Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
She nods, her gray-streaked ponytail bobbing. “Got it. Pulling that footage shouldn’t be a problem. We did a system wide check a few days ago and the cameras were working perfectly.”
In a few more minutes, we’re in a concrete box of an office tucked behind the catering kitchen in the basement, and Kate is pulling up the logs on an ancient desktop.
“You said you were on the fourth floor, right? And what was your room number?” I tell her and she deselects several camera feeds. “Great. This should get us the view outside your room and down the hallway in both directions. We’ll start there, and if we see something, we can always add more cameras into the search. It’ll just be faster if we start small. The system is in solid working order, but the software is older than I’d like.” She glances up at me as the results load with painful slowness. “But we rarely have any reason to look at these logs, so I understand why management is reluctant to update the infrastructure. We’re in a very safe area. The worst crimes we usually see around here are kids skateboarding in the halls or guests stealing cutlery off other guests’ room service carts. You’d be shocked by how many people will snag a used fork or spoon. Not to mention those cute little bottles of ketchup.”
I nod, fighting to keep a pleasantly neutral expression on my face as my beeper begins to buzz with the same frequency as my cell.
The cell is Aaron, threatening to pull my brains out through my nostrils if I don’t call him back and tell him where I am so he can come join the search for Nora. The beeper is Al, no doubt telling me to get my ass over to the cupcake shop and finish this job while his team looks for Nora.
That’s what he told me on the phone earlier, and by now, he’s probably realized that I have no intention of doing so.
At least not until I know Nora is safe.
I could get in a lot of trouble for disobeying a direct order. I’m not sure how much, but I’m pretty sure jail time is on the table. But that’s okay. I’ll gladly serve a year or two behind bars to make this right.
“Okay, here we go,” Kate says as the results finally load. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
She fast forwards for a while, until the doors to the rooms around ours open and people start to emerge. Then, she slows the footage to normal speed. “This is the start of the alarm.” She watches as the screen empties without any sign of movement from our door. After a moment, she glances over her shoulder at where I’m hovering beside her chair, arching a brow.
“Our cat was in labor, and we thought it was just a drill,” I explain, pointing back at the screen as the grainy, black and white version of me pokes his head out the door to glance both ways. “But I eventually decided I should check to make sure there wasn’t a fire. I left my wife and a friend of ours in the room to keep an eye on the cat and went to look around.”
Kate hums low in her throat. “I’d advise evacuating immediately in the future. Better a few minutes of inconvenience than a lifetime of regret if things go wrong.”
And things have gone wrong, just not in the way Kate was referring to.
About seven minutes after I leave the room, Kate slows the footage again as two men approach the door. Rex and Wimpy. I recognize them instantly, of course, but I know Nora would have, too.
So why did she let them in?
I get my answer a beat later as Rex lifts a fist to rap at the door only for it to open before he can knock. Bear steps out with the kittening box in his arms and is immediately threatened by Rex, who appears to be armed with his weapon of choice, a high-powered stun gun capable of doing serious damage without breaking his grandmother’s rule about bringing guns into the community.
“Oh no,” Kate murmurs, her spine stiffening in her chair as Bear and Nora are brought outside, clearly against their will. “I think we should call the police.”
“Absolutely,” I say, making a mental note to have Al reach out to the local police before they receive Kate’s call. “But first, can we see where they went? I’d love to be able to give the authorities a vehicle description or, even better, a license plate number.”
“Right,” Kate says, clicking back to the search screen. “I’ll do a wider search for more cameras during the ten minutes after they left the room.”
She does and five more agonizing minutes later, she opens several preview screens and we’re able to watch Nora and Bear forced down the stairs and out a side door leading to a less trafficked section of the parking lot. Thanks to the outdoor camera, with its wide-angle lens, we get an excellent view of an old white van and Nora arguing with Rex as he tries to push her inside.