Page 6 of Verses and Blooms
“I can’t do this,” Ansel choked out, rushing out of the clinic. One nod from Kane and he was following the omega. It was best that we stick together to some degree. The patients were all sequestered in their units, guards standing outside to keep them safe since none of the staff could be trusted at this point.
“Fuck,” I cursed. “Keep searching, Ry. It has to be here.”
“I’m helping out there. Stay together,” Ares warned before heading out, barking orders as he went.
“Who was with the doctor?” Cooke asked. He had a hand pressed to his ear, dark eyes narrowed as he listened, before glancing at Vance.
“Greer had him. I told the chief that guy wasn’t right in the fuckin’ head,” Vance complained, spitting on the ground at just the memory.
“Describe him for me,” I said evenly. I’d make sure he paid for his role in this. Slowly. Painfully.
“Dark hair, streaks of gray. Eyes a dull, cloudy blue. Attitude that says he thinks he’s above all us agents even thoughhewas at the bottom of the totem pole,” Cooke said as he slammed his hand down onto a shelf, busting what was left of it. “Never following orders without complaint. Always bitching.”
I nodded once, letting them know that I had committed that description to memory. One glance at Rydell said he thought the same.
“We need to go search out Sanchez. He’s the one with the tech know how,” Vance said. He and Cooke stared at each other for a moment, as if they were communicating silently. I had a feeling there was more than just camaraderie between them, but that would only work to our advantage. A bonded pair, no matter what capacity, would understand the intensity of how much we were willing to go to to find our mate.
“I’m staying here,” Rydell said, barely sparing us a glance as he ran his large hands over the cinderblock walls. His voice was desperate now. “She’s here. I’m not getting far from her. I can feel it.” His dark green eyes implored me to listen, to believe him.
“I’ve got this. You stay here,” I answered back, giving his shoulder a squeeze. He relaxed a little and nodded.
Cooke looked past me to Ares. “We’ll stay with him.”
“Then you’re with me,” Ares said.
I followed him out of the office, jogging to keep up as he stormed through the hallways, not stopping until he was outside of the conference room. I only saw it used for family visits or the occasional guest when the board stopped in.
The same board who had caused most of the problems here.
Ares’s team had transformed it into a makeshift data center. The entire table was covered in keyboards, screens, and more computers than seemed necessary, but what the fuck did Iknow? I wasn’t exactly a tech genius, though I’ve done my fair share of surveillance.
A beta with dark hair was tapping away behind the screens. He barely looked up as Ares and I stormed in.
“Sanchez, I need you.”
“I’m already on it, brother. I’m going to help her,” he promised, still not looking up from his screen.
“No, there’s more. Malik is gone.”
That got his attention. The beta glanced up, his gray eyes drifting from Ares to me, then back again as he processed it.
“That’s not possible. We have eyes on the entire perimeter and interior. There are guards on every high-profile person and all the staff.”
“Good, then it won’t be hard figure out where he went and how the fuck he’s been transporting patients from his clinic out of here without anybody noticing. They slipped out somewhere and if you have cameras,find them.”
“And you know it’s him that took her?” Sanchez asked. The curiosity in his voice meant he wasn’t dismissing me, but considering the connection.
I let out a dry laugh. “Yes. That man drugs the entire patient population here all at once. Every single person. You can’t tell me that wasn’t a cover for something. Suddenly, a patient goes missing, everybody’s up in arms, but we aren’t putting up much of a fight, are we?”
Sanchez’s lip curled in disgust as he shook his head. “Ares, do you want me to find this doctor? That’s gonna take my eyes off looking for your omega.”
“She’s with him,” I corrected. “Just shift your focus a little. They’re getting off this property somehow and I don’t want them to get far. He has her.”
“He speaks for me,” Ares said easily. That trust had Sanchez’s eyebrows raising but he nodded.
“Alright,” he agreed, focusing back on his screens. His fingers flew over the keyboard almost as soon as they touched it, eyes tracking back-and-forth over the multiple screens. I moved around him to watch. There were too many feeds to count. Blocks of security footage stacked into a huge grid. It was easy to see which ones their team added to the mix. We weren’t exactly high security here at ARC. Those feeds were grainy and showed little to nothing.
The rest were clear and had a wider range, tracking faces as they passed.
