ll get Zi and Dad to help me. They’ll be ready in an hour or so.” It was busywork when I could just commandeer a few computers from the staff and have the new ones built by someone else, but they weren’t the only ones needing a distraction.
Jo sat up straight suddenly, his eyes glazed over. When they cleared, he looked at the rest of us. “Roger’s responding to the treatment. He woke up briefly, but they sedated him when he started fighting back.”
Relief crossed everyone’s face. When it looked like there was nothing else to say, I stood up.
“Zi, Dad. Can we head to the office, please? We have some computers to build.”
“I’ll have someone send food over,” Celeste said, grabbing Molly from Zi. When Zi hesitated, Celeste gave her a strained smile. “I’ll be with Danny and Maya in the hospital. Link me any time. I’ll protect her like she was my own.” A tear fell from her face as the words left her mouth. “You go help find mine, please.” Zi gave her a hug that could only be understood as a pact between two protective mothers.
“I’m going to go make sure Eddie gets the send-off he deserves,” Cory told me, giving me a quick kiss. I squeezed his hand hard before I let go and nodded.
“Tell me when you need me. I should be there with you,” I whispered, and he nodded.
It was close to two in the morning when I finally made it back to my room. I left Adrien, Markus, Uncle Danny and Aunt Kassie in front of the new computers, looking at all the feeds I could hack into so they could look for Vi and Tori, and listening to the old and new audio dumps of the Vegas surveillance. I made sure their mates promised to make them sleep at some point because everyone needed to be ready to move when we found the girls.
Cory was in bed when I got home, but he was sitting against the headboard, his arms resting on his knees, his face between them. He looked up when I entered, and the heartbreak in his eyes brought tears to mine. I removed my clothes, crawled in, and took him into my arms, all thought of a long hot shower forgotten. Sobs wracked his frame, the mask of alpha finally put away, and in its place was Cory, loving big brother and uncle to the two missing girls. A man who’s had to hold in all his anguish to continue pushing forward. It was an hour before I finally felt him surrender to his exhaustion and fell asleep in my arms.
We were both back up before seven. The breakfast table was quiet, though I was happy to hear Roger had woken up again last night and was responding well to the treatment. He should be allowed to go home in a few days when he regained his strength. His wolf was still sleeping, too exhausted from keeping him alive through the blood loss and silver poisoning for such a long time. Mom was hopeful he hadn’t gone dormant and would wake up in a few days.
I walked into my work lab to find Uncle Seb, Aunt Nat, Miguel and Mario on the chairs instead of the others. I asked them if they needed any help, and when they shook their heads, I went back into my office, remote logged in to the computer in the conference room on one monitor and continued to look at all the information we had thus far.
Sometime before dinner, I left Uncle Theo, Xochil, Uncle Danny and Everett to listen and look at camera feeds and met the rest of our family in the crowded headquarters.
“We know they are heading west. To California. But we’ve only caught them on the feeds once. They’re on the I-10, but if they’re going toward San Diego, as we suspect, they might have already veered off. I’ve reset the parameters of the facial recognition to search the west half of Arizona, California, Baja California, and the borders of Sonora,” I told them, before pulling up the small feed we found. “The girls are still fine, as far as we could see.” I zoomed into the SUV, where you could see both girls huddled together in the back seat.”
“We should head to California. Be ready,” Adrien said.
“The flight is an hour long. The plane is ready for takeoff. It will be faster if we fly once we know where they are than to fly, land somewhere, figure out where they went, and then fly or drive from there.” Cory shook his head, making Adrien sink into a chair.
“Have we found anything on the suspects?” Dad asked, turning everyone’s eyes to Uncle Theo.
“No. As far as I can tell, they’re all telling the truth unless they know of my gift and how to circumvent it. We’ve been careful to keep the circle of those who know of my gift pretty tight over the years, though, so I don’t think they’re lying,” Uncle Theo answered.
“If they’re not the mole, then we’re missing something,” Uncle Helios said, a frustrated hand going through his hair.
“I’ll keep looking,” I assured them.
It was a disheartening meeting; the only silver lining they were all hanging onto was the knowledge that the girls were alive a few hours into their disappearance. If they were keeping them alive for transport, they must need them alive for something. At least, we hoped. Uncle Theo could not shed any insight on his brother, saying the man he knew would have never done the things he’d done.
