Page 94 of Take Me Darkly

Every head in the room snapped toward his station. With a sharp strike of a key, he threw the feed onto the main display wall.

There she was.

Serena.

She was standing at the mouth of the brick drive in the pale morning light, her arms wrapped tightly around her chest, staring up at the glass casement and the marble statue set into the stone.

“That’s not a live feed,” Hale said quietly, his voice dropping into a somber, devastating register. “Look at the timestamp in the corner. That’s from five minutes ago.”

Five minutes.

She’d been standing right there five minutes ago while I was screaming her name across an empty garage.

We watched, utterly helpless, as the past played out like a horror movie in front of us. A figure entered the frame from the street side—blonde, unhurried, walking toward Serena with an easy familiarity, as if they had all the time in the world. Serena turned. They spoke. I couldn’t hear the words, couldn’t read the expressions, could only watch the center of my entire universe stand at a gate with her back completely turned to the dark.

Then Serena’s head snapped toward something off camera. She planted her foot to run. A second figure crossed into the frame behind her, moving with blinding speed. In the space of a single, horrific second, the two of them folded over her body, striking her down and dragging her out of the camera’s view.

The front drive sat empty on the screen. Peaceful. Sunlit. The marble statue of the woman burning in her glass case.

For one agonizing second, the room was utterly silent.

Then it detonated.

“I want that street coordinate!” Hale barked, already on his feet, pressing a phone to his ear. “Every business on that block, every residential doorbell camera, every ATM camera within four hundred yards! I don’t care who we have to threaten or pay off! Get it done!” He turned away, his voice dropping into a fierce stream of operational directives.

Zeke had a second line pressed to his ear, his knuckles white against the receiver.

“This is Zeke Kristof. I need eyes on license plates and any vehicle that left the vicinity of the property in the last ten minutes!” He covered the mouthpiece, looking up at me, his eyes dark with guilt. “Precinct’s pulling the city traffic cams. They can quietly put together a tactical team within minutes.”

Thankfully, we had local businesses and a few NYPD captains on the payroll. These were our people, our private channels—the tight, exclusive circle I’d trusted for a decade to stay quiet about my business.

But it wasn’t enough.

Not for this—not when my soul was being ripped out of my chest.

I felt the very last shred of my restraint snap, and I didn’t bother fighting it. For weeks, Serena had begged me to bring this fight out into the open, to shine a floodlight on the monsters chasing her. For weeks, I’d arrogantly told myself I knew better. I’d been dead wrong, and my pride had cost me everything.

It was time to put my secrets aside and focus on the only thing that mattered—bringing Serena back to me.

I pulled out my phone with a trembling hand.

It was time to bring in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

My thumb had barely brushed the screen to search the directory when the device vibrated in my palm.

Unknown Caller.

My instinct was to reject it, but a cold, prickling sensation at the base of my neck made me answer instead.

“This is Anton Romano,” I growled, the rage and panic lacing every syllable.

“Mr. Romano,” a voice replied. It was male, calm, distinctly older, and carrying an unhurried, academic precision that was completely at odds with the agonizing chaos of the room. “Please forgive the intrusion, but I believe you’ll want to hear what I have to say. I represent people who can help you.”

I froze, my grip tightening on the phone. “What people?”

The words ripped out of me loud enough that Zeke’s head snapped up, his hand instantly cupping over his own phone. “Put it on speaker,” he mouthed urgently.

I didn’t have time for this. There wasn’t a fraction of a second to waste on some random lunatic while Serena was out there in the hands of monsters. I was about to hang up, but something in the caller’s voice—a chilling, absolute certainty—anchored me to the floor. I lowered the device and aggressively tapped the speaker icon.