Page 129 of The Beast

“I was an ass,” he said, his voice so low he was amazed she heard it. “I was an ass, and so she went to the penthouse instead of staying with me. If something happens to her…”

He trailed off with a shudder, holding Harper tight, and hoping for all he was worth that he’d soon be holding Izzy.”

“Come on,” Harper said. “The sooner we find her, the sooner you can bloody whoever took her.”

He didn’t laugh, but his lips twitched.

And she damn sure wasn’t wrong.

She held his hand as they walked to the security office, a cramped room on the ground floor filled with monitors and blinking lights and a building manager named Patterson who kept wiping his palms on his slacks.

“Here,” Patterson said, pointing at one of the screens. “I’m sorry to say, this is the only angle we have of that section of the garage. But at least it’s something.”

Gabriel scowled as he watched the footage play. A grainy, low-resolution image with a starting timestamp of 5:20:27 AM.

At 5:24:10, Bella walked into frame. Even in the poor-quality video, Gabriel could see the exhaustion in her posture, like she was carrying a weight too heavy for her shoulders.

His fault. He’d put that weight there.

She stopped. Looked around. Called out something. Harper, probably, based on the shape of her mouth.

And then they appeared.

Two men. Big. Professional. They’d positioned themselves carefully—faces angled away from the cameras, baseball caps pulled low, nothing that could be used for identification. They knew exactly where the blind spots were. Knew exactly how to move through the space without giving the cameras anything useful.

Sterling had sent pros. Not surprising.

He watched as Bella tried to back away, then as one of the men circled behind her to press something—a gun, it had to be a gun—against her back.

That’s when he saw the change. When all the fight went out of her.

They guided her toward a black SUV idling near the exit. She didn’t fight. What choice did she have?

The SUV door opened. Hands pushed her inside. The door slammed shut.

And then she was gone.

“I got back to the penthouse about twenty minutes before I called you,” Harper said. “I thought about crashing in New York, but I figured Bella needed me. And then I realized she wasn’t there when I stuck my head into the bedrooms to see if she was awake. If I’d just skipped the damn coffee and left earlier⁠—”

“No.” Gabriel took her hand. Squeezed it. “None of this is on you. You did exactly the right thing.” He turned to Patterson. “And that’s it?” His voice was deadly quiet. “That’s all you have?”

Patterson nodded jerkily. “I’m sorry, Mr. Grimm. The cameras in that section... They’re older. Lower resolution. We’ve been meaning to upgrade, but the board keeps pushing back on the budget.”

“Get out.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Get. Out.”

Patterson fled. Smart man.

Gabriel stood there staring at the frozen image on the screen. The last frame before she disappeared. Bella, being pushed into that SUV, her face turned just slightly toward the camera.

She looked scared. She looked brave. She looked like a woman who knew she was in trouble and was already planning how to survive it.

God, he loved her.

“I’m going to kill them. Those men. Sterling. They’re going to pay for this.”