Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99132 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99132 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
He scanned his ID and ran up the stairs, barreling through the opening toward the conference room. Handwritten notes, medical research records, and map printouts fanned out between coffee mugs and energy bar wrappers on the conference table. Laurel stood by a board, arms crossed, scanning names and timelines. Kate sat across the table, typing slowly on her laptop, brow furrowed.
Huck paused in the doorway, struggling for the right words.
Laurel looked up first. Her eyes narrowed at his expression.
Kate kept typing.
He stepped into the room, his voice low. “Kate.”
She looked up. “Yeah?”
He walked closer, not rushed, not loud. He crouched slightly to her eye level. “I need you to listen to me carefully. Viv’s missing.”
Kate blinked once.
He kept his voice steady. “She went into the locker room at softball practice. Tso was on watch. She didn’t come out. The window’s broken. There’s a little blood. We don’t know what happened yet, but we’re treating it as an abduction.”
Kate didn’t move for three full seconds. Then she stood up so fast her chair tipped back and clattered to the floor. “No,” she said. “No, she wouldn’t—she wouldn’t just disappear. Not from softball practice.”
Laurel moved to her side. “Kate. Stop. Breathe.”
“I have to go. I need to be there. Need to see—” Kate’s voice cracked and broke, her hands fluttering at her sides like they didn’t know what to do.
“You can’t help right now,” Laurel said softly. “But we will. Huck and I are going. We’ll find her.”
Kate looked between them, her face crumpling, then dropped into the nearest chair like her strings had been cut.
Laurel turned to Huck. “What do we have?”
“Tso called it in. She went in for the bathroom. Never came out. He checked the locker room. Window’s busted. Blood on the frame. Her bag is still there, and she left her phone in the dugout.”
“Surveillance?”
Huck kept his tone calm. “None from the field. I’ve got officers locking down the parking lot, and patrol’s canvassing the surrounding businesses.”
Laurel pulled her gun from her bag. “We start at the school. I want to talk to every coach, every player, every janitor who’s clocked in this week. Someone had to have seen a strange face.”
“I’ve got uniforms securing the scene and a mobile command post setting up in the parking lot,” Huck added. “Drone support’s airborne by now. K9 en route, and Aeneas and I will also search.”
“Good. We’ll run parallel,” Laurel said, moving fast now. “You coordinate field ops. I’ll start with staff interviews. Pull class rosters, visitor logs, lunch vendors, field maintenance. Anyone who had reason to be near that locker room today.”
Huck turned. “Traffic cameras?”
“I’m calling cyber on the way. I want every plate that passed the lot in the last two hours.” Laurel paused at the door and glanced back at Kate, who sat frozen in the chair, face pale, fingers gripping the armrests like they were the only thing keeping her upright. “I’ll bring her back.”
Kate leaped up. “I’m coming with you. I have to.”
“Understood,” Laurel said. “Huck, have Ena get the other two girls and bring them here. Just in case.” She pulled her phone out and called the Seattle field office.
Norrs instantly answered, and she gave him the information. “I need you to get Bertra Yannish and John Fitz from Oakridge Solutions and bring them here. They might’ve figured out Viv was investigating them earlier. This is too much of a coincidence. Take them from their homes. Fast.”
The office smelled like burned coffee.
Laurel chugged up the stairs at six a.m., her clothes stiff from dried sweat and mud, her brain thick with exhaustion that had long since turned into something brittle. She hadn’t slept. None of them had. She tossed her jacket over the back of Kate’s empty chair and took several deep breaths before heading back to the conference room.
They’d been out all night.
Interviews. Field checks. Surveillance footage. They’d talked to every coach, every teammate, two janitors, the vending machine guy, and a substitute teacher who claimed he didn’t know practice had been happening at all. Laurel had chased leads through parking lots, crawled under bleachers, and reviewed hours of low-res surveillance from four different school-facing businesses.
One camera, angled badly over a loading dock behind a used bookstore, had caught a man walking past the back of the field around 4:53 p.m.
Hood up. Ball cap low. Face turned from the lens every time.
She’d watched it seven times and still couldn’t identify him.
The Seattle FBI Field Office was currently searching Oakridge Solutions, and she trusted that Agent Norrs had sent the right agents to do the job.
She pressed her face with both hands, hard enough to see stars. Her head pounded behind her eyes. Her mouth tasted like metal, and fear made her skin tingle. Where was Viv? They needed to find a lab that might not exist.