Page 17 of Rescued by Four Alphas (Claimed by the Four Alphas #2)

" I t's been ten minutes," I announce, checking my watch. "Time's up."

Axl nods, pushing himself off the wall where he's been leaning. "Something feels off about this whole thing. Did you see how nervous she was acting?"

"Yeah." I move toward the door, my instincts on high alert. "Dahlia said she trusted her, but my gut says otherwise."

I knock firmly on the office door. "Dahlia? Dr. Marianna? We're coming in."

Silence.

Axl and I exchange a look. "Maybe the ultrasound machine is loud?" he suggests, but his voice lacks conviction.

I knock again, harder this time. "Dahlia!"

Nothing.

"Fuck this." I grab the door handle and push it open with enough force that it bangs against the wall.

The office is empty.

"What the hell?" Axl rushes past me, checking behind the desk, under it, anywhere they could be hiding.

I scan the small space frantically. The examination table still has the ultrasound gel on it, as if someone had been using it moments ago. Dr. Marianna's white coat hangs on its usual hook. Her stethoscope sits on the desk. But there's no sign of either woman.

"How is this possible?" Axl spins around, his face pale. "We were right in front of the fucking door! No one came out!"

I pull out my phone and hit Rodriguez's number. "Code blue," I bark the moment she answers. "Dahlia is missing. Lock down the entire building. Nobody fucking leaves."

"Sir, what do you mean by missing? We have eyes on all exits..."

"I mean, she's fucking gone!" I roar onto the phone. "Check every room, every closet, every broom cupboard. Now!"

I hang up and start tearing apart the office. I check the small bathroom attached to the examination room, throw open every cabinet, even look behind the heavy curtains. Nothing.

"Leo!" Axl calls out from behind Dr. Marianna's desk. "You need to see this."

I rush over to where he's staring at Dr. Marianna's open laptop. The screen shows a security monitoring system with multiple camera feeds.

"That bitch," Axl snarls. "She was watching the entire health center. This is not a one-day plan, man."

My blood turns to ice as I look at the grid of camera feeds. "Click on the one showing her office."

Axl's fingers fly over the keyboard, pulling up the footage from Dr. Marianna's office. We watch horror as the events of the last twenty minutes play out on screen.

There's Dahlia, lying on the examination table with ultrasound gel on her belly. Dr. Marianna moves the wand around, and we can see them talking, though there's no audio. Dahlia appears excited about something; she's laughing and crying at the same time.

Then Dahlia's movements become sluggish. Her eyes start to droop.

"She drugged her," I whisper, my hands clenching into fists.

On screen, Dr. Marianna picks up her phone and says something brief. Within seconds, a section of the back wall slides open, as if on hidden tracks. A secret door.

Three men in dark clothing emerge from the hidden passage with another man.

He looks at Dahlia, then nods at Marianna before he orders the men.

One of them lifts Dahlia's unconscious form gently and carried her bridal style through the door.

The other one strikes Dr. Marianna in the head with something, and she crumples to the floor.

They pick her up too and carry her out through the door, which immediately slides shut behind them.

Everything took less than two minutes.

I'm shaking with rage. Every muscle in my body screams for violence, for something to tear apart with my bare hands. Instead, I slam my fist into the wall so hard that plaster cracks and rains down on the floor.

"Fuck!" The word explodes out of me like a gunshot. "FUCK!"

Axl immediately moves to the back wall where we saw the secret door open. He runs his hands over the surface, pushing, pulling, looking for any button or lever.

"It's solid," he reports, his voice tight with frustration. "I can't find any way to open it."

"Of course you can't." I scrub my hands through my hair, trying to think. "They're not going to leave their escape route accessible. They probably locked it down the moment they went through."

"We have to tell Evan immediately," Axl says, pulling out his phone.

"Wait." I grab his wrist. "First, we need to get all the security footage from this building—everything from the two to three months.

Marianna was scrutinized down to her hobbies.

If she was, it's complicated; it would have to be within the past two months.

There might be evidence of her previous meetings with these people. "

Axl nods grimly. "I'll go find building security. Meet me downstairs in five minutes."

He rushes out while I grab Dr. Marianna's laptop. I dial Evan's number, already dreading this conversation more than any I've ever had to make.

"Leo?" Evan's voice is sharp as usual. "What's your status?"

"Dahlia's been taken."

The silence that follows is deafening. When Evan finally speaks, his voice is so low and deadly that I flinch.

"Taken? What the fuck do you mean taken?"

"Dr. Marianna drugged her during the appointment. There was a secret door in her office, and three men came in and carried Dahlia out through it." The words taste like poison in my mouth. "They took Dr. Marianna, too, probably to make it look like she was also a victim."

Evan's rage is so loud that I must hold the phone away from my ear. "YOU HAD ONE JOB! ONE FUCKING JOB!"

"Evan..."

"I trusted you to keep her safe! I always trusted you to fucking stay with her, damn it!"

"We didn't know there was a secret door," I say, hating how defensive I sound. We should have remained inside. "We monitored every entrance and exit. Our security covered the entire building."

"Clearly, that wasn't enough!" Papers rustle in the background, like he's sweeping everything off his desk. "How long ago?"

"Twenty minutes, maybe twenty-five."

"What do you have? Any details? What about the fucking wall? Where does it lead?" His voice cracks slightly. "She's carrying our children, Leo. Our fucking children."

"I know." My voice breaks. "I'm going to find her. I swear to you, I'm going to bring her home… we have footage of the kidnapping."

I hear him take a shuddering breath. "Send me that footage now."

I navigate to the security system on Dr. Marianna's laptop and start uploading files to Evan's secure server. My fingers feel clumsy and slow.

The office door behind me opens, and for one wild moment, I think Dahlia might be walking back in, that this has all been some terrible misunderstanding.

Instead, Rodriguez appears. "Sir, we've completed the building sweep. There's no sign of Dr. Baldwin or Dr. Marianna Vasquez anywhere in the facility."

"What about the underground? Basement levels?"

"We checked everything accessible. But..." She hesitates.

"But what?"

"The building plans we have on file don't match what we're seeing. Several areas appear to have been modified or aren't accounted for in the official blueprints."

I curse under my breath. "How many exits from the building?"

"Four main exits, two emergency exits, and a service entrance for deliveries. We have footage of everyone who's entered or left the building today. No one carried out anyone."

"Because they didn't use the regular exits," I mutter, watching the upload progress bar creep toward completion. "They used whatever tunnel system that secret door connects to."

I call Axl and ask, "Did you get the security footage?"

"I'm working on it," He answers. "The building security is cooperating. They're pulling everything from the past three months… I was connected to the building manager, and he said Dr. Marianna requested some 'office renovations' about six weeks ago and brought in her construction crew."

"Six weeks ago," I repeat, feeling sick. "She's been planning this for six weeks."

The upload finally completes, and I quickly send the security footage from Dr. Marianna's office to Evan. Within seconds, my phone rings.

"Evan is calling again," I tell him before I hang up.

I answer Evan's call immediately. "Did you see the footage?"

"I saw it." His voice is cold as steel. "The man giving orders to the kidnappers is Dr. Reid."

My blood chills. I've heard enough about Reid from our previous conversations to know he's dangerous, but seeing him in action makes it real. "Why would he resort to kidnapping when he could have gotten the government's approval soon? You said he had the ear of the Joint Chiefs."

"He's getting impatient." Evan's tone turns darker. "The other Omegas he took… their children died during his experiments. So now he needs another lab rat."

The way Evan says it makes my skin crawl. The reduction of our mate to a test subject is exactly how these monsters think. "We need to find her fast."

"He won't harm her," Evan says, and I can hear him trying to convince himself as much as me. "She's rare and precious to his research. He needs her alive and healthy."

"That's not an excuse to leave her there!" I snap, my bear pushing at my control. "She's terrified. She's pregnant. She's…"

"I'm not going to leave her there, damn it!" Evan's voice cracks with emotion. "But rushing in now without a plan means jeopardizing her life and our children's lives. We need to be smart about this."

I take a deep breath, forcing myself to think like a cop instead of a panicked mate. "What will we do?"

There's a long pause at the other end of the line. When Evan speaks again, his voice is so quiet I almost miss it.

"I'm going to meet with Hammond."