Chapter Eight: My Sister Is Missing (The Universe Has Absolutely Lost The Plot)

There are stages of panic. I have seen all of them, professionally. The clutching, frantic kind. The silent, frozen kind. The kind that looks like calm until you notice the person's hands. I was doing the third kind. "Her phone is on the floor," I said. "Yes." Otto's voice was trying to be steady and almost succeeding. "Face down. Screen cracked a little. Like she dropped it. Or—" "Or someone took it from her," I said. Silence. "Don't touch anything," I said. "Stay in the corridor. Don't let anyone else in. I'll be there in—" I looked at Zevran, who had heard all of it and was already walking toward my car. "Twelve minutes," I said. "I'll be there in twelve." I hung up. I was running before I finished the sentence. --- Zevran drove. I didn't argue. I was on the phone — to Draven first, who went quiet in a way that meant he was already moving resources. Then to building security, who confirmed that the corridor camera on Meridian General's fourth floor had experienced a malfunction starting eight minutes before Otto's call. Not a system failure. A targeted interruption. The kind that required someone who knew where the camera was and how to cut the feed without triggering the backup. "Professional," I said. "Very," said the security officer, who sounded personally offended. "Who has access to that system." "The hospital's security team, the building management company, and—" He stopped. "Dr. Voss. The maintenance contract for our camera infrastructure is held by a facilities company out of the northern corridor." Northern corridor. "Get me the company name," I said. "Vael Technical Services," he said. I closed my eyes. Rennick Vael. Not just the legal architect of Crone's consortium. Not just the man who had shaken my hand at a conference. He had a company. A facilities company. A facilities company that held the maintenance contract for the camera systems at my hospital. He had been inside my building's infrastructure the entire time. "Cancel that contract," I said. "Effective immediately. And get me footage from every camera in a four-block radius that isn't yours." "Dr. Voss—" "I know it's complicated. Do it anyway." I hung up. Zevran was doing something in the range of twenty kilometers over the limit and I was not telling him to slow down. "Vael Technical Services," I said. "I heard." His voice was flat. Controlled. The version of controlled that meant something underneath it was not. "He had camera access to my entire hospital." "I know." "Which means he knew about every patient I had, every visiting—" "I know." He changed lanes with a precision that suggested his wolf was significantly more focused than his face was letting on. "He knew about me. The moment I came in." "He would have told Crone." "Yes." "Which means Crone knew I had you before I'd processed it myself." I looked at the road ahead. "He had more time to plan this than I realized." "He planned Sera," Zevran said. The words landed. "He planned Sera," I said slowly. "He knew she had the documents. He let her deliver them — because the filing was going to happen regardless, and he'd already prepared the counter-motions, and what he actually needed was to know what else she had." "The second thing," Zevran said. The second thing. The look on Sera's face when I'd asked *had you known* and she'd said *no* and there had been something behind it, still loading. "He took her," I said, "because she knows something he doesn't want me to find out." Zevran's jaw tightened. "What does she know?" "I don't know yet." I pressed my hands flat on my knees to keep them still. "But it's something he's afraid of. And Halveth Crone—" I thought about his voice on the phone. Warm. Unhurried. Never once caught off guard by anything. "Halveth Crone is not afraid of very many things." --- We were back at Meridian General in eleven minutes. Otto was in the corridor exactly where I'd told him to be, standing over Sera's phone with his arms crossed and his face doing something he was working hard to keep under control. When he saw me he exhaled like he'd been holding it since the call. I went straight to the phone. Cracked screen. Face down. I crouched beside it without touching it — habit from too many situations that turned out to be something serious. The crack was on the right side. The impact point. "She's right-handed," I said. "Yes," said Otto. "She dropped it from her right hand." I looked at the floor around it. "No signs of struggle. No scuffs." I stood. "She went willingly." "Willingly?" Otto's voice went sharp. "Nara—" "Not willingly as in she wanted to go." I looked at him. "Willingly as in someone she trusted called her out of that corridor. Someone she felt safe enough with to leave her bag behind and step out for what she thought was a quick conversation." I looked at the phone again. "She dropped it in a hurry. Not dropped — let it fall. Like her hands were full suddenly. Or like she was reaching for something else." Zevran had been moving through the corridor while I talked, looking at things — the door at the far end, the window ledge, the small details that most people walked past. He stopped at the far door. "This door wasn't closed this morning," he said. I looked at him. "How do you know?" "There's a rubber wedge mark on the floor. Someone wedged it open regularly." He crouched. "The wedge isn't here now. Someone removed it." He looked up. "This goes to the east stairwell?" "Yes." "Which exits to the side street." "Yes." He stood. Looked at me. "Whoever called her came through this door," he said. "Someone who knew the building. Who knew which exit avoided the main cameras." He looked at the door handle. "Someone who had been here before." Vael Technical Services. Maintenance contracts. I thought about the junior administrator — Pelton, twenty-three years old, scared, hired four months ago through a northern corridor employment agency. I had used him to feed Celeste misinformation. He hadn't been fired. He was still in the building. "Otto," I said, "go to the administrative office. Find a junior administrator named Pelton. Don't tell him why. Just ask him if anyone came to see him this morning before nine." Otto looked at me. "Is he—" "He's not dangerous. He's a kid who made a bad choice and has been sitting in a building where something bad just happened." I held his eyes. "Go. Gently." Otto went. I looked at Zevran. "Draven," I said. "Already on it." He had his phone out. "He's running camera footage from the external feeds." He paused, reading something. "Side street footage shows a vehicle leaving at—" He looked at me. "Approximately twenty minutes before Otto called you." "What vehicle." "Dark. Private plates. Northern corridor registration." He met my eyes. "Nara, it stopped twice. Once outside the hospital. Once—" He paused. "Once outside the Meridian Central Repository." The repository. The lockbox. "He doesn't have the ledger," I said immediately. "The lockbox is frozen. Draven's filing secured it." "Yes." His voice was careful. "The lockbox is secure. But if he has Sera—" "He's going to use her to access it." I felt the shape of the play. "The dissolution filing cleared my legal standing. But Sera is a party to the original debt document. She's a Voss. If Crone argues she has standing as a documented party to the consortium formation—" "He could petition for access to the lockbox on her behalf," Zevran said. "Against her will," I said. "Or while presenting her as willing." The horror of it settled in cleanly. She had the documents. She knew the consortium inside out. And she had the second thing — whatever else she'd been holding back this morning, the information that had made Crone move fast enough to take her rather than wait. He needed what was in her head before she could give it to me. My phone rang. Unknown number. Of course it was. I answered. "Dr. Voss." Crone's voice. Still warm. Warm in the way a room is warm when something is burning in it. "I hope this morning hasn't been too difficult." "You took my sister," I said. "I invited your sister for a conversation. She came voluntarily." A pause. "You may verify that with the building's external cameras, if you like. She walked out. No one carried her." "She walked out because she thought she was safe." My voice was steady. I was very proud of my voice right now. "And you let her think that." "Nara." He was the only person alive outside my family who used my first name, and he used it like a tool — warm, familiar, establishing intimacy he hadn't earned. "I have no interest in harming your sister. I have interest in a conversation. That conversation is happening. When it's done, she'll come home." "When what's done," I said. A pause. "There are things she knows," he said, "that are better discussed privately. Between family." Between family. I felt the word land differently than he'd intended it to. Between family. Halveth Crone was her family's blood. Distantly. Bitterly. Through her grandfather's buried history and a northern corridor woman and a disinheritance that had been festering for decades. He had called Sera family. He had called himself family. "Don't hurt her," I said. "As I said—" "I'm not asking," I said. "I'm telling you. If you hurt my sister — not *if I find out.* If it happens. Full stop. Whatever happens with the filing, whatever happens with the hearing, whatever you think you've built to protect yourself — I will dedicate the rest of my career to making sure that every single thing you've ever constructed is examined, documented, and destroyed. I am very good at destroying things methodically." The pause this time was the longest yet. "I believe you," he said, with something in his voice that sounded, almost, like respect. "She'll be home by morning." He hung up. I lowered my phone. Zevran was looking at me. "By morning," I said. "A night," he said. "Whatever she knows — whatever he needs from her — he thinks a night is enough to get it." Zevran was quiet. "Then we use the night," he said. "For what?" "To find out what she knows before he can use it." He looked at me. "You said she had a second thing. Something still loading. Nara — who in your family would know what Sera knows? Who did she talk to? Who gave her the documents?" I stared at him. The documents. Sera had had them for eight months. She hadn't pulled them from nothing — someone had given them to her or pointed her toward them or told her what to look for. Eight months ago, something had happened that started her pulling at the consortium thread. Eight months ago. Which was approximately when Draven had told me someone was building a case connected to my family's financial history. Which was approximately when a northern corridor financial file had been flagged to Draven's network. "Draven," I said, turning to him. "Eight months ago. You told me someone was building a file on northern corridor money flows. You said you had a source." He held my gaze. "You never told me who the source was." "No," he said. "Who was it." A pause. Draven Malketh, who never pushed, who created optimal conditions and waited, who had arranged the lockbox alias and spent two years as my professional ally and known more than he admitted about everything — looked at me with those composed, careful eyes and said: "His name is Cael Orin. He's one of Zevran's senior pack advisors." The name hit the corridor like a stone hitting water — and what came back at me, rippling, was the realization that somewhere in this story, for the past eight months, a man named Cael Orin had been feeding information to Draven who had been passing pieces of it to me. A man inside Zevran's pack. Who had been working against Celeste from the inside. Who Zevran, standing next to me in this corridor, had apparently never known about. I turned to look at Zevran. His expression was very controlled. "Cael Orin," he said. "Yes," said Draven. "My advisor," he said. "Yes." "Has been feeding you intelligence about my own pack for—" "Eight months," Draven said. The corridor was very quiet. "Did you know?" I said to Zevran. He looked at me. "No," he said. And then, very quietly, with the specific exhaustion of a man discovering that the people closest to him had been protecting him from the outside in: "But I should have seen it. Cael Orin has been trying to tell me about Celeste for a long time. I didn't listen well enough." A pause. "He found another way." Draven's phone buzzed. He looked at it. Looked at us. "Cael Orin is not in the Hold right now," he said. "Where is he?" Zevran said. Draven held up the phone. On the screen was a text from a number I didn't know, sent to Draven's private line eleven minutes ago, containing four words. *I know where Sera is.*