Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Ledger
Rydell was still convinced she was close… just hidden. He led us right back to that office now that the staff had been cleared out.
I hoped to god he was right.
“Clear the shelves and pull out furniture,” he ordered. His voice was deeper now, reverberating off the walls with each growled order.
Cooke and Vance didn’t hesitate to jump in alongside us, clearing the office until we had the hall outside the infirmary full of a mountain of medication and debris.
My money was on Malik’s office more than the intake and lab. If he was smart, he would have kept it a secret if he had another entrance somewhere.
Rydell had the same idea, already ripping the bookshelves away from the walls in Malik’s office. My muscles burned as I helped, everything was either sturdy or bolted, but between the two of us we made easy work of clearing it out.
When the walls were left bare, the room looked innocuous. There were no grooves in the floor to show there was a hidden room, the window looked normal. Even the small coat closet was plain.
“Fuck,” Rydell cursed, glaring at the walls as if the answers would materialize in front of him.
Pounding footsteps had us both turning, guns raised until Ares burst through, eyes wild.
“Malik is fucking gone,” he shouted. I’d never seen this alpha frantic but he was freaking the fuck out now. As his words hit me, I felt the same.
“How? He was in custody!” I protested, already rushing past him.
“He was. Which means one of our guys was a fucking mole. Chief is losing it and everyone is searching,” Ares explained. His eyes were as wild as Rydell’s now.
“I can’t do this,” Ansel choked out, rushing out of the clinic.
One nod from Kane and he was following the omega.
It was best that we stick together to some degree.
The patients were all sequestered in their units, guards standing outside to keep them safe since none of the staff could be trusted at this point.
“Fuck,” I cursed. “Keep searching, Ry. It has to be here.”
“I’m helping out there. Stay together,” Ares warned before heading out, barking orders as he went.
“Who was with the doctor?” Cooke asked. He had a hand pressed to his ear, dark eyes narrowed as he listened, before glancing at Vance.
“Greer had him. I told the chief that guy wasn’t right in the fuckin’ head,” Vance complained, spitting on the ground at just the memory.
“Describe him for me,” I said evenly. I’d make sure he paid for his role in this. Slowly. Painfully.
“Dark hair, streaks of gray. Eyes a dull, cloudy blue. Attitude that says he thinks he’s above all us agents even though he was at the bottom of the totem pole,” Cooke said as he slammed his hand down onto a shelf, busting what was left of it.
“Never following orders without complaint. Always bitching.”
I nodded once, letting them know that I had committed that description to memory. One glance at Rydell said he thought the same.
“We need to go search out Sanchez. He’s the one with the tech know how,” Vance said.
He and Cooke stared at each other for a moment, as if they were communicating silently.
I had a feeling there was more than just camaraderie between them, but that would only work to our advantage.
A bonded pair, no matter what capacity, would understand the intensity of how much we were willing to go to to find our mate.
“I’m staying here,” Rydell said, barely sparing us a glance as he ran his large hands over the cinderblock walls. His voice was desperate now. “She’s here. I’m not getting far from her. I can feel it.” His dark green eyes implored me to listen, to believe him.
“I’ve got this. You stay here,” I answered back, giving his shoulder a squeeze. He relaxed a little and nodded.
Cooke looked past me to Ares. “We’ll stay with him.”
“Then you’re with me,” Ares said.
I followed him out of the office, jogging to keep up as he stormed through the hallways, not stopping until he was outside of the conference room. I only saw it used for family visits or the occasional guest when the board stopped in.
The same board who had caused most of the problems here.
Ares’s team had transformed it into a makeshift data center. The entire table was covered in keyboards, screens, and more computers than seemed necessary, but what the fuck did I know? I wasn’t exactly a tech genius, though I’ve done my fair share of surveillance.
A beta with dark hair was tapping away behind the screens. He barely looked up as Ares and I stormed in.
“Sanchez, I need you.”
“I’m already on it, brother. I’m going to help her,” he promised, still not looking up from his screen.
“No, there’s more. Malik is gone.”
That got his attention. The beta glanced up, his gray eyes drifting from Ares to me, then back again as he processed it.
“That’s not possible. We have eyes on the entire perimeter and interior. There are guards on every high-profile person and all the staff.”
“Good, then it won’t be hard figure out where he went and how the fuck he’s been transporting patients from his clinic out of here without anybody noticing. They slipped out somewhere and if you have cameras, find them.”
“And you know it’s him that took her?” Sanchez asked. The curiosity in his voice meant he wasn’t dismissing me, but considering the connection.
I let out a dry laugh. “Yes. That man drugs the entire patient population here all at once. Every single person. You can’t tell me that wasn’t a cover for something. Suddenly, a patient goes missing, everybody’s up in arms, but we aren’t putting up much of a fight, are we?”
Sanchez’s lip curled in disgust as he shook his head. “Ares, do you want me to find this doctor? That’s gonna take my eyes off looking for your omega.”
“She’s with him,” I corrected. “Just shift your focus a little. They’re getting off this property somehow and I don’t want them to get far. He has her.”
“He speaks for me,” Ares said easily. That trust had Sanchez’s eyebrows raising but he nodded.
“Alright,” he agreed, focusing back on his screens.
His fingers flew over the keyboard almost as soon as they touched it, eyes tracking back-and-forth over the multiple screens.
I moved around him to watch. There were too many feeds to count.
Blocks of security footage stacked into a huge grid.
It was easy to see which ones their team added to the mix.
We weren’t exactly high security here at ARC.
Those feeds were grainy and showed little to nothing.
The rest were clear and had a wider range, tracking faces as they passed.
He was right… they had eyes everywhere. That little bit of hope was enough for me to cling to.
I needed Audrey safe.
“How long has he been gone?”
“I last had eyes on him when we walked out to get outfitted with gear. We came back in and spent maybe two hours searching that office,” I answered.
“Oh yeah, I heard the big guy was convinced she’s there,” Sanchez said absently. I fucking hated the pity in his voice.
“Don’t doubt a mated alpha,” I said, glaring at the asshole. “If he says she’s there, she is. Or was.”
His gray eyes locked onto mine. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m sorry your mate is gone, I’d be losing my head, too.”
“Right now, I need to find Malik and my omega,” Ares said, getting us back on track. “He has her.”
“As if I wasn’t multitasking already,” Sanchez scoffed. To his credit, his hands hadn’t stopped moving, eyes bouncing between us and the screens.
I had a feeling Vance was right, this guy was the right man for the job.
“Here he is in the lobby. His original guard was pulled away and Greer was put in his place.” He recounted each change in the screen as we watched. Noting the time stamps each time.
Sanchez tapped a few keys until that screen was enlarged enough to be the focal point of the big screen.
It was like a switch had flipped the moment Malik’s old guard was swapped for Greer.
The doctor went from slouched down and angry to perfectly calm, perking up and sitting a little straighter.
It was all a fucking act. I don’t know that we’d ever truly seen the real Malik in all the years I’d been here.
The guard barely looked at him. He was surveying the room slowly but wasn’t as obvious as the doctor.
Sanches fast forwarded slowly, everyone on screen speeding up. My eyes were locked on the guard, tracking every movement.
Then I caught it. Greer had moved, his hand tapping at his thigh in a way that was anything but natural or boredom.
“Wait, right there,” I said quickly. Sanchez paused the screen and glanced up at me, waiting for me.
“Go back a bit. Watch what he does with his hands,” I pointed out. He reversed just before it happened, everyone leaning in for a closer look. I watched at regular speed, noting the three rounds of five taps.
Sanchez let out a chuckle. “Good eye, kid.”
“That was obviously a signal for someone,” Ares said with a growl. “Who the fuck is he talking to? Who is he working with?”
“Well, we know it’s not the fucking chief,” I said. “He wants his daughter back and is nowhere in that room.”
Sanchez blew out a breath. “Oh, I remember when she was taken. Sad story. That man was a wreck,” Sanchez said.
He shifted his attention back to his screen, tapping between feeds until he had four angles of the same room, adjusting the screens so the times were synced where he needed it.
My eyes locked on the screen and I barely breathed as he hit play. Bouncing from each angle and studying the crowd, looking for the receiving end of that hand signal.
At first, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Everyone was busy with their own groups and orders.
Until a guard in the back started moving slowly out of the hall, backing out of frame a step at a time. He glanced at his watch, then his foot shot out, tripping one of the nurses.
It was the perfect distraction. She was shouting at him, arms flailing as she laid into him. Now there was a full show, everyone’s eyes on the commotion as he held his hands up trying to calm her down.
He never looked behind him, but the other angles showed Malik and Greer taking advantage of the moment.
They were moving swiftly, not being subtle at all now as they hurried out of the room until they reached the hallway leading to the back of the building. They were slower now, the walk purposeful as the guard held his gun at Malik’s back, guiding him by his cuffs.
Between everybody herding the staff to the front of the building and the others keeping watch over the patients, no one noticed them slip out of the door by the greenhouse.
“Where the fuck are they going out there?” I said, even more confused now. “That literally just leads to grounds and you’ve got every exit blocked and the perimeter surrounded, right?” I questioned.
Ares nodded. “We have eyes everywhere.”
“Ledger,” my name echoed down the hall. I knew that voice.
I was out of the conference room in seconds, searching out the omega calling for me.
Ansel was flying down the hall, face pale, eyes wide and frantic. He was nearly hysterical as he crashed into me, fingers fisting into my shirt and holding on. It was the first time he’d touched me like this and I held my shock at bay only because I was worried.
“What happened?” I demanded, steadying him with a hand on each shoulder. My first instinct was to purr but I didn’t want to startle him when he was already worked up.
“I went to sit in Audrey’s favorite place and there was movement behind me that caught my eye and I saw him. Malik is out there.” It was a jumble of rambled words all strung together. His chest was heaving from the effort
“By himself?” I questioned. “Was she with him?”
“No, not by himself. There were two others with him. No Audrey,” he said, body deflating at the admission.
“I bet they laid low in the bushes until they were sure no one saw them disappear. Just enough time for the other guard to join them. The timestamp was only twenty minutes ago,” Ares bit out. “They were right there. So fucking close.”
“He’s out there now,” Ansel said, urging us to move. “I watched them walk towards the shed out back.”
“The gardening shed?” I questioned, looking at Ares. “I don’t think there’s anything out there. It’s overgrown as hell.”
“Well, we’re about to fucking find out,” he said, pressing his hand to his ear. “We’ve got a reported signing of Malik heading towards a shed at the south wall of the property. Just past the greenhouse. I need a team heading that way, and we will be joining you.”
Ares was already moving down the hall. I had one hand on my holster, my arm around Ansel as I led him. The omega was shaking like a leaf. “You need to get back to Kane. Stay safe for Audrey and me..”
“Kane went to help Rydell and Caspian. I’m coming with you.”
I stared down at him. His hysterics seemed to fade in an instant and only determination was left behind. He wasn’t backing down and I didn’t want to waste time arguing.
“Alright,” I agreed, “but you stick by me.”
The way that Ansel looked up at me, his eyes full of trust, had my alpha perking up. I knew what his trust meant and I loved Audrey enough that I was gonna do everything I could to keep her omega safe.