Forty-Eight
MERCER
She was taking too long.
Our mate had yet to emerge, which meant our plan had probably gone to shit. Benjamin must have slipped past every precaution.
He has her.
The heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach had me confident. She may not be my mate for real, but it was like I could feel her emotions from a distance. Talia was terrified, and whether that was purely my paranoia talking or not, I had to take action.
She thought we’d sent her in there without a backup plan. I would never risk her life like that, but we’d decided it was better if she didn’t know about the tracking devices embedded in all the jewellery pieces we’d given her.
That way, she couldn’t accidentally give away its purpose as a lifesaving measure with a misplaced glance or by fiddling with it too much.
My packmates were as on-edge as I was in the back of this kitted-out surveillance van. “This is going bad,” West declared. “We need to go get her. Now.”
I lifted a hand to stop him from barrelling out of the van. “Wait a moment.”
He growled. “She could be in danger.”
“If there was danger, she might not even be in the building anymore.”
West went pale. “Fuck. You got a point.”
Emilia spun in her chair, pointing at a screen with three blinking dots. “She’s in the right location.” She squinted, leaning closer. “Wait, no. That’s not the hallway.”
“Pull up the cameras,” Lavinia ordered. She had her phone in her hands, tapping at the screen.
Emilia had been focused on other feeds, trying to pinpoint where Benjamin would be coming from. She had the service hallway feeds up in an instant. Talia wasn’t in the frame.
West stalked toward the door, Conrad on his heels. “I’m going to get her.”
“Rewind the footage,” I requested quietly.
She punched it back until a dark figure appeared. When she hit play again, we watched a man in black clothing grab Talia’s arm and pull her into a room, disappearing from view.
“He has her,” I growled.
I was on my packmate’s heels in an instant, jumping down from the bed of the surveillance van. “Wait!” Emilia exclaimed. “Her tracker. It’s moving, faster than a human would be. They must have gotten her into a car.”
Lavinia shoved into the driver’s seat, taking the wheel and revving the engine. We all clambered back inside, shutting the doors behind us. West was halfway to the front when the van lurched forward, speeding down and out of the alley we’d been parked in.
“Emmy, directions,” Lavinia requested tersely.
“Got it. Take a left.”
I held on to the bolted-on cupboards for dear life as she took the corner. I hadn’t missed Lavinia’s driving, that was for sure.
She careened through the streets, Emilia shouting out the directions as we watched Talia’s three dots move on the map.
Where the fuck was he taking her? Had the bastard injured her already?
I regretted not finding a way to get a heart rate monitor onto her. That way, we would know for sure that she was alive. As it was, we only had the trackers on the jewellery to go by.
Although, I was convinced I would know if she were gone. My heart would have cracked open in my chest the second she left the world, even if she was a thousand miles away.
“They’ve stopped.” Emilia gestured to the dots, now in the centre of a large building. “Must have driven her into the warehouse. I’m surprised they didn’t take her further.”
