The large screen showed twelve boxes of static flickering a few times, and then one by one the static boxes were replaced with live camera feeds showing various views of Cascade Falls Academy.

“All right, boys,” I muttered into my Bluetooth headset, leaning back in my office chair and running my hand through my shaggy blond hair, “We are up and running on cameras one through ten. How are we going with eleven and twelve?”

“On it now,” Cole responded. “Should be done in a couple of minutes if Austin quits his crying.” The snickering laughs of my team, everyone except Austin, could be heard on the open line.

“Shut the fuck up, Cole,” Austin grumbled. “I still think River’s wrong. There’s no way—no way—that simpering idiot is the thief we’re looking for.”

“Aus, don’t be such an asshole,” Caleb snarled down the line, “You clearly don’t know her at all, so don’t go making assumptions.”

“Obviously, neither do you,” he sneered in reply to his twin, and Caleb said nothing. Austin had a point; Caleb had been spending all his free time with the girl for the past two and a half weeks and hadn’t once suspected she was our mark.

“Children. Cut it out,” River, our team leader, snapped at them. “I don’t think any of us were expecting The Fox to be a teenage girl. Let’s get these cameras set up, and hopefully we can get the evidence we need.”

I coughed to cover a laugh at hearing the twins chastised. They should have known it was her. Her name was Kit, for fuck’s sake. Surely I wasn’t the only one who knew a kit was a baby fox? Then again, maybe I was. I sometimes forgot that my mind stores all kinds of random knowledge. Aside from that clue, though, we were way off base with the profile we’d been working off for the identity of “The Fox.”

“I bet you a hundred that you’re wrong on this, River,” Austin grunted, not willing to give it up so easily. “She doesn’t have it in her to pull the jobs we’ve seen.”

“Done,” the Brit accepted. We all knew he would; River was never one to back down from a wager, especially when he knew he was right—and I suspected he would be walking away a hundred dollars richer tonight.

The last two cameras flickered online, and I started clicking through them all, one by one, to ensure they worked correctly. Camera five showed movement, and I enlarged it to watch more closely. It was three in the morning; there should be no one moving around other than my team, and the people on this feed were definitely not my team.

“Aus, you are soon to be a hundred dollars poorer because we have suspicious movement on camera five. Four masked men currently picking the lock on Kit’s bedroom door,” I warned them.

“Locations?” River barked, and everyone reported their positions. “Austin, Cole. You’re closest. Head toward the window in case they take that exit, and Caleb and I will take the main entrance.”

Confirmations flowed over the line. I watched the security cameras as the team ducked into and out of feeds, while keeping one eye on the cameras showing Kit’s door and window.

“Window,” I updated them. “It just opened, and I can see a gloved hand on the sill.”

Austin and Cole darted across the lawn visible on camera three. They were moving fast, but they were still a decent distance out.

“Yep, coming out the window. Four guys, and one of them carrying the girl over his shoulder. She looks unconscious.”

Caleb cursed at the update.

Austin and Cole raced into view on camera nine and immediately pounced on the masked men. A combination of surprise and their superior training helped the pair to swiftly disable and subdue Kit’s four assailants. The boys quickly zip-tied their hands and feet, and then Cole bent to check on Kit where she had been dropped during the violent exchange.

“She okay?” I asked hesitantly when he didn’t immediately report her status. Cole still didn’t answer, taking a few more seconds to check her over.

“Think so.” I should have known better than to expect him to elaborate. Cole was never one to waste words. River and Caleb arrived on camera view and checked the bound intruders.

“Cole, take the girl back to our house and get Wesley to look her over. We will take care of these four,” River assigned, and we all confirmed again.

Holy fuck, that was unexpected! When River had told us he’d found our mark, it had sounded too easy, so I really should have seen something like this coming. It was a shame we hadn’t thought to put cameras around the student dorms earlier, but by all witness accounts, as well as the profiler report, The Fox should have been much older and male.

I hope she’s okay… they probably sedated her. I trusted River and the boys to get information out of the goons as to what they might have used, just in case she needed an antidote.