“Talk to me.”
“I’m reviewing the footage now. Two men in suits entered the building at 1:52 PM. They had FBI badges, showed them to the guard on duty—Isaac Reeves, one of the newer hires. He verified their credentials and let them through.”
“Where’s Isaac now?”
“Gone. His phone is off. His apartment is empty. Looks like he cleared out in a hurry.”
“So he was working with them.”
“Looks that way. The footage shows the two men going up to your floor with Isaac. They’re up there for eleven minutes. Then they come back down with Savannah. She’s walking between them, looks like she’s going voluntarily, but—” He pauses. “Her body language is off. She looks scared.”
“Where’s Pedro?”
“That’s the thing. Pedro left his post at 1:47 PM. Five minutes before the fake agents arrived. Security logs show he went down to the parking garage for a reported breach. But there was no breach. Someone called it in using a spoofed number.”
“So they lured him away first.”
“Yeah. By the time he realized it was fake and got back upstairs, Savannah was already gone. He called me at 2:34 PM asking where she was, said he found the penthouse empty.”
“Where is he now?”
“Sitting in his car outside the building. Waiting for you.”
I reach my floor. The hallway is empty. No guard at the elevator. No one outside my door. I unlock the penthouse and step inside.
“I’m here,” I tell Silas. “It’s empty.”
“I’m on my way. ETA fifteen minutes.”
I hang up and walk through the penthouse slowly. Everything looks normal at first glance. The furniture is in place. The TV is off. Savannah’s lunch dishes are still on the dining table, half-eaten salad abandoned.
But then I notice the small things.
Her purse is gone from the table by the door where she always leaves it.
The bedroom closet is half-empty. Clothes missing. The overnight bag we bought for the hospital is gone.
I open the bathroom. Her toiletries are gone. Toothbrush, makeup, and the prenatal vitamins she takes every morning.
In my office, I check the safe. It’s open. Not broken into—opened with the code. Twenty thousand in cash is missing. The emergency credit cards I kept there are gone.
I sit at my desk and pull up our bank accounts on my computer. Three withdrawals in the past hour. Five thousand from checking. Ten thousand from savings. Another five from the emergency account. All made from Savannah’s phone, using the banking app with her fingerprint.
I stare at the transactions. At the empty closet.
In the text messages, she says she needs space. It looks like she left. Packed her things, took money, walked out voluntarily, but it doesn’t add up with the text Alexi received.
My phone rings. Alexi. “Did you find her?” he asks.
“She’s gone. The penthouse is empty.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“Someone took her. Made it look like she left on her own.” I pull up the security footage on my computer, scrubbing through to find the timestamp. “Fake FBI agents. One of our own guards helped them.”
“Jesus. What do we do?”
“Find her. Before they—” I can’t finish the sentence. Can’t say out loud what the Kozlovs will do to her.
