screens flicked from one scene to another as Kony moved through the streets.
Bouncing between traffic light cameras and footage mined from business security cameras. “Whoever wrote this program is a fucking genius.”
“That would be me,” Cade approached from behind them and grinned at Sage. “I was bored when I was here for a couple of months to recover after an IED blast. Rock got me computers and put me to work to shut me up.”
“Whining always works,” Sage slapped his hand off Cade’s in a high-five, then turned and high-fived Kalon who sat at the workstation behind him.
“Wait, go back.” Axel frowned at the screen, he couldn’t be sure, but that woman with a buggy holding a toddler by the hand. That could be Krystal. He squinted at the screen, wanting it to be as it would mean she was alive. But his stomach also churned, because if she was walking around the streets of El Alcíhuatl, then she wasn’t a captive as they had thought. Shit, he had to be wrong, that wasn’t her. It couldn’t be.
“What do you see?” Castello frowned at the images as they went fuzzy, and the people on screen started moving backward.
“There, stop.” Axel pointed to a woman on the bottom left of a screen,
“That’s her, the hair is different, it’s blonde and not brown, but that’s her.”
“When is this footage from?” Castello asked.
“Six days ago.” Kalon answered.
“Follow her.” Castello watched as onscreen the woman Axel had pointed out as his sister disappeared from on screen.
“Got her,” Kalon flicked the view to another screen, and they followed her along the street view until she once again disappeared.
“Where is she?” A blast of hope raged through his veins. Hope which had been rapidly draining away with every lead he had followed and every trip which had resulted in false leads and empty promises. Axel scanned all the screens, he couldn’t see her, were they missing a camera view?
“Have her.” Once again Sage clicked a button to put a different screen as the main view on their wall of screens and they followed her until she disappeared out of the range of the camera.
“I’m not seeing her,” Cade muttered. All three of the coms experts’
fingers clicked on keyboards as they searched for their target. “She must have ducked into a store.”
“Is she making a run for it?” Axel really wanted that to be true, he didn’t want for his baby sister to be one of the bad guys. But he pushed the hope down, hit it with a virtual sledgehammer, he knew better than to hope for shit.
“I don’t know.” Castello nudged him with his shoulder, “We’ll figure it out.”
“Damn it,” Cade went across to another desk and unlocked a computer, clicking through the screens until he found the one he wanted. A street map of the town projected onto the wall. “Gimme the street names where we had her in view.”
“What?” Sage frowned at him, “Why?”
“Because if we put them in this program will predict a logical destination based on the route she has taken so far.” Cade explained. He started typing in locations as Kalon called them out to him. Each time the map on the screen highlighted the route Krystal had taken. Once they got to the street where she had disappeared from view, the small turning circle that told them the computer was doing its thing appeared on screen, until finally it locked onto a location. “Based on her route she is headed for the train station.”
“Zack?”
“Yeah, Boss?”
Through the open door to the next room, Axel saw Zack paused mid-move as he sparred with Connor.
“You and Connor get your asses to the train station, see if you can find what train she took out of there.” Castello ordered.
“Roger that.” Zack held out his hand to his teammate, grabbed his arm near the elbow, and pulled him to his feet. No doubt he was happy to have something to do. Within seconds they were dressed like the locals would be, weapons stashed on their person out of sight, and disappearing out the door.
“Why those two?” Axel was fascinated by how Team Ambra worked.
All the members had their own personalities and differences. Some made it their mission to make another batshit, like Zack did with Castello, others like Sage were just a quiet presence in the background, keeping everyone united.
The dynamics of these men working together was both equally strange to him and gave him a sense of family that he had missed since leaving Hell’s Eagles.
As if Grif was reading his thoughts, he moved from where he had been watching Zack and Connor spar. “Is it weird?”
