Page 45 of Crave Me

I grimaced as he pushed things further and accessed the home surveillance of dozens of civilian residences across the development.

“Jesus Christ,” Luke breathed at him breaking so many laws all over the place.

Caspian shot a look over his shoulder at him. “Have our best at King-Tech access the system and cover him.”

Luke nodded, then headed to the back of the room, pulling his phone out as he went.

“Here,” Asher spoke, nudging Caspian, and then we all looked to see zoomed-in footage of a license plate from several angles, a Chevy pickup truck, and most relevant of all, compiled imagery of Sebastian right there in the passenger seat of the truck asleep. “Your boy’s there all right.”

“Oh my God!” Skylar cried. “It’s him. He really got out.”

“Anything on Caleb?” Caspian asked.

“No. Just Sebastian and the driver.”

Caspian cursed and shoved a hand through his hair.

And then he bolted from the command center, “I’ll head out there with a team and intercept the truck.”

I stepped into his path and pressed a hand to his chest. “I understand you want to be there in person, but the teams you have already scouring that five-hundred mile area are much closer. That truck is currently at least three hundred miles away from King Manor.”

He gritted his teeth, took a moment, then stepped back and nodded.

In the next moment, he was contacting his teams and ordering them to intercept the truck.

As soon as he was done, Skylar was there wrapping her arms around him. “We found him. Bastian is coming home to us.”

“Fuck, yeah!” Damien exclaimed.

The celebration was muted by the fact that Caleb wasn’t.

Asher was well-attuned to that fact and he called to Skylar, “Fire up that intel you retrieved, we’ll see where it leads.”

We exchanged a look and I actually saw more than his unaffected façade for a moment.

He was as worried as I was that Caleb wasn’t there alongside Sebastian.

It didn’t bode well.

Not at all.

11

~Skylar~

“You’re safe now. You’re safe, I promise,” I spoke to Bastian’s sleeping form, as I sat on his bed stroking his hair. “I love you. I love you so much.”

God, that didn’t even cover it.

Emotion welled in my eyes as I took him in.

He’d been unconscious when he’d arrived back here and he’d had to be carried in by Caspian’s people. The on-call doctor had been brought in and her, along with Caspian’s staff had cleaned Bastian up after he’d been caked in dirt, sweat, and blood from dozens of cuts it looked like he’d sustained from snagging himself on tree branches and hell knew what else during his escape. He was now clean and clad in a pair of boxers, and hooked up to an IV. He was severely dehydrated and he was so pale and gaunt from being denied both water and food as the doctor had determined.

“Anything yet?”

I looked up from gazing at Bastian to see Caspian now standing in the doorway, arms folded across his chest.

And he was dressed in full tactical gear.

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