“Nah,” he scoffs before I’ve even finished. “No fucking way, that’s not my sister. She doesn’t walk away from shit. She’d tell you to your face.”
He curses suddenly, footsteps pounding on concrete.
“I’m heading there now. I’ll ring Rowan on the way and fill him in.” His breaths quicken. “He’s already been to the salon. Margret got the same text about being ill.” A car door opens, slams shut. “She’s never done anything like this before, Luc. Never just dropped everything and gone off the grid... What… what if...” He’s panting. “What if she didn’t even send these messages? What if... fuck, man, you hear all those fucking horror stories about omegas travelling alone—”
“Stop,” I bark, for him and for me. His breath shivers down the phone. “Go to the flat. If she isn’t there, you call me back immediately, understood?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it, boss. I will. Sorry.”
I hang up.
The worry that Revea rejected us is now drowned out by the horrific fear that something far worse has happened.
That she isn’t safe.
I slam open the office doors. My pack’s confused expressions land on me, but I’m locked on Sylvan.
“Track her.Now,” I bark so hard and loud that all of them tense.
Sylvan pulls out his phone, types in a code, pinches his screen a few times, then his jaw tenses. “She didn’t just turn off her phone. She removed the chip. Last tracked point is the airport.”
“And she didn’t just text us. She texted her brothers and Margret too. Told them she’s unwell. But Rue’s just been on the phone, said it’s unusual behaviour, that she isn’t at her house. Yeah,house, apparently she’s been hiding the flat from them. I’ve sent him there, told him to call me when...”
My phone buzzes, I answer, putting it on loudspeaker.
“She’s not here,” Rue says, and my growl rumbles out. “Rowan’s here, he’s got people tracking her phone, but they can’t find anything.”
“She removed the chip,” Syl adds.
Rue curses, then repeats it to someone before his voice lowers. “I don’t know what to do, guys. I thought she’d be with you, but now I can’t stop thinking she’s...”
“Rue, take a breath,” Kaiden rumbles out, his soft bark enough to stop him. “The worst-case scenario you’re picturing right now, stop. You know how those people work, and this isn’t it. They wouldn’t send texts, it’s too risky a tip-off.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Rowan said that too...”
“I’ll find her,” Sylvan says without hesitation.
There’s the sound of the phone being passed, then a new voice. “Kaiden?”
Our pack alpha pauses. “Hey, Rowan—”
“Please find her.” Rowan’s voice is raw, dark; he sounds just like Kaiden. “Use whatever you have, use my men, whatever you need, just…” Then it fades out. “…find my baby sister.”
Kaiden’s eyes sweep over us all. “We will.”
We sit in silence after that. Sylvan never stops working, only to ask us for things like extra screens and to jot down marks on a digital map.
Time goes so slow. Each second brings more dread.
What if we’re wrong? What if this is a kidnapping, and we’re all just sitting here while she gets taken further and further away from us—
“I’ve found her.”
Kaiden
Sylvan tracked her by searching through hours of CCTV footage and feeding it into a face-recognition programme he shouldn’t have access to.
He shows us the compiled footage. From the moment she got off the flight, to picking up her luggage, to getting into a taxi, where she was dropped off at a hotel a short distance away from the airport. It ends there.
