Chapter 45 Chase
Chase
Flora and that TA were long gone.
I had jumped out of the window while Spencer tore apart the office, seeing what evidence he could find. I knew there wouldn’t be much. The office was on the ground floor, so it was easy enough to exit through the window. There was a small alleyway, which led to a parking lot.
The potent scent of Flora's panic that had been overwhelming in the office trailed off as I went through the alley. It vanished entirely when I reached the parking spots. He must have had a vehicle. There was no other reason her scent would disappear so quickly, even with the fresh air.
There were no cameras in the alleyway, but as I ran into the parking lot, I noticed a few.
Cameras were good. I could hack cameras.
Hell, the university would give us unbridled access to the camera feed if we demanded it—and we would. We needed to move quickly, though. Every second we lagged behind them, the further away Flora was being taken.
My heart pounded so violently that, if I weren’t solely focused on finding my omega, I would be concerned I was having a heart attack. But there was no time for that. Anything that had to do with me or my pack mates was at the bottom of the list right now. Flora was the one and only thing on top.
Time was of the essence in any kidnapping—and this was Flora.
Quickly, I looked around, assessing where the cameras were. There was no one in the lot or the alley, so I turned on my heel and sprinted back to the office, jumping through the window.
“There’s nothing out there,” I told Spencer, who was taking desk drawers and tipping the contents onto the floor in an attempt to find evidence. “It leads into a parking lot. There are cameras there, so I'm going to try and get access to them.”
A moment later, Bear barreled into the room, shoving his way through the students crowding around the now-broken-down door. I had a feeling campus security would be here soon, but they could do fuck all in this situation.
“What’s happening?” he asked, his pale skin making the scar on his face pop even more.
It was clear he didn't give a shit about who saw him. He had more important things to focus on. He’d just raced through campus without a second thought.
I’d have done the same damn thing.
“He took her through the window. She’s been drugged,” I explained.
He blanched, his pale face now going an uncomfortable gray.
“All I could feel was intense panic, then nausea, and then nothing,” he told us, his stare distant. Bonding was a blessing and curse; the connection could be helpful, but sharing pain and suffering was a burden you needed to be strong enough to carry.
“That’s probably just because she’s knocked out,” I assured him, gripping his shoulder. “I’m going to access the university’s cameras and see if I can get eyes on what happened in that parking lot.”
“Good.” Spencer’s voice was curt, slicing through the tension-thick air. “There’s fuck all here. We need to get back to the apartment.”
“The apartment?” I asked, momentarily confused. “Shouldn't we be trying to follow them, alerting the campus security, gaining access to those cameras?”
“We need to follow her!” Bear growled.
This didn’t seem right. Had his panic over losing Flora gone to Spencer’s head? Had all his rational ability and thought escaped him? Why would we be going back to our apartment, where Flora most certainly wasn't?
“Because we need my computer,” Spencer added.
“We don’t need to scramble to find her. Last week, I put a tracker in every pair of shoes Flora owns.
Only, I can't access the trackers from here; I need my computer in the apartment.
I didn't want to take it out of the building and risk compromising it.”
I stared at my pack mate, utterly silent, as my jaw fell open. Bear was doing the same, and then I shook myself out of it.
“That is so smart,” I muttered. Usually, I was the one thinking of technological answers to pressing questions. It was good to see that, maybe, I was rubbing off on our dear pack leader.
“She’s going to be so pissed at you.” Bear shook his head, quiet for a moment longer before looking up at Spencer with a hard nod. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Turning to the door, I moved to leave but was stopped as two campus security officers appeared.
“We got news of two students trashing an office. Care to explain?” one asked. He looked surly and disgruntled.
“We are security officers. The faculty knows us, Spencer from Saga security systems.” My pack leader said in a no-bullshit tone. “The TA in this office has kidnapped an omega, and we need to get moving.”
“That sounds like one hell of a story,” the officer snorted.
We didn’t have time for this, to hold his hand and explain that we were in the right and needed to get moving ASAP.
His pea brain clearly wasn’t capable of reasonable thought, it appeared, and Flora was getting away from us the longer we stood here.
“Whatever, we're leaving,” I said, taking another step forward. When the officer stepped in my way, white-hot rage flooded my veins, and I grabbed him by the front of his shirt, easily handling him.
“Do you really think you can stop us?” Spencer asked, cold and deadly.
We towered over them. The campus required no real training for its security officers.
It was one of the things that drove us insane when we started protecting Percy on campus.
And there was no way in hell these two pissants were going to keep us from getting to our omega when some asshole had just kidnapped her from under our noses.
We were attracting a lot of attention. Students who had been on their way to classes had paused to watch the commotion.
“Now, boys, there's no need to get aggressive,” the guy I held squeaked out, reaching toward the taser on his waistband.
Spencer, clearly done with the conversation, reached forward, yanked the taser out of the guy’s waistband, and pointed it at him in under a second. Unblinking, he stared down at the guy and gestured with the device.
“Move.”
“But—”
My pack mate didn’t hesitate. Slicing forward, he grabbed the officer by the throat, throwing him to the floor.
The guy’s face went white as a damn sheet, eyes wide, as he looked back and forth between all of us from his position, prone and on his back.
“W-Wait, you can’t—" he stuttered as we shoved past him into the hall, striding through the throng of students that quickly parted to let us by.
“Tell the dean he can bill us,” I announced, not bothering to look back.
Hang on, Flora. We’re coming.
We looked at the little dot on the screen.
“Do you know where that building is?” Bear asked as we piled into the car.
“No, but I will momentarily,” I assured him.
Spencer was driving like a bat out of hell.
Scenery passed us by in a flash, and for once, I wasn’t about to comment on Spencer’s crazy driving.
We’d gotten the read on the tracker in Flora’s shoes.
It hadn’t moved since landing in its current location.
They had to be there. Or Lyle had somehow found it and ditched the tracker elsewhere.
Where are we going?
A lot of the building records for the university were on public records. So looking up the address wasn't difficult. As I scanned the details, I was both relieved and even more on edge. We weren’t going far, but… it was strange.
“It looks like it’s a dormitory,” I said, squinting at the screen, trying my best to read as the car zoomed through the streets. “Not an active one. It’s closed. Became a storage building in the late nineties, according to the blueprints. It’s scheduled to be demolished in the next few years.”
“It’ll be isolated and quiet then,” Spencer muttered.
“Good. If we have to shoot this guy, we won’t risk hurting innocent students,” Bear pointed out.
I suppose that was a silver lining.
“The question is, how do we get to Flora without attracting his attention? She could be on any floor.”
“I doubt he'll be keeping her on the ground floor,” Spencer surmised. “It slows pursuers down if they have to climb all those stairs.”
“We could approach someone he’s working with, put the squeeze on them to let us up,” Bear suggested.
“He's a weedy little teacher’s assistant. There’s no way in hell he has anyone helping with this.
” Spencer quickly turned the steering wheel, making us all lean to the side as he took the corner fast. “We just need to make sure he’s not near Flora.
Then we can beat his ass from here to high heaven with our pinkies. ”
I clenched my jaw. “This is not a plan. I know we need to move quickly. Trust me. But just barge in there? Is that really all we’ve got?”
“It’s Flora, Chase. What more do you want? If we wait too long, that asshole could—” Bear stopped, squeezing his eyes shut as he swallowed hard.
We all knew where his thoughts were going. Lyle had her alone. With everything we knew about him, all the notes and texts he’d left, he could very well be doing unspeakable things to our omega.
A low growl rumbled out of me just as I noticed the same from Bear and Spencer. We all agreed. We couldn’t let Lyle hurt her, touch her. Flora was ours, and we were all going to take great joy in separating him from his limbs.
“All right. We go in. Trap or not. We go in, and we get Flora.” I nodded, directing Spencer to the next turn.
Spencer flicked his eyes to the sat-nav and then back to the road. “And Lyle pays for taking what’s ours.”