Page 61 of Victorious: Part 2
But I can’t stop.
Not when every piece of data I’m pulling up is painting a picture that makes my skin crawl. Multiple screens display Cartel connection maps, financial trails, communication intercepts, and a web of corruption so extensive it makes my head spin.
I lean back in my chair, rubbing my eyes with the heels of my palms. Three days of nonstop digging since Phoenix and Clover left for Vegas, and every breadcrumb I follow leads to the same terrifying conclusion—this thing is bigger than any of us imagined.
My fingers fly across the keyboard, cross-referencing prison guard payroll records with suspicious bank deposits. The patterns are there if you know how to look, and unfortunately for these Cartel fucks, I knowexactlyhow to look.
“Come on, you pieces of shit,” I mutter, pulling up another database. “Give me something I can use.”
The door to my tech den suddenly slams open, rattling every piece of equipment in here. I spin around, ready to unleash hell on whoever disturbed my concentration, but the words die in my throat when I see Rip’s face. He’s pale as a fucking sheet, sweat beading on his forehead, chest heaving as though he has run a marathon. His usually laid-back surfer demeanor is nowhere to be found.
“Dude!” he gasps, bracing himself against the doorframe. “Loki, bro, we got ourselves a gnarly situation brewing.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Define ‘gnarly situation.’Because unless the building is on fire or someone is bleeding out, I’m kinda busy here trying to—”
“Doughnut’s gone!”
The words hit me like a confusing punch to the gut. I stare at him for a beat, processing. “Gone? What do you mean,gone?”
Rip pushes into the room, running both hands through his shaggy hair. “I mean like, totally vanished, dude! One minute he’s chilling in his pen, doing his whole goat thing, next minute, poof! It’s as if he just caught a wave and rode it into another dimension.”
I stand up slowly, my mind already racing through the implications. Doughnut doesn’t just disappear. That goat is stubborn as hell and never strays far from his food source.
If he’s missing…
“When did you notice?” I ask, already moving toward my surveillance monitors.
“Like, twenty minutes ago? I went to toss him some of those radical carrot treats Haven got him, and his pen was totally empty. Gate was still locked though, which is like, super weird, man.”
My fingers fly across the keyboard before he finishes talking, pulling up the exterior security feeds. “If someone took him, they would’ve had to get past our perimeter cameras.”
“That’s totally what I’m saying. It’s like he just evaporated or something. Unless…” Rip’s voice trails off, and when I glance at him, his face turns paler. “Unless someone knew exactly how to get in without being spotted. Whoa, that just blew my mind. Am I high right now?”
A chill runs down my spine. I’ve been so focused on the digital trail, I haven’t been paying enough attention to our physical security.
Big fucking rookie mistake.
“Show me the pen,” I say, ignoring his usual antics, already grabbing my tablet and a portable scanner.
We head outside, and the moment I see Doughnut’s enclosure, every alarm bell in my head starts ringing. The gate is locked, just like Rip said, but there are subtle signs of a disturbance. The dirt near the fence line has been smoothed over too damn perfectly. A few tufts of goat hair caught on the chain link, but in the wrong spots.
“This wasn’t random,” I mutter, crouching down to examine the ground more closely. “Someone planned this.”
“But why would anyone want to jack our goat?” Rip asks, confusion clear in his voice. “I mean, Doughnut’s totally radical and all, but he’s not like, valuable or anything? Fuck, they’re not gonna make, like, Goat curry… are they?”
I stand up, my mind spinning through possibilities. “It’s not about the goat, Rip. It’s about sending a message. About showing us they can get to whatever or whoever they want on our property.”
The blood drains from Rip’s face. “Dude… that’s like maaajorly uncool.”
Pulling up the security footage on my tablet, I scroll through the last twenty-four hours of exterior feeds. “I need to get back to my den. Run a full perimeter sweep, check for any other signs of—”
I freeze, staring at the tablet screen.“What the fuck?”
“Yo, what is it, bro?”
I rewind the footage, watching it again. “There’s a motherfucking gap. A thirty-seven-minute break in the surveillance footage between two and three this morning.”
Rip leans over my shoulder. “That’s not good, right?”
