Page 41 of Rescuing Tobias

April 23rd

2:32 P.M.

Tobias was trying really hard notto turn into a fully-fledged stalker.

Not that it was easy.

He was all but consumed with the need to know what Isabella was doing every second of the day, so he knew that she was safe. If it were possible, he would spend every waking second tracking her movements.

But it wasn't.

With two of the nurses rescued alongside her already missing, priority number one was ensuring that nothing happened to any of the others. Priority number two was doing everything within their power to dismantle the ring and shut it down.

When he’d first learned that those two nurses were missing, he’d wanted to call Isabella, apologize, and beg her to move back there to stay with him at Prey, where he knew it would beimpossible for anyone to get to her. In fact, if he didn't know she was safe with Connor then he would have done just that.

After all, what good was protecting her from having to take him on as a burden if they got together, if Isabella wound up abducted again?

It was no comparison.

Besides, he could control himself when the stakes were so high and keep their relationship solely a friendship.

Five days had passed since Josiah told them what he’d found, and he wasn't sure he could hold out much longer before he checked up on her again. Connor hadn't called in for reinforcements because Isabella had been snatched, so he knew she was still safely living with her best friend. Knew it, but until he looked it up for himself he couldn’tknowit.

For the last couple of hours at least, he’d been in a near-constant argument with himself. It had been almost ten days since Isabella told him she was pregnant, and he told her to leave, causing him to track her phone. Checking in on her once every ten days couldn’t really be classified as stalking.

Even if he was checking in illegally.

Knowing this was one battle he wasn't going to win, not even against himself, he sighed, shut down the search he was running, and instead brought up the one he had preset to run Isabella’s name through everything from hospital records to police reports and everything in between.

It was supposed to be just a formality.

Because he would have already been told if anything had happened to her, given she was staying with another Prey employee.

Therefore, nothing could have prepared him for the heart palpitations he suffered when her name came up in a recent emergency room record, and a police report from three days ago.

With shaking hands, he tapped on his keyboard, reading through the details. Each word he read had his blood pressure jumping higher and higher until he was pretty sure he was going to stroke out.

Shoving away from his desk, Tobias jumped to his feet and hurried toward the door.

“Is everything okay?” Ava’s worried voice called after him.

“No,” he answered simply.

Ready to stop fighting against his feelings, his desires, and what he was pretty sure was the inevitable conclusion to all of this anyway, despite his fears and concerns over becoming a burden to a woman he respected the hell out of.

It was too late to be logical.

Too late to pretend that he could be noble.

Jogging down the hall, he bypassed the elevator because he didn't want to wait for it and took the stairs instead to the floor that housed the Oswald siblings’ offices. While Raven often worked in their cyber team room, she had an office up there as well, and she’d been working in it today since she had phone calls to make.

Now he shook his head at her PA and gave a single knock on Raven’s door before flinging it open and stepping inside. Raven was at her desk, but she wasn't on the phone, and she stood as soon as he hurried inside, concern on her face.

“What’s wrong?”

“Isabella was almost run over by a car three days ago,” he announced, wondering how they hadn't already been informed about this. Surely, Connor would have reached out to tell someone what had happened since it sounded from the police report like it wasn't accidental.

From the guilty look on Raven’s face, he got his answer.

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