Page 67 of Hunted

It was one of the new foldable ones, that opened up into a tablet-sized screen. She plugged a signal encryption device into it, and then called up her cloud account and downloaded the blueprints of the house.

To that, she added Switch’s security cracking software.

She waited, holding her breath, until the security software isolated the feeds for McIntyre’s system. Quickly, she scanned through them until she found the ones she was looking for—the auction room, and the room where they were keeping the little girl.

In the auction room, the clients were waiting for the auction to begin. McIntyre was talking to someone through a comms unit.

In the other feed, a seven-year-old girl in a pink dress sat on the bed, clutching a teddy bear and looking like she was about to cry. Probably because there was a huge, burly security man looming over her, talking.

Unfortunately, there was no sound. Her phone wouldn’t handle too much input, so they’d gone visual-only.

Mikey tapped in some more instructions, and the software began tracking the feeds to their sources, overlaying them onto the blueprints of the house.

It zoomed in and locked.

The auction was on the third floor, south side, down near the end of the wing.

The little girl’s room was third floor north side, near the center section. The helipad was on top of the center section, with a stairway near her room.

Convenient for McIntyre getting her out. Also convenient for Michelangela.

She rearranged some things inside her purse, put her phone inside and walked out of the cloakroom, away from the staircase towards the security guard down the hall.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Sir? I’m looking for my husband. I’m sure he came down this way.”

The guard blocked her path. “No, ma’am. I’ve been here for the last hour, and no one’s come past me.”

“No, I’m sure he did,” she insisted, moving as if to pass him.

“Ma’am, please, I’ll have to ask you to go back.” He turned slightly to face her.

She moved closer. “I know you’re covering for him,” she said. “He’s with that woman, isn’t he? How much did he pay you? I’ll double it.”

“Ma’am—”

She opened her purse and pulled some bills out. “Here. I’ll give you three hundred dollars. Go on, take it.” He had his hand out to stop her, and she shoved the bills into it. Also the needle from the tiny syringe she had between her fingers.

“Shit!” he said. “What was that?”

He moved to hit the button on his comms unit, but he didn’t make it. It was a quick-acting knockout mixture, and his knees were collapsing before he could even try to alert anyone.

They’d known they’d never get inside the house with weapons, so Michelangela had gone with her dragon-made syringe box, attached to her phone case. The one made to repel searching eyes.

Throwing a glance down the hallway to make sure no one was watching, Michelangela dragged the guard around the corner of the hallway. Then she ran her fingers down the paneled wall until she felt a crack. She pushed, and a concealed door opened into the servants’ passageway she’d seen on the blueprints.

Lucky for her, evil billionaires didn’t like to run into their cleaning crew lugging vacuum cleaners and laundry baskets down the hallways. So gauche.

She dragged the guard inside so if anyone noticed he was missing, it would take longer to find him. Then she left him snoring, and continued through the servants’ corridor to the third floor staircase.

On the way, she checked her phone. Inside the auction room, a video feed from the little girl’s room was projected on the screen. It was a close-up on her, sitting on the bed, so the bidders couldn’t see what was going on in the room, but Michelangela could, through the security camera there.

The huge security guard was holding the little girl’s teddy bear. As she watched, he ripped its head off, scattering stuffing everywhere. Then he said something to the little girl, gesturing towards her.

She could almost hear him threatening to do the same to her.

The girl’s eyes grew wide, and then her body shimmered and she burst into her wolf form. Michelangela wanted to reach through the phone and strangle the bodyguard. Forcing a young shifter to panic-change was the worst thing you could do to them. A lot of them got stuck and couldn’t come back.

The bidders, not knowing what the guard had just done, were oohing and ahhhing over the girl’s Change.