willing to help because she’d already decided that if he’d brushed off her concerns, she was going to start walking the damn streets to look for them on her own.
Langston scanned the street below, and she could see he was worried as well. “Not like Oscar not to answer his phone.”
Ten minutes later, Owen called back. “No one’s seen them since this morning. Jennika is checking with hotel security. We’ve been monitoring all hotel entrances and exits since we got here last night. There are surveillance cameras in the hallway with the meeting rooms. Ridley confirmed they not only went to the smaller meeting room, but were planning to work there. He also brought them protective gear. In the meantime, Vadisk and Claudette are going to take the vans and start canvassing the surrounding area. Your boyfriends picked a bad time to go MIA without checking in with someone.”
“You don’t think the Bellator Dei got to them, do you?” Selene asked, finally voicing the fear that had taken root when she’d discovered the conference room they’d been using empty.
“Unlikely. As I said, we’re monitoring the hotel security system. If they stayed in the hotel, they’re safe.”
“And if they didn’t?” Langston asked.
“If the Bellator Dei was waiting for one of us to walk out of the hotel, we have bigger issues.”
“Bigger issues than them missing?”
“Yes. Because if the Bellator Dei are outside, it means they know who we are, where we are, and had the capacity to kidnap two fully grown men from a public street without raising any kind of alarm or creating a disturbance we would have heard about.”
They ended the call, and Langston looked at Selene. “That actually makes me feel better. The Bellator Dei aren’t direct-confrontation people. That’s why they like bombs.”
Selene nodded, trying to feel the same, but the knot in her stomach tightened with each moment that passed.
Half an hour later, Selene’s nerves were shot, and the normally smiling Langston looked grim when there was a knock on the door. Langston leapt across the room and yanked it open.
A grave-looking Owen, with Jennika at his side, was standing in the hallway.
Selene’s legs trembled as she sank onto the edge of the bed.
Owen and Jennika walked in, the latter walking to the dresser and setting a computer on top. She opened the lid.
“Everything we have on video confirmed what we already knew.” Owen nodded to Jennika.
Selene and Langston crowded around the computer. The low-resolution video showed Ridley, Oscar, and Luca walking down the hall. Jennika fast-forwarded to show Ridley leaving and then coming back with an armful of stuff, then leaving again.
“You two might want to sit down,” Jennika said gently.
“No,” Langston snarled, sounding so much like Oscar. “Just show me what happened to my brother.”
Selene put her hand on his shoulder, both as a sign of support and to restrain him.
Jennika looked at Owen, then fast-forwarded again before hitting play.
They watched as a room service waiter knocked on the door. The angle of the security camera meant that they couldn’t see who opened the door, especially since it wasn’t opened all the way. There was a flash of a pale hand—Luca’s—reaching toward the food on the catering cart, but the waiter grabbed his arm.
A second later, the waiter shoved the door open and walked into the room, leaving the cart in the hall. A member of the housekeeping staff, who’d been pushing a laundry cart, followed him in.
Two minutes of nothing, only eerie silence as they watched the video. Then, the staff members appeared again and calmly pushed their carts into the room. Several minutes later, they wheeled both carts out of the room and closed the door behind them.
“Oscar, Luca…they were in those carts, weren’t they?” Selene asked woodenly.
“Dead?” Langston’s question was flat.
Jennika closed the laptop and glanced at Owen.
“No.” Owen was calm and composed. “We lose sight of them briefly, but then we have video of a linen company truck pulling up at the service entrance of the hotel. Two carts are rolled into the back, the staff jump in the back with the carts, and the truck drives off. We’ve confirmed that today is not the regular pickup day for the hotel linens, and that the men on the videos aren’t hotel staff.”
“Not dead?” Selene asked, needing to hear it again.
“We don’t believe so. This reads like a kidnapping.”
“Kidnapped. The fucking Bellator Dei kidnapped them. Do you know where they are? Where they went?” Langston demanded.
Selene backed up until she was sitting