28 Ryatt
It felt like driving in circles. With no new leads, we were getting on edge because we couldn’t figure out where they took Kit. No matter how much we scurried over the area, nothing pointed in the direction of the woman missing.
My hands kept tapping the steering wheel as I sat on the side of a run-down road. This district of town meant looters would be nearby, so one of us had been forced to stay with the car. It was my turn now that we had been doing this for several days.
It felt like a blur. My heart kept stopping in my chest the more I thought about Kit being taken.
Anger festered in me because of what I had caused her all those years ago.
I trusted the wrong person because I grew up with him, but now that loyalty had bitten me in the ass.
Saul had been the problem all along, sitting right under my nose.
I left her in his care, and that fucker took an path to uphold his job.
The guys and I had seen him just a few months ago when we ran into him at an auction.
He kept his new world private, saying he did well but no details.
It wasn’t until this moment that I realized he redirected every question back onto us to avoid answering for himself.
My mind began to eat me alive because of all the little clues I had missed along the way.
Sitting in this car wasn’t helping as the others sought high and low for any piece of evidence that might lead us to the woman that we hurt more than once now.
I had no doubt Saul planned to try and use her to get to us. I also knew Kit would never betray us the way we had her. She was too good for us all, so I made it my undying promise to make sure we found her.
With the sun setting, we were about to head back without another trace of luck once again.
Anika and Franco were marching, side by side, to come back to the van, and I noticed Kashmir and Turner were coming out of their neck of the woods.
The only three who hadn’t appeared within my perimeter’s vision were Kayos, Raphael, and Jericho.
Not seeing my Omega first also made my heart thrum a little harder in nervousness.
Kit had gotten into his head about protecting himself, and I knew he learned to care for the same woman we did in the little moments he had with her.
He finally confessed that his morning walks weren’t just walking, and Anika had been training him.
It started a few arguments, but that probably came from our sleep deprivation and high anxiety.
We were all beginning to fall apart because one of us went missing.
Whether or not Kit knew it, she had been part of our pack this whole time.
Her absence for us felt like someone cut out a piece of our hearts but it never stopped bleeding cause the wound never closed.
Now that I knew she wasn’t marked, I planned to rectify that immediately.
Turner shook his head toward Franco, and our Beta returned it because neither had any luck.
I knew before they even got into the van that we weren’t going to have the news we wanted.
Franco and Anika were the first to climb in, and she took the front seat for my pack to have the back with her brother.
Frustration oozed out of her because she felt like she failed Kit even more than we did.
It wasn’t a burden she should be carrying, but I also knew it’d never be one we could relieve so easily.
“Nothing?” I asked. All of them shook their head as the other two joined and climbed in.
“Nothing that can be seen.” Anika sighed heavily because she felt like a failure.
Knowing we had too much time to kill before the three others got back, I repeated tapping my fingers against the steering wheel.
When we first went on the hunt to find Kit, we had Anika take us to the area it happened for us to get a better picture of what she saw.
There just had to be something we were missing.
Just like when she lost the visual, so did the cameras that ran to this district.
“Walk me through it again,” I ordered her, keeping my eyes straight ahead.
“How many times do you have to go over this? I already told you, she was having a spur of the moment lunch with Mandy. Mandy said it was urgent, so Kit agreed almost immediately. We’ve been doing it for years, so I went to the butcher to order more meat for the compound.
When I was getting back because of the phone call, I saw them dragging Mandy into the van around the building. ”
“And you’re sure Mandy didn’t say anything else before this lunch? Maybe she mentioned having an enemy that Kit needed to help her with.” I looked her way to give her my undivided attention.
She shook her head which flipped some braids over her shoulder as her knee kept bouncing.
“Mandy didn’t know who Kit really was. Kit didn’t trust anyone with her secret, so Mandy believes her to be the Alpha’s prized Omega.
Only me, my brother, and three others know the truth, so there would be no way for Mandy to know Kit was a fighter because she saw Kit as a pampered Omega. ”
“But none of that makes sense,” I returned. “If Kit had us fooled, I just don’t see how someone else could have figured it out from the outside. Even with her traitorous lover, how did they put Kit and Mandy together to attack?”
“That’s where I’ve been stuck too,” she admitted.
“Whenever we’re in public, Kit hides completely behind me like I’m her bodyguard.
We do it so routinely that it’s natural even though the two of us know she can fight just as good as I can.
I’m always with her, so no one thinks about her being strong enough and or capable on her own. ”
An idea set off inside my brain. “Maybe we’re looking in the wrong spot. Maybe they don’t know about Kit. If Mandy was taken with Kit, maybe Kit was never the target. Maybe she was taken because she was with Mandy?”
Anika’s eyes widened when she caught onto what I meant. “You think Kit was taken because of the emergency Mandy had, placing her with the target.”
“And if that be the case,” Turner interjected from the back seat. “There might be a clue at Mandy’s home.”
“So we need to stop looking for nothing, and go where there might be something,” Franco agreed. He let his eyes take in Anika because he saw her as an equal. “Do you happen to have the address for where Mandy lives?”
“It just so happens that I do,” she hummed with giddiness before pulling out her phone to show us in maps. “We’ve only been there twice, but I saved her address in her contact information when we first went there.”
“Should we wait until first light?” Turner asked.
For the first time in our conversation, Kashmir finally added something. “No. We need to go sooner rather than later, and night will give us cover from whoever might be lurking around the premise.”
“But daylight might offer a better view and understanding of anything missing in her home,” I brought up.
“With Mandy being a politician, I can almost guarantee you her curtains will block out all light. We’ll move one room at a time, and we’ll make sure someone guards the window so no light breaks through. I’m not wasting another ten hours because Kit might not have that long.”
Even though I was his Alpha, I could tell he wouldn’t change his mind.
This had upset all of us, but I could finally see what it had been doing to him.
We were a team, and my men had sound ideas that I couldn’t ignore.
Even if I told them to wait, I knew this would be something he would directly disobey to save Kit.
“Fine,” I consented. “We’ll head back to the compound when the others return, and we’ll load up with weapons. Once we do that, we’ll take our team and go to Mandy’s house.”
With our new direction being made, I was still secretly kicking myself for not coming up with the idea sooner.
Their kidnappers might not have known Kit’s identity, but I knew her false scent would wear off and reveal all her secrets.
Plus, we knew Saul was somehow involved in all of this.
It would only take him a single second to pinpoint Kit in their holding cells for him to know exactly who he caught while grabbing someone else.
And maybe that had been his game all along.
Saul knew Mandy with the rest of us, so it wouldn’t be surprising if he was using Mandy as bait to lure Kit out.