Gabe forced himself not to hover. The man needed concentration, not pressure, but waiting felt like torture.
Wade had spread the satellite images across the table and was annotating them from memory. He marked the main building's position, the tower, the boat house at water level, working with the methodical care of someone who'd done mission planning before.
Reagan assembled sandwiches no one was eating. Piper dozed against her father's shoulder, exhaustion finally catching up with her. Cara sat beside Gabe, close enough that he could feel her warmth yet far enough to give him space to think.
The bakery remained quiet except for Tom's occasional muttered curse and the steady click of keys.
Gabe checked his watch for the hundredth time. Twenty-one hours and thirty-four minutes.
"Got something," Tom said suddenly.
Everyone straightened. Piper jerked awake.
Tom turned the laptop so they could see. Lines of code filled the screen, meaningless to Gabe but apparently significant to Tom.
"Their security system's old. Coast Guard installation from the early nineties, never properly updated." Tom's fingers flew across the keyboard. "Cascade Holdings added cameras and motion sensors, but they kept the original infrastructure. A serious mistake."
Wade leaned closer. "Can you access it?"
"Already in." Tom pulled up a new window. "Six cameras total. Four exteriors covering the approaches and perimeter. Two interiors."
Gabe's heart pounded. "Show us."
Tom clicked through the exterior feeds first. Grainy night-vision footage showed the access road, the parking area with three vehicles, the boat house from above, the steep coastline. Everything looked empty and quiet, with just two guards visible near the main entrance, shifting occasionally against the cold.
Wade studied the footage. "Guard rotation pattern suggests four-hour shifts."
Tom switched to the interior cameras.
The first showed a hallway—empty, with fluorescent lights casting harsh shadows across institutional tile floors and concrete walls.
The second camera showed a room.
A figure paced back and forth, restless energy in every movement.
Gabe's breath caught.
The image was grainy, black and white, the angle wrong for seeing the face clearly. But the way the person moved, that specific restless pacing, the height and build, the gestures when he ran his hand through his hair—all of it screamed one name.
"That's him." The words barely made it past Gabe's throat. "That's David."
His brother was alive, moving, thinking.
Gabe bowed his head. "Lord, thank you."
Cara's hand found his shoulder. "You're sure?"
"I'd know that walk anywhere." Gabe's voice strengthened even as his eyes stung. "He used to pace like that when we were kids. When he was working through a problem. Drove our mother crazy during homework time."
David paused in his pacing and looked toward the window, like he could feel them watching.
"I'm on this, buddy," Gabe murmured.
Relief flooded through him so fast it made him dizzy. His hands trembled. His chest felt too tight to breathe properly.
David was alive—not just in a photo with today's newspaper, but right now, this minute, moving and thinking and waiting for the cavalry. Waiting for him.
"Can you tell if he's hurt?" Gabe forced himself to look clinically, to assess instead of just feeling.
