Chapter 210 Gone Baby
ADRIANA
I couldn’t stay upstairs anymore.
Sitting in that room knowing Mark was loose somewhere, no walls between him and us, no one telling me anything — it was making me crazy. I pushed off the bed and went downstairs.
Elijah and Hazel were near the bottom of the staircase talking in low voices. They stopped the second they heard me coming.
“What’s the update?”
They looked at each other. I hated that look.
“Can someone actually speak to me?”
Hazel turned and walked away without a word, and Elijah stepped forward and put both hands on my shoulders like he was bracing me for something.
“You don’t need to worry. I’m handling it. He’s going to be caught, and when he is, this is over. I promise you that.”
“You had him, Elijah.” I kept my voice low but it cost me something. “You could have ended this when you had the chance. Why didn’t you just kill him? Her birth wouldn’t have been affected by that.”
“I was not going to have his execution happen around the same time she was born. I didn’t want that shadow over it. I wanted her arrival to mean something clean.”
I understood that. I did. But clean didn’t feel like a luxury we could afford anymore.
He had a grudge and the reason behind it was standing right in front of him. Landon was killed. We had taken what was his to use, and men like Mark didn’t let things like that go. Ever.
“Go back up and stay with the kids. When I have something to tell you, I’ll come up myself.”
He was trying to manage me and we both knew it. I was about to say so when a guard appeared behind him, stopping at a respectful distance.
“Alpha. I have a report.”
Elijah glanced back, then at me. “Adriana—”
“Let him speak.” I folded my arms. “Go ahead.”
The guard looked at Elijah, who gave a small nod.
“We tracked movement in the woods along the eastern side and found drag marks near the river border crossing. It looks like he’s already over.”
“Already?” I said. “He’s injured and he can’t shift. There’s no way he covered that distance on foot that fast. He had a vehicle waiting or someone drove him to the border directly. He didn’t do this alone.”
The guard looked at me with something close to surprise. Elijah’s jaw moved.
“We don’t have confirmed intelligence on that yet,” he said carefully.
“It’s not intelligence, it’s math. A wounded man doesn’t cross a border that fast without help. Someone moved him and someone knew in advance that he was going to need moving.” I looked at the guard. “Pull the gate logs. Every vehicle that came in or out of this property in the past forty-eight hours, I want a list.”
The guard looked at Elijah. Elijah nodded once, and he left.
“You could have just said that yourself,” I said.
“You got there first.”
I almost smiled.
“Keep me updated. I’m serious this time. I don’t want to find things out from the staircase.”
He cupped the side of my face. “You’ll know everything I know. Go be with them. Leo’s been holding it together for the kids but he’s scared.”
I was halfway back up the stairs when I stopped and turned.
“Martine.” Her name came out quieter than I intended. “I want to arrange her funeral. And her children. I want them brought here. They have no one now and she took care of me, Elijah. I’m not leaving them somewhere.”
He looked at me for a moment and then pressed his lips to my forehead. “It’s already being arranged. I’ll take care of the children today.”
I watched him walk away and thought about how long Mark had been right there at the edges of everything, hiding in the space just outside where I was looking. I’d been so focused on what was directly in front of me that I’d missed him entirely. I wouldn’t do that again.
“Leo. It’s me, open up.” I knocked on the door.
There was footsteps on the other side, then a slight pause.
“You who?”
I pressed my palm flat against the door. “If this door isn’t open in the next three seconds, you are going to find out exactly who.”
The door swung open. He stood there with that grin that meant he’d been waiting to do that since I left.
“Hello, Mother.”
“Move.” I walked past him. The twins and Lorain were on the bed watching me with careful eyes. “Did your father say anything to you? Do you know where he went?”
He was already looking at the her when I asked, and I caught myself. This wasn’t a conversation for right now, not with all three of them watching me and measuring my face for information.
“We’ll talk later, just you and me. Right now I need quiet because I’m going to feed your sister and she needs to settle, and you know what she’s like when she’s overtired.”
“Come on.” Leo patted the space on the bed beside him and they all shuffled over. “We’ll stay in here. We’ll be quiet.”
I didn’t want them wandering the hallways with everything unsettled, so I let it go.
“Don’t open the door for anyone. I mean that.”
I sat down and she fed quietly, and the room settled into that deep hush that only comes when a baby finally stops fighting sleep. Lorain fell asleep in that time. The twins had gone still. Even Leo sat without fidgeting, watching her with something soft in his expression that he would absolutely deny if I brought it up later.
When she was done I moved to the cradle and set her down carefully. I pulled the blanket up and stepped back.
I looked down.
The blanket was saturated red and the cradle was empty.
I stood there for one full second, completely still, my brain flatly refusing what my eyes were showing me.
My baby was not there.