Chapter 39
THIRTY-NINE
ALEX
By the time I finished updating my team on what I’d been told by my handler, I was itching to get my hands on a keyboard. The information was just waiting, and in it I’d hopefully find some answers. Not the least of which were faces of prospective suspects.
“How do you want to handle this?” Ewan asked. “I know you want to dig into the data.”
“We can cover the rest of the wedding for you. Keep an eye on Ciara,” Finn said.
Despite the itch, I shook my head. “I’m no’ leaving. It’ll keep. Maybe it’s my paranoia, but I have a bad feeling about today.”
“What’s pinging for you?” Callum asked. “Something in the research you’ve already done?”
“No. I think it’s mostly all the elements we can’t control. This entire event is a security nightmare. I say we stay and keep our eyes open for anything that seems out of place.”
Munro strode into the family kitchen, where we’d convened for the sitrep. “Look alive, lads. Rain’s coming. It’s all hands on deck to get the chairs moved to the backup tent.”
With some sense of relief, I headed outside to the front lawn. The sky that had started the day as pale gray had darkened to pewter, and clouds were beginning to boil in the distance. Could be the rain would pass before the ceremony, but there’d be no way to dry all the chairs in time. More than a dozen other people were grabbing chairs and streaming toward the tent. I scanned faces, looking for Ciara. With such a last-minute change to proceedings, I was certain she’d be out here helping move chairs herself. But she wasn’t among the group. Then again, I’d ordered her to stay inside, so perhaps she was still in the castle or inside the tent.
I moved to the nearest row and began folding chairs, tucking two under each arm and hustling for the tent. Inside, Sophie directed placement of the chairs. Neat rows were already forming on either side of what would be the aisle.
“Just over there, on the bride’s side, if you please, gentlemen. Thank you.”
Following Sophie’s orders, I started a new row to the left.
Kyla rushed in, two chairs under her arms. Spotting me, she made a beeline in my direction. “Have you seen Ciara?”
My hands stilled on the last chair. “Not since she went up to the bridal suite, maybe half an hour ago. Why?”
“She was supposed to meet me in the library nearly twenty minutes ago to go over the radar and make the call, but she didn’t show. I thought maybe she got sidetracked by some other emergency, but she’s not answering her headset or her phone.”
That bad feeling I’d had all day intensified.
“She was under orders not to leave the castle on her own.”
Kyla’s cheeks paled. “Did Brodie get released?”
“No, it’s… there’s no time to explain. I’ll retrace her steps. Where’s the bridal suite?”
“Second floor of the main castle, but she’s not there. I already checked. Afton saw her in the prep kitchen after that, right before she was supposed to meet me.”
“Okay.” Without another word, I headed in that direction.
“I’m coming with you.”
I didn’t argue. It would only waste time.
“Maybe she’s in the loo,” Kyla muttered.
“For twenty minutes?” I asked.
“I mean… food poisoning?” But she obviously didn’t believe herself.
“She was perfectly fine when I saw her earlier.”
A few minutes later, I strode into the prep kitchen. Afton and her sous chef were moving in a well-choreographed dance, juggling prep of multiple courses to feed three hundred people in a few hours.
“Which way did Ciara go when she left here?” I demanded.
Afton’s knife thunked against the cutting board and clattered to the table. “She was headed up to the library. She went out that door. Is something wrong?”
Yes. My gut screamed it, though I didn’t yet have confirmation.
Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.
Without waiting, I exited through the door she’d indicated, pausing in the corridor as I tried to figure out the way to the library from here.
Kyla moved past me. “This way.”
I followed her down a hall and through at least two doors before we found ourselves in a narrow staircase. I mentally added the new areas to the map in my head as I continued to scan for anything amiss. As we emerged into the hallway on the second floor, I recognized where we were. I’d had no idea there was a stairwell at this end.
As Kyla headed toward the library, I slowed my steps, looking for… something. The hair on my arms stood up seconds before I spotted something slim and white on the floor beside some sort of plant in a decorative urn. I crouched and lifted Ciara’s headset.
“Kyla.”
She turned, her face paling as she saw what I held.
Following instinct, I parted the leaves of the plant and found her bum bag. Her phone was inside it.
Shoving down the avalanche of terrified profanity, I activated my comm. “We found Ciara’s headset and her phone. No obvious signs of a struggle, but she didn’t ditch them herself. She’s been taken. Spread out. Check the exits and the parking area.”
“What do you mean taken?” Kyla’s voice had risen two octaves.
“There’s no time to explain.” I yanked out my phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Pulling up video feeds from the surveillance cameras.”
“We don’t have surveillance cameras.”
I spared her one brief glance. “Aye, you do.” Because I was that guy, and I’d installed them myself in the past few days. Not as many as I’d have liked, but I had eyes on all the exits I was aware of and on the castle drive. If anyone left by vehicle, they had to go down that drive.
I scrubbed the feeds, checking footage for the past half hour. With every additional minute that ticked by, my panic rose because that was one more minute, one more mile further away she could be. I hoped beyond hope that I was wrong. That there was some rational explanation. But I knew I wasn’t.
And then I spotted it. Two figures stepping out of one of the back doors on the formal gardens side of the castle. Because of the setup for the wedding, no one should’ve been using that door. It wasn’t near the front or any of the staff areas for the event. Zooming in, I recognized Ciara moving very slowly, her hands raised. The other figure stayed close, something black clutched in her hand. A gun pressed to Ciara’s back.
The blood drained out of my head.
This was no longer a hypothetical, no longer simply paranoia. Ciara had been taken. And I hadn’t been able to do a damned thing to stop it.
I let loose a frustrated roar.
“Talk to me, Echo. Lock it down and talk to me.”
Ewan’s calm, steady voice came over the comms.
Sucking in a breath, I relayed the information to my team. “I’ve got a visual on Ciara, being led at gunpoint out a door on the west side of the castle. Target is female, dressed as waitstaff. Timestamp is eighteen minutes ago.”
“Is it Klein?” Callum asked.
“Unclear, but probable.”
What the fuck did this woman have planned? This wasn’t anything designed to look like an accident. This was outright kidnapping.
Turning to a white-faced Kyla, I pointed to the screen. “Do you recognize this woman?”
“I… no. She’s not part of the extra temp staff we hired for the event.”
“Are you sure?”
“I vetted them all.”
But there were so many extra people around, it would’ve been easy to pose as part of the staff to slip inside. Was that why today? Why here? Had she known about this massive event, or had she simply chosen a Saturday because there were usually weddings here then?
“Any video of what kind of vehicle they left in?” Finn asked.
It was a mark of exactly how rattled I was that I hadn’t even checked the driveway feed yet.
“Standby, Nomad.”
I rewound the footage and scrubbed through it again. But while multiple cars had arrived, no vehicles left in the relevant window.
“Negative on video. No sign that anyone’s left.”
“I’ve got the main drive covered,” Callum reported.
“Then maybe she’s still on the grounds.” If she was still here, that was good. The longer Klein had Ciara, the further she could get, and the lower our chances of tracking them.
“The main drive isn’t the only way off the property,” Kyla said.
I swung toward her again. “Where else?”
“There’s a gravel road out beyond the formal gardens, behind some of the outbuildings there. It’s gated, but not locked.”
I relayed the information to my team.
“On it,” Finn answered.
“Is there video of the parking area?” Ewan asked.
“Negative, Sentinel. I didn’t have that many cameras. There’s no coverage there.” We needed eyes. As many of them as we could get.
I swiped over to the photo I’d taken earlier of Johanna Klein and sent it to Kyla. “Spread this through all the event staff and guests. Have everyone on the lookout. But no one should approach. She’s armed and should be considered dangerous.”
I didn’t think Klein would start shooting targets at random, but I wasn’t putting anyone else’s life at risk to test the theory.
“Shouldn’t we call the police?” Kyla asked.
They’d take time to mobilize, and the force here was small enough that I didn’t expect much. But they could put out an APB. “Aye, do that. Ask for Constable Williamson. She’s been handling Ciara’s case. Send her the photo I sent you and have her put out an alert to area law enforcement.”
“What about the rest of you? What if she has questions for you?”
“We can’t afford to wait. We’ll be doing what we do best. Going hunting.”