Page 45 of The Outcast
“Come on, you don’t think that Keith…” Indiana didn’t finish his sentence but looked at Aubri and me. “No, that’s crazy.”
Aubri’s jaw was so tense that I was afraid she might hurt her teeth, but I felt stressed and anxious too.
“Banni, gather all the candidates and have them help you search the inn. Indiana and I are going to find out where Keith is and ask for surveillance footage.” Walking out the door with decisive steps, Aubri threatened, “If he touched Sparrow, he’s a dead man.”
Fifteen minutes later, Lilly and the eight remaining candidates had helped me search all twenty-five rooms in the inn as well as the kitchen, the basement, the attic, and the garden. There was no sign of Sparrow or Keith.
“Maybe they ran away together,” Franklin suggested.
I scoffed. “Not in a thousand years. Sparrow said that he gave her the creeps.”
“Who saw her last?” Aubri asked. “Did anyone see her after we had dinner with her around seven?”
“I saw her at a little after ten.”
“Where?” Indiana asked me in a gruff voice.
“In her room. I offered to swap rooms with her because I figured that she might not feel safe after Keith stopped by earlier and freaked her out.”
“But she didn’t swap with you?”
“No.”
Aubri was frowning hard. “Did anyone else see Sparrow between ten last night and now?”
A firm “No” arose from all the candidates.
Indiana hammered his palm against the doorframe and groaned with frustration. “How long will it take to get that footage from the inn?” The problem with robots was that you couldn’t force them to step outside protocol unless they had permission. Management was somewhere remote and needed to follow the law.
“Indiana, try calling Raven again,” Aubri said.
He complied and placed the call on speaker when his sister Raven picked up fast.
“Hey, I was just about to call you.”
“Did they give you the footage, yet?”
“I have it, and Leo and I just looked through it. At 3:42 a.m. a man carried a person outside and placed that person in a drone that took off.”
“Lucifer’s ass!” Indiana burst out at the same time I shouted the worst words I knew in French.
“With Sparrow missing, we’re treating this as a kidnapping. Leo is talking to Solomon as we speak.”
I reached for the back of a chair, feeling physically ill as I listened to Indiana and his sister Raven talk about the next steps.
“We’ll activate the Doom Squad as well as the entire Huntsman unit, the police, and everyone we know. We can have her photo on all News channels within the hour.”
“Don’t do that,” Aubri said. “Keith won’t take her to a populated area where she can be recognized. If this blows up in the press, all our work will be wasted. The French will find out and refuse to receive any help from us. They always said that we Northlanders are emotionally unstable and this…” Aubri threw up her hands. “Let’s just fucking find her and deal with himourway. We don’t need the whole world to think every man in this country is a lunatic.”
Pointing to me, Indiana asked. “Can you keep your mouth shut about this?”
With irritation I snorted. “Can we focus on saving Sparrow and worry about the Exploration program and your reputation later?”
“We need to think.” Aubri rubbed her head. “Sparrow has all the files on you candidates. I never saw anything but your application vids. Where did Keith live?”
“Alaska,” Bianca shouted. “He said he lived in a rural place by a lake with a view of mountains.”
“There’s a million places in Alaska that fit that description. We need a city name or an address.”
