Page 161 of The Alpha's Second Chance Mate

He showed us the black-and-white security cameras North Crest used in certain locations. What I saw made it a little better, and a tiny sigh of relief escaped my lips. The street looked totally deserted. No one was on the screen. I’d have thought it was a still image if not for a bird swooping past the camera.

“Wait.” Zayde frowned and clicked his mouse on his laptop. The screen reverted to the tracking software he’d had up earlier. On the screen, a bunch of little dots moved across the street.

Zayde’s brows knitted in confusion as he looked from the tablet and back to the laptop.

“What’s wrong?” Trent asked.

“It’s… well, that’s the school. It’s where the others are supposed to be,” Zayde said. “So they should be right there.” He jabbed his finger on the tablet screen. “I don’t…” He shook his head, then let out a bitter laugh.

“What?” I asked.

He cursed under his breath and tossed the tablet on the table. “That bitch.”

“What?” I shouted. “For fuck’s sake, Zayde, what’s going on?”

“That hacker chick,” he said. “She spliced out the live footage with a pre-recording. This happened hours or even days ago,” he said, pointing at the tablet. “If she did that, then there’s no way to watch the live feed. We’re blind.” He chuckled bitterly to himself. “Well fucking played.”

“Can’t you, like, hack into it?” Farrah asked.

“I could. Maybe,” Zayde admitted. “If the cameras are even still hooked up. Even then, it’ll take hours. By then, it’ll be too late.”

“What do we do?” I asked. “We can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

“That’s exactly what we do,” Trent said.

“Trent, you cannot be fucking serious,” I screeched. “You guys should shift and head straight there. Cole and Langston need backup, they need?—”

Trent put a hand on my shoulder. I looked at him, hoping he’d say something that would walk me back from the edge.

“You trust Langston, right?” he asked.

“I do.”

“Then you have to trust that he’ll get Cole home. Trust him to get all of them out of there. Other than Cole, I can’t think of a single man on earth I’d rather have at my side than Langston. I promised Cole I’d keep you safe. For all we know, this might be some ploy to get you alone so Kyle can come for you. We wait. And we hope.”

Sinking back to my seat, I sucked in a trembling breath, worried that I might faint. Trent kept his hand on my shoulder, and Stormy stayed right next to me. All I could do was look out the window and recall that awful feeling I’d had before Cole left. That fear that something bad would happen.

Now it felt more like a premonition.

39

COLE

“We need to get the fuck out of here,” Langston said as he let go of Dallas.

I glared at my brother, who was smirking back at me and rubbing his wrist. “Not without him.”

Dallas shook his head. “Kyle won’t let that happen. He won’t allow you to change the paradigm. He has Ashton, which means he has the power. He’ll never allow you to have anything to hold over his head.”

“Bullshit.” I grabbed Dallas’s shirt and dragged him forward until our noses were almost touching. “Kyle’s not here, he’s not in charge right now. I am.”

Dallas pulled back, rolling his eyes and not looking the least bit scared. “You need to get out of here. Unless you want something bad to happen.” He cocked an eyebrow. “And I don’t mean to yourself.”

I shoved him away with a wince of disgust, like he was something filthy that had gotten on my hand.

“How can you do this?” I said, looking at him with contempt. “To your own family? Ashton is your nephew. My son. How could you want anything bad to happen to him.”

Dallas’s eyes narrowed to slits, and a deep growl rumbled up from his chest. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him so angry.

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