Deak tried to follow, but one of the men shoved him against a cabinet and warned that the boy would be harmed if the club interfered. By the time the vehicles left, the room was full of overturned furniture and the sick silence that follows a threat delivered with absolute confidence. Jace called Rhett with trembling hands, then handed the phone to Deak because his own voice would not carry. Deak took one breath and gave his report in four words.
"They have the boy."
Rhett heard the sentence beside the warehouse's dark fence while Mara's voice crackled through the radio about a loading vehicle. For a moment the world narrowed to the words and the knowledge that the one person he had promised Caleb to protect was now in Hale's hands. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. The terrible choice was no longer between acting and waiting. It was between allowing two separate groups of people to be harmed and finding a way to protect both before Hale made them bargaining pieces against each other.
"Where's Deak?" he asked. "Here," came Jace's voice. "Hurt, but conscious. Police and the federal contact have been notified.
The men took Eli toward the old county road." Rhett could hear typing in the background as Jace gathered the information that would help legitimate responders locate them. "We're preserving the security footage," Jace added. "Everything is being copied and logged."
"Do not go after them," Rhett said. "Stay safe and keep that evidence secure. Tell the federal team the boy has been abducted and we have reason to connect it to this warehouse." He ended the call before the grief rising in his throat became something the others could hear. Then he contacted Mara and told her that Eli was gone.
Mara's silence lasted less than a second. "Deak?" she asked. "Alive. Jace is with him."
Rhett looked back toward the loading bays. "We have to get Norah and those people out. Then we go after the boy."
"We need to be very careful about what that means," Mara said. Her voice was firm, and Rhett loved her for being able to say the difficult thing when all he wanted was to stop thinking. "If we let Hale turn this into a fight between a motorcycle club and private security, he gets the chaos he wants. The federal team is moving. Our job is to keep the witnesses alive and make sure the responders know where they are."
The warehouse doors opened while they were speaking. Several frightened people were being hurried toward a waiting vehicle, and one stumbled on the loading platform before a guard pulled the person upright. Rhett saw enough to understand that immediate harm was possible. He called the federal contact again and described exactly what they could observe, giving the location, the number of visible people, and the situation at the loading dock.