Page 4 of Hot for Hostage

I frowned at the bowl of yogurty mush.

“Has anyone seen Bear recently?” I asked the row of dogs, earning a dozen barks in answer. None were helpful. “Did a volunteer take him for a walk?”

It wasn’t unheard of for volunteers to show up at the crack of dawn, but Bear wasn’t usually a morning person—er,dog—and I struggled to keep my panic in check. Had someone adopted him? Had I missed it?

Taking a deep breath to quell my rising panic, I ran to all the other rooms before checking the courtyard play area. When Bear was nowhere to be found, I marched back to Emily in reception.

“Where’s Bear?” I asked, setting his food bowl on the counter.

The brunette receptionist looked up from the brownie she was nibbling on and brushed a crumb off her chin. “He’s not in his kennel?”

“No,” I said, trying not to freak out. “Was he adopted? Or did a dog walker take him out?”

She flipped through the sign-out notebook in front of her. “No adoptions so far today. Tasha is walking Pepper and Biscuit now, but no one else signed out any dogs.”

“Where could he be?” I rubbed a hand over my chest to calm my thundering heart. “I checked everywhere!”

Emily rolled over to the computer on the other side of her desk and clicked around. “I can access the back-door security footage from here. Maybe he escaped?”

“Bear would never…” I trailed off as ice filled my veins. There was another possibility—one I didn’t even want to contemplate. I darted around the counter and leaned in next to her. “Play the footage.”

Turns out, overnight security footage is pretty boring. And Mr. Sanders didn’t have the best quality surveillance system. But after a false alarm with a raccoon and one terrifying second where I could swear I saw a ghost—I sawintruders.

“There!” I stabbed a finger at the screen, making Emily jump. “Pause it.”

She clicked the mouse, and we both leaned in. Three figures lurked in the alley, dressed in dark clothes and ski masks.

Dread pooled in my stomach at the cans of spray paint they held. “It’s them. The teenage thugs.”

“I thought they only vandalized the front of the building,” Emily said.

“So did I.”

She resumed the footage, and we both watched closely as the small group of dark figures approached the back of the building. They spent a few minutes spraying the brick wall—I cursed myself for not seeing it when I checked outside for Bear—before approaching the back door. It was locked overnight, but one of the figures swung a brick at the lock.

Emily and I both gasped as the lock clattered to the ground. I hadn’t even noticed the broken lock in my panic earlier.

“They wouldn’tdare,” I whispered, clutching the arm of Emily’s chair. We both leaned even closer to the screen.

The boys disappeared inside the building, but Mr. Sanders didn’t have indoor security cams for us to follow them with. Emily and I waited with bated breath as she sped up the video, and five whole minutes passed on the timestamp before the boys stumbled back out with a wiggling German shepherd between them.

Bear.

Muzzled, leashed, and probably terrified out of his mind—Bear was being herded down the alley by these dog thieves.

My fingers itched to reach through the screen and grab him.

And in the silence of the reception area, I could almost hear the last bit of my patience snap like a glow stick.

sadie, get your gun

. . .

Sadie

Sadie’s Guide to Hostage-Taking, Tip #3: Always have a plan. Multiple plans, if you can. But in the event of an impromptu hostage-taking, improvisation is your friend.

The police were at the shelter within the hour, but they claimed there was nothing they could do.

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