Page 74 of Cole

"Good man." Logan paused. "Cole, I'm running this operation from headquarters. Sadie's monitoring all feeds and the tracker in real time. We will get her back. I promise you that."

Cole didn't say anything. Couldn't respond past the lump in his throat. He ended the call and focused on maintaining the professional detachment that had served him through countless dangerous situations.

But beneath that detachment, rage simmered. Someone had hurt Janice. Had scared her. Had put their hands on her and dragged her away from safety.

And Cole was going to make them pay for every second of terror they'd caused her. He swung into the parking lot hard enough to make the tires protest. He was out of the SUV before it had fully stopped, taking the stairs two at a time.

Timothy and Dalton stood in the hallway outside room 7, their expressions grim. Frazier was inside the room, phone pressed to his ear, presumably talking to Sadie or Logan.

Cole's eyes went to the spilled food first. Two large bags, their contents scattered across the hallway floor. Burgers and fries, containers split open, food scattered across the carpet. He stomped through the door, and Cole could see the room undisturbed except for Janice's absence and the mess on the carpet.

"Tell me everything," he said, his voice flat and hard.

"Food delivery came from the tavern," Timothy said. "We talked to the woman who runs it—Donna. She said Janice called in an order, claimed she was sick and couldn't come pick it up. Donna brought it here herself."

"And?"

"And when she got here, she set the bags down and knocked. Janice didn’t open the door." Timothy's jaw tightened.

“She probably didn’t want Donna to discover that she really wasn’t sick.”

Frazier turned to them, his phone still in hand. "Sadie's got the surveillance feeds from Penson's house live now. Janice's in his office. She's alive, appears uninjured, and she's talking to him."

Relief crashed over Cole so intensely that his knees went weak. Alive. She was alive.

"What's he saying to her?" Cole moved past Frazier into the room, where a laptop sat open on the bed, streaming the video feed from the camera he’d planted that morning.

The angle wasn't perfect. He'd positioned it to capture the room broadly rather than focusing on any specific area, but Cole could see Janice clearly enough. She sat in a chair facing Penson's desk, her posture tense but upright. No visible injuries that he could see. No blood, no obvious signs of violence.

But the fear in her eyes, visible even through the grainy feed, made Cole want to put his fist through a wall.

"She's stalling," Frazier said quietly, moving to stand beside Cole. "Listen."

Cole focused on the audio feed, picking up Janice's voice mid-sentence.

"...behavioral changes in response to environmental factors. Climate change, seasonal variations, water chemistry fluctuations—all of it affects animal behavior and population dynamics."

She was talking about her research, burying Penson in scientific jargon and drawing out the conversation to buy herself time. Smart. Good play.

"How long has she been there?" Cole asked.

"Ten minutes." Frazier checked his watch. "She's doing good, Cole. She's keeping him talking, not giving him what he wants."

On the screen, Penson stood abruptly, clearly frustrated. Cole couldn't make out all the words, but the body language was clear enough. The conversation was ending.

Then Penson's voice came through clearly: "Take her to the camp."

Cole's blood turned to ice. The camp. The illegal mining site. Remote, isolated, the perfect place to make someone disappear.

"Fuck," he breathed.

"We move now," Frazier said, already pulling up maps on his phone. "The mining camp is approximately thirty miles northeast of Penson's house. If they're taking her there, we have maybe forty-five minutes before she's in a location that's much harder to extract from."

Cole's phone buzzed, and he looked at the ID.

"I heard," his boss said without preamble. "Sadie's coordinating with the local FBI field office. They're mobilizing, but they're two hours out. You're going to have to handle initial extraction."

"We're already moving," Cole said, his mind shifting into tactical mode. The emotion didn't disappear when it came to Janice, but he compartmentalized it, shoving it into a box he'd open later when she was safe.