Chapter 218: Kidnapped

Braelyn’s POV

“Yes… I was with her there,” I repeated, my voice barely above a whisper. My gaze was locked on the screen as if my life depended on it.

The room was dimly lit only by the blue glow of the CCTV monitors. Rows of screens filled the wall, each one showing a different corner of the park. Children laughed and ran across the footage, families queued for rides, clowns waved at passing crowds… and somewhere in all of this, Alora had vanished.

The officer rewound the footage close to the ticket booth until it got to when I was standing there. “That’s me. Just go a bit back.” I urged him, staring at the screen showing Genny, and I was horrified when she found out Alora was missing.

“This was when I realised she was missing. ” I added. He nodded.

“Alright…give me a sec.” He muttered rewinding the footage until Alora showed on the screen.

“That’s her ..” Genny excitedly pointed out once she saw her daughter on the screen. The officer’s eyes narrowed on the screen.

“There,” he repeated, tapping the screen exactly where Alora stood.

My breath hitched, and I saw myself standing at the aquarium booth, card in my hand, slightly turned toward the counter. Alora was beside me, swinging our joined hands, her purple dress bright against the crowd.

“There… there she is,” Genny sobbed, pressing her palm to the glass. She repeated like a broken record. My brow furrowed, noticing an old detail. Alora was staring in a particular direction as she swung our joined hands.

The footage was fast-forwarded. A woman brushed past us. A man with a balloon crossed the frame. I let go of Alora’s hand for a second to reach for the card machine..

And that was all it took. In that tiny window of time, Alora looked back once… then turned and followed something off-screen exactly in the direction she had been staring at all this time.

“She walked away,” I whispered in disbelief. “She just… walked away…” My knees felt weak.

“She didn’t look scared,” the officer said gently. “That’s good. Children who are taken usually show distress. She followed willingly.”

That didn’t make me feel better.

“She must have seen something,” Genny said hoarsely. “She loves dolphins… maybe she thought the show was starting…”

“Noo..” I shook my head. “Didn’t you notice she had been staring in that particular direction. ” I muttered. Genny’s face turned pale as the realisation.

The officer nodded, noting my observation. “We’ll track her movement from there and find the truth.”..

The cameras switched again trying to find the frame Alora was in. Alora appeared near the cotton candy stand close to my ticket booth. She wasn’t alone, there was a boy beside her. He looked younger than Alora, a toddler. His back was against the camera but Alora looked worried

The boy was being ignored by everyone. Alora glanced in my direction, then back at the boy, before grabbing his hand. That’s when my stomach dropped. What was that tiny adult thinking she was doing? She grabbed the boy and pulled him away from the camera frame

That’s when we noticed the boy was crying when the camera caught his face. “What does she think she is doing?” I muttered baffled while Genny watched dumbfounded as Alora took the boy away.

The camera angle changed and caught Alora asking people questions. Most of the people didn’t even notice them or were too busy; the park was jam-packed by that hour, and it was hard to follow their tiny figures in the crowd.

“Is she helping the boy find his family?” Genny asked, baffled, her missing child was helping another missing child. What was she thinking? Wasn’t she worried she wouldn’t find her way out?

She went to the arcade then the bumper cars. At the bumper cars area, they ran into a teenager. We couldn’t hear their conversations but the teenager pointed somewhere for them.

The camera angle changed and we realised it was a guard. A man dressed as one. Alora took the boy to the guard and started explaining something. The guard nodded then took her hands.

My brows furrowed. If a guard found them, why wasn’t the security aware? “Do you know the guard?” I asked the cctv man.

He shook his head, his gaze narrowed on the screen. “There are a lot of guards, and it’s not my department,” he said.

“Wait moment…” he muttered then glanced to the guard seated in front of another screen

“Jamie!!” He called out. Jamie glanced over.

“Dude, do you know who patrols around the bumper cars area?” He asked Jamie. Jamie’s brows furrowed for a moment as if he was in deep thought.

“Fredy…tall Freddie. Don’t tell me you forgot about tall Freddie. ” Jamie replied and the cctv man glanced back at the screen

“Jamie, please, can you come over? The missing child was taken by a guard patrolling the bumper car area, and it doesn’t look like Freddie. Was the guard changed?” My stomach dropped. Genny started shaking.

Jamie stood up and leaned over the CCTV guy’s chair and watched the guard take Alora and the boy away from the bumper car area. “That’s not Freddie..” Jamie muttered then his gaze darted to another corner of the screen noticing a guard stepping out of the nearby tent with a crying girl he handed her to a lady nearby

“That is Freddie. Who is the other guy?” Jamie said as a matter of fact. The imposter as if sensing the presence of a real guard picked off Alora and the little boy and ran

They left the camera frame. After that, we checked different angles, but there was no sign of them. Jamie immediately pulled out his walkie-talkie. “We have a code red. Repeat code red a child trafficker is on the grounds…”

I was stunned. Child trafficker? Alora was kidnapped by a child trafficker.

This really couldn’t be happening.

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