"Twelve-thirty to one o'clock. Bubba's entrance and the surrounding areas."
We crowd around the screen as Vanir pulls up the footage.
The timestamp reads 12:43 when Dalla walks out of Bubba's with a woman—older, dark hair, exactly like the bartender described.
They're talking, the woman gesturing urgently.
Dalla looks concerned but not afraid.
She doesn't know.
She has no idea she's walking into a trap.
They disappear around the corner of the building, out of frame.
"Fucking hell," Runes mutters.
"Different angle," I say. "There has to be a camera that covers that gap."
Vanir shakes his head. "It's a blind spot. Always has been. Never thought we'd need coverage there."
Of course.
Of course they picked theonespot on the compound that isn't covered.
They've been watching, learning, mapping every weakness.
The satellite camera in the woods.
The sedan on the road.
All of it leading to this moment.
"What about the street?" I ask. "They had to have a vehicle. They couldn't have carried her out on foot."
Vanir switches feeds, pulling up footage from a camera mounted near the main gate.
We watch the timestamp tick forward—12:44, 12:45, 12:46—and then a dark van appears on the road, slowing as it passes the compound.
"There." I point. "That's them."
The van stops just past the tree line, out of direct sight of the gate but still visible on the camera.
A few minutes later, we see movement—figures emerging from the shadows between buildings, carrying something.
Someone.
They're carrying Dalla.
She's limp. Unconscious.
One of them has her over his shoulder like a sack of grain.
The sound that comes out of me isn't human.
It's something raw and primal, torn from a place I didn't know existed.
"RJ." Runes' hand is on my shoulder, gripping hard. "Focus. We need to find her."
