Chapter 32
The phone buzzed on Huck Rivers’s belt as he crossed the hallway outside the evidence room. He checked the caller ID and answered before the second ring. “Hi, Tso,” he said.
“She’s gone,” Officer Tso said, his voice ragged. “Viv—she went into the locker room. I watched the door. I swear I watched it, Huck. I thought I was watching it. Five minutes. Maybe less.”
Huck stopped walking. His spine locked. “Slow down,” he said, though his body had already gone cold. “What do you mean ‘gone’?”
“She didn’t come out. I went in after her. The window was blown out. There’s blood—small trail outside the frame. Her bag’s still here. She didn’t leave.”
Huck didn’t speak for a beat. He just breathed. Then he was moving. “I’m calling it,” he said. “Full response. You stay put and lock that field down. Nobody in or out. Understand?”
Tso’s breath hitched. “Understood.”
Huck ended the call and hit the button on his shoulder mic.
“Dispatch, this is Rivers. We’ve got a confirmed abduction.
Victim is Viv Vuittron. Sixteen years old, white female, blond, five-seven, softball gear last seen.
Pull up her DMV profile and get it moving to State, FBI, Highway Patrol.
Set up perimeter and drone support now. I want eyes in the sky in five minutes. ”
He scanned his ID and ran up the stairs, barreling through the opening toward the conference room.
Handwritten notes, medical research records, and map printouts fanned out between coffee mugs and energy bar wrappers on the conference table.
Laurel stood by a board, arms crossed, scanning names and timelines.
Kate sat across the table, typing slowly on her laptop, brow furrowed.
Huck paused in the doorway, struggling for the right words.
Laurel looked up first. Her eyes narrowed at his expression.
Kate kept typing.
He stepped into the room, his voice low. “Kate.”
She looked up. “Yeah?”
He walked closer, not rushed, not loud. He crouched slightly to her eye level. “I need you to listen to me carefully. Viv’s missing.”
Kate blinked once.
He kept his voice steady. “She went into the locker room at softball practice. Tso was on watch. She didn’t come out. The window’s broken. There’s a little blood. We don’t know what happened yet, but we’re treating it as an abduction.”
Kate didn’t move for three full seconds. Then she stood up so fast her chair tipped back and clattered to the floor. “No,” she said. “No, she wouldn’t—she wouldn’t just disappear. Not from softball practice.”
Laurel moved to her side. “Kate. Stop. Breathe.”
“I have to go. I need to be there. Need to see—” Kate’s voice cracked and broke, her hands fluttering at her sides like they didn’t know what to do.
“You can’t help right now,” Laurel said softly. “But we will. Huck and I are going. We’ll find her.”
Kate looked between them, her face crumpling, then dropped into the nearest chair like her strings had been cut.
Laurel turned to Huck. “What do we have?”
“Tso called it in. She went in for the bathroom. Never came out. He checked the locker room. Window’s busted. Blood on the frame. Her bag is still there, and she left her phone in the dugout.”
“Surveillance?”
Huck kept his tone calm. “None from the field. I’ve got officers locking down the parking lot, and patrol’s canvassing the surrounding businesses.”
Laurel pulled her gun from her bag. “We start at the school. I want to talk to every coach, every player, every janitor who’s clocked in this week. Someone had to have seen a strange face.”
“I’ve got uniforms securing the scene and a mobile command post setting up in the parking lot,” Huck added. “Drone support’s airborne by now. K9 en route, and Aeneas and I will also search.”
“Good. We’ll run parallel,” Laurel said, moving fast now. “You coordinate field ops. I’ll start with staff interviews. Pull class rosters, visitor logs, lunch vendors, field maintenance. Anyone who had reason to be near that locker room today.”
Huck turned. “Traffic cameras?”
“I’m calling cyber on the way. I want every plate that passed the lot in the last two hours.” Laurel paused at the door and glanced back at Kate, who sat frozen in the chair, face pale, fingers gripping the armrests like they were the only thing keeping her upright. “I’ll bring her back.”
Kate leaped up. “I’m coming with you. I have to.”
“Understood,” Laurel said. “Huck, have Ena get the other two girls and bring them here. Just in case.” She pulled her phone out and called the Seattle field office.
Norrs instantly answered, and she gave him the information. “I need you to get Bertra Yannish and John Fitz from Oakridge Solutions and bring them here. They might’ve figured out Viv was investigating them earlier. This is too much of a coincidence. Take them from their homes. Fast.”
The office smelled like burned coffee.
Laurel chugged up the stairs at six a.m., her clothes stiff from dried sweat and mud, her brain thick with exhaustion that had long since turned into something brittle.
She hadn’t slept. None of them had. She tossed her jacket over the back of Kate’s empty chair and took several deep breaths before heading back to the conference room.
They’d been out all night.
Interviews. Field checks. Surveillance footage.
They’d talked to every coach, every teammate, two janitors, the vending machine guy, and a substitute teacher who claimed he didn’t know practice had been happening at all.
Laurel had chased leads through parking lots, crawled under bleachers, and reviewed hours of low-res surveillance from four different school-facing businesses.
One camera, angled badly over a loading dock behind a used bookstore, had caught a man walking past the back of the field around 4:53 p.m.
Hood up. Ball cap low. Face turned from the lens every time.
She’d watched it seven times and still couldn’t identify him.
The Seattle FBI Field Office was currently searching Oakridge Solutions, and she trusted that Agent Norrs had sent the right agents to do the job.
She pressed her face with both hands, hard enough to see stars. Her head pounded behind her eyes. Her mouth tasted like metal, and fear made her skin tingle. Where was Viv? They needed to find a lab that might not exist.
Kate was home, locked in with her two remaining girls and a rotating pair of deputies outside the door. Huck had taken over command for the morning, splitting personnel into new search zones. Still nothing. No calls. No demands. No Viv.
Just a sixteen-year-old girl somewhere out there in the dark with a possible attack coming.
Gathering herself, Laurel strode down the hallway and stopped at the conference room, where two broad male Seattle FBI agents with buzz cuts and sharp eyes took point with Dr. Bertra Yannish sitting across the table, scrolling on her phone.
Apparently they’d allowed her to get dressed because she wore jeans and a light purple sweater with her blond hair up in a ponytail.
She looked up. “This is an outrage. I was interviewed by a bulldog of an FBI agent for two hours. I shouldn’t still be here.”
Norrs had questioned her and then headed out to help with the search after hitting a stone wall, as he’d put it over the phone. Laurel pulled out a chair and sat. “Where is your other lab? Speak now, or you’ll go to prison for the rest of your life.”
Bertra’s eyes narrowed. “What lab?”
“Don’t lie to me. You know Viv heard you talk about it, and now you’ve orchestrated her kidnapping. Where is John Fitz, anyway?” Apparently he hadn’t been at home or the office, and he lived alone. His phone hadn’t pinged a location either. So it must be off.
“I have no idea.” Bertra tapped her nails on the glass. Nervousness? Maybe.
“Excuse me.” Henry Vexler strode inside, rubbing his hands together as if he’d just washed them. Had he been in the bathroom? “You can’t interview my client without me.” He didn’t sit.
Bertra smiled, her lipstick flawless, her eyes sharp enough to cut through wire.
“I called my attorney, of course. I’m not happy I’m paying him nine hundred dollars an hour to sit here.
” She leaned slightly toward Laurel, voice low and full of weaponized calm.
“I have no idea where Viv is, and I’d tell you if I did. ”
Laurel didn’t blink. “Where’s Fitz?”
Bertra gave a casual shrug, like she was bored already. “How in the hell would I know? It’s after hours and I don’t expect to see him until later today. In the office. Where we work.”
Beside her, Vexler in his expensive suit, polished shoes, and the constant air of courtroom smugness, sighed with exaggerated patience.
“Agent Snow, we’re very sorry there’s a missing girl, but my client doesn’t know anything about the situation.
You have zero reason to hold her. She’s not a suspect or a witness.
So either stop this right now or I’ll file a motion, and it’ll be public. Very.”
Laurel could not care less about public.
“Your client hired Viv as an intern,” she said, voice cool but laced with the anger she barely kept in check.
“Viv overheard her discussing a secret lab. I believe your client had her kidnapped. I also believe your client is involved in the deaths of people with fatal brain lesions we traced back to compounds developed at Oakridge Solutions. And we have credible intel suggesting a bio-attack will occur soon.”
Kind of. Not really. Not enough.
But God, she needed it to be enough.
Vexler gave her a tired smile. “Arrest my client or let her go. You have nothing specific tying her to the abduction. You know it. I know it.”
And he was right.
Laurel’s chest burned with the truth.
Bertra stood, graceful and smug. She gave Laurel a slight nod, like they were adversaries in some corporate chess match and not standing on the ruins of a missing girl’s future.
“You want to get in front of this,” Laurel said sharply, rising. “Now.”
Vexler smirked. “I do appreciate your tenacity. You remind me of your sister.”
Laurel didn’t flinch, but anger rushed through her, making her ears heat.
“I wish you luck in finding the girl,” he added smoothly, and turned toward the door with Bertra beside him.
Laurel watched them go, fury boiling under her skin.
She leaned forward, hands braced on the table, the fight draining out of her legs.
She felt raw, cornered, and two steps behind.
The only thing worse than not having enough to hold Bertra was knowing she was dirty and having to let her walk anyway.
Laurel’s eyes burned. She pressed the heel of her hand against them, once. That was all she’d give it.
Where was Viv?
They had surveillance, yes, but no faces. No license plates. She had officers sweeping the neighborhoods and canvassing every parking lot. The drones hadn’t found heat signatures worth chasing.
Laurel turned and looked at the boards filled with names, numbers, possible connections, and none of it giving her what she needed.
Her jaw clenched until her teeth ached.
She wasn’t losing this girl.
Shaking herself, she stood and walked down the hallway and stairs, intending to go into the Fish and Wildlife offices, which had become a central hub for the investigation since it had more square footage.
She stepped into the vestibule and ran right into Tim Kohnex.
His dog sat over by the door, yawning. “I don’t have time for you. ”
His blue eyes widened. “The wind is talking. About spinning tires and the missing girl.”
Laurel breathed deep. “Bullshit.” She rarely uttered profanity. Her brain wasn’t using all its power as she hadn’t slept. “I know the news got ahold of this.” She’d seen Rachel at the school and had stayed away from her.
Kohnex grasped her arm. “It’s the wind. I heard it with the cars near the church.
Whispering that she’s lost. Why don’t you come to the Spring Worship Day with me tomorrow at the church?
The wind will whisper to you at that holy place.
” He stood nearly six foot seven, his body fit and slender. “Let me help you.”
Laurel jerked free. The man wanted to write a book about being psychic, and he’d told her so.
“You’re trespassing. Leave or I’ll have you arrested.
” She pushed through the door to the Fish and Wildlife offices, where the bustle of agents and officers desperately trying to find a missing teenager sounded like a busy city at lunchtime.
Where could Viv be?