“He’s not out there,” I say.
Her expression shifts from confusion to something closer to fear. “Lucian?—”
“Don’t panic, he might’ve just needed some air. I’m checking the cameras.”
The security room is two corridors down from my office. I push through the door without knocking. The tech inside jumps at the force of it.
“Pull exterior street feeds,” I order.
He scrambles, fingers flying over his keyboard. Monitors flicker to life, cycling through angles—front entrance, corner intersection, alley view, traffic light.
“Rewind twenty-five minutes,” I say.
The footage scrolls backward in fast motion until the timestamp hits.
There. Elias steps through the front doors.
He doesn’t light a cigarette.
He doesn’t hesitate.
He jogs down the street like there’s a devil on his tail.
“Track him,” I say.
The tech jumps feeds. Corner camera. He passes it quickly, cutting north instead of south.
Another camera catches him at the edge of the block.
He doesn’t slow.
Snow begins to thicken in the footage.
“Keep going.”
The view shifts to the park perimeter two blocks over. A lamppost camera captures him crossing the street without looking back.
My pulse spikes.
He doesn’t turn down the main path.
He veers left.
Toward the trees.
The camera at the park entrance catches him slipping between them just as the snowfall intensifies, white swallowing him whole within seconds. The feed loses him after that. The screen shows only storm and branches bending under wind.
I step closer to the monitor, as if proximity might pull him back into frame. “How long ago?” I ask.
“Seventeen minutes,” the tech answers.
Seventeen minutes in a growing storm.
The park leads into forested land that stretches for miles.
“Any interior park cams?” I demand.
“Only at the main paths,” he replies quickly. “Nothing deep in the woods.”
