CHAPTER EIGHTEENDane
“Berta, where is Adriana?” he asked as he stepped off the elevator and into the lobby less than five minutes later.
“Adriana?” she repeated.
“The woman I brought in with me earlier. Redhead?”
“Oh, of course. She went to the powder room.”
“Ah. Great.”
Dane waited, pacing back and forth through the lobby for the better part of ten minutes, but she hadn’t turned back up. He walked back over to Berta’s desk.
“Berta, can you do me a favor?”
“Sure. What is it, Mr. Jensen?”
“Would you step down to the ladies’ room and check on her? It seems to be taking her an awfully long time to get back. Perhaps she is sick,” he said, afraid she’d gotten exposed to the wrong chemicals while they were at the construction company and was now reacting to it.
“Absolutely,” she replied, pushing a button on the phone to send calls to voice-mail while she was away.
Dane’s heart pounded as she crossed the lobby, her heels clicking across the marble floor and echoing throughout the mostly empty chamber. She disappeared down the hallway and was gone for a few minutes before returning, shrugging as she approached him.
“I don’t know where she went, Mr. Jensen. She’s not in there.”
Dane turned and ran back to the elevator. He went straight to security.
“Mr. Jensen. We weren’t expecting you,” the main guard told him.
“I need to see the last twenty minutes of footage from the lobby and down the hallway toward the women’s room.”
“Sure, um. Hold on. The guard started rewinding a segment from one of the cams until the time stamp was at the right mark and then pushed play.”
Dane watched as Adriana emerged from the elevator and walked over to Berta to say something. He assumed she was asking where the restroom was from the way Berta smiled and pointed down the hallway on the opposite side of the lobby. Adriana nodded and turned back in that direction. The camera showed her walking across the lobby and entering the bathroom. There was nothing for a few minutes, and then a figure emerged, Adriana’s slumped figure over one shoulder.
“Oh, Jesus. Who is that?” the guard gasped.
“Someone who isn’t going to like what happens to them next,” Dane growled, watching as the figure, wearing dark clothes and a cap with a half-mask, turned and walked down the hallway toward the side entrance into the garage. “Pick up garage footage from there.”
The guard switched to the garage feed at the set time and they watched the figure emerge into the parking garage, a dark SUV waiting for them. Dane recognized it immediately. They put Adriana inside and sped off, disappearing down the ramp and out the exit, where they turned to the left. No doubt, they were headed to the Black Talon reservation.
“Do you want me to call the cops?” the guard asked.
“No. I’ll take care of this. Say nothing to anyone.”
“Yes, sir,” the guard replied, looking puzzled.
Dane bolted from the observation room and back down the hallway to get to the elevator. He hurried back down through the lobby, Berta calling out to him to ask if he’d found her. He didn’t have time to waste on an answer. He just kept going out to the garage to get his car. He didn’t know what he was going to do. He was a powerful dragon, but he was no match for the entire Black Talon Clan. He was going to need backup.
He made two calls, asking the only people he knew to turn to for help. First, he called the Alpha of his clan and explained the situation to him as quickly as possible. Then, he called Transformation and asked to speak to the head of security there.
“We’ll be there with plenty of reinforcements,” they told him.
Dane ended the call and pulled off the highway into the abandoned parking lot of an old factory where he wouldn’t be seen. He was already shifted and waiting when the others arrived to join him, stripping down and shifting before taking to the skies behind him as he took flight toward the Black Talons reservation. The wolves from Transformation would meet them there, coming through the woods from a different point of attack.
The fact that they had sedated her told him they knew about Adriana’s capability of shifting into multiple animals. She was no threat to them in any form, but the fact that she could shift into something small enough to elude them had resulted in them rendering her unconscious. They would keep her that way. He’d have to find her and find her fast before they could do any real harm out of spite for him.
The Black Talons were expecting them. The moment they breached the perimeter of their compound, there were dragons in the air to meet them. They could only hope to keep them busy, to fight them off while the wolves did their work on the ground, finding Adriana. Right now, his fight was in the air.