Chapter 215 Vehicle Access
ELIJAH
The shouting from outside was getting louder and I was not thinking about it.
Ninety minutes. That was what I had left before Mark’s three-hour window closed and whatever threat he’d made in that letter became something I had to respond to rather than prevent. Ninety minutes to confirm he’d gotten word of the announcement, get Lana back, and deal with Peter before he put enough distance between himself and this house to disappear entirely.
Peter. I still couldn’t find him.
“Last confirmed sighting is the dungeon corridor,” Hazel said, coming through the office door with her phone in her hand. “He took the three guards down himself, told the others on duty that he’d handle processing them. Nobody questioned it because he was the chief guard.”
“And now he’s gone.”
“I have men on the grounds and at every exit point. Nothing yet.”
“Expand it. I want teams on the roads too — every route out of pack territory. He’s on foot or in a vehicle, either way he can’t have gotten far if he only left an hour ago.” I stopped. “What about the cells?”
Hazel’s expression shifted in a way I didn’t like.
“Come with me.”
She took me downstairs. The smell reached me halfway along the corridor and I knew before I got to the door. I stood in the entrance of the last cell and looked at what was inside and felt something go very cold and very quiet in my chest.
All three of them. Dave and the other two. Dead.
“Peter did this,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
“Had to be. He was the last one with them and the guards upstairs confirm nobody else came through.” Hazel’s voice was steady but her jaw was tight. “He killed them before they could be questioned further and walked out.”
“Because Mark told him to.” I turned and walked back up the corridor. I needed air. “He wasn’t here for the job, Hazel. He was placed here specifically. Mark built his access over time, identified who to use, and when Peter had served his purpose he cleaned up the evidence.”
“Which means Mark has been planning this for months.”
“At least.” I pushed through the door at the top of the stairs and kept moving. “How many of our men are we certain about right now?”
“Aiden is running a full check. He’ll have numbers within the hour.”
“I need them in thirty minutes. I don’t have an hour.” I turned to face her. “Mark is going to surface. He has to — he needs confirmation that the abdication was public and real before he’ll release her. When he does, I want to know the second it happens.”
“And if he doesn’t surface? If he just — sends word somehow?”
“He’ll want to see it himself. Men like Mark don’t delegate the moments they’ve been building toward. He’ll be close enough to watch.” I looked at her. “Get Aiden. The three of us are going through everything Peter had access to. His patrol logs, his scheduling records, anywhere he scouted on this property. If he identified a location for Mark to use as a base, there’ll be something in the paperwork.”
We spent the next forty minutes going through it all spread across my desk. Hazel had coffee that had been sitting cold since morning and I drank it without noticing. Aiden found three anomalies in Peter’s patrol logs — routes he’d added himself, deviations from standard patrol paths that hadn’t been flagged because he was the one approving his own schedules.
“Here.” Aiden put his finger on the map. “He ran this eastern route six times in the last two weeks. It’s not a standard patrol path and there’s no record of why he added it.”
I looked at where his finger was pointing. A strip of wooded land on the eastern border of pack territory, backing onto an access road that ran parallel to the main road into the neighbouring area.
“Vehicle access,” Hazel said, seeing it at the same time I did. “He could get in and out without coming through any of our checkpoints.”
“That’s where they’re holding her.” I was already moving. “Get me four men, people Aiden has personally cleared. No one else. We go quietly, no sirens, no noise. If Mark hears us coming before we get there he’ll—”
“I know,” Hazel said. “I know.”
The door opened and one of the younger guards appeared, slightly out of breath.
“Alpha. There’s movement on the eastern perimeter. One of the foot teams reported seeing a figure at the tree line. They’re holding position and waiting for your instruction.”
I looked at Hazel.
“That’s him.” I grabbed my jacket from the back of the chair. “Or it’s someone he sent to watch. Either way, we move now.”
Aiden was already at the door.
“Adriana doesn’t move from that room,” I said. “Whatever happens in the next hour, she stays in that room with the kids. Make sure the guard on the door understands that.”
“Understood.”
I went out.
The evening air was cold and the shouting from the front of the house was still going and somewhere in the darkness ahead of me my daughter was waiting to come home.
I walked faster.
ADRIANA
I was dreaming.
My hands were chained to a wall that didn’t exist and Mark was standing over the cradle with a knife and no matter how hard I pulled I couldn’t get to her. I could hear her crying and I was screaming and the chains just kept holding.
He looked back at me and smiled and I screamed louder and the sound she made was so small and so—
I woke up with my hand already reaching for something that wasn’t there.
The room was dim. The sky outside had shifted from afternoon into early evening and below the window the shouting was angry and uneven and wrong. I sat up and my head pounded immediately and I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead and tried to remember where the day had gone.
I hadn’t meant to sleep. The last thing I remembered was Elijah’s voice and his arms and then nothing.
I pushed off the bed and went straight to the door and pulled it open.
Lana was on the floor of the hallway.