by Tina Folsom
John remained next to him, watching a red dot on his cell phone move around a map. “Ronny’s just entering the first gate.”
Blake peered into the distance. “What’s he driving?”
“His own truck. We figured Norwood would be less suspicious if everything looks normal. We put a tracker in Ronny’s shoe to make sure we can keep an eye on him if he has to leave the car somewhere and continue on foot.”
“And the drugs?”
“He told us they came in liquid form, so we filled plastic bottles with colored water.”
“As long as they don’t smell it, I guess we’ll be fine.”
“And by the time they do,” John added, “we’ll already have them by the balls.”
Blake heard a crackling sound over his earpiece. “Positions?”
“This is Wes. My team is at the south end, opposite buildings B and C.”
“Oliver here. We should be at the northern end of building A in about sixty seconds.”
There was a pause.
“Amaury?”
“Yeah. Sorry, had to adjust the volume. My guys and I are stationed behind some crates at the entrance of the walkway between buildings D and E. We have a good view of the parking lot. Ronny’s just pulling up.”
“Good. John and I are overlooking the Festival Pavilion, and we can see the entrance to the Herbst Pavilion, too.” Several shadows approached from the back of the firehouse and slowly crept past the shrubbery there. “Shit, I can see somebody approaching from the east. Anybody got eyes on them from below?”
He exchanged a look with John, indicating that if nobody was closer, he and John would try to take them from behind.
The three figures froze. “It’s us,” Samson suddenly said through the earpiece. “I’ve got Haven and Yvette with me. I texted you that we were coming.”
Just then, Blake felt his cell phone vibrate and looked at it. Samson’s text message appeared on the screen. “Just got it now. Glad you’re here.”
For a few minutes, everybody remained silent. Blake glanced at the dot that represented Ronny. “Amaury?” he asked through his mic. “What’s Ronny doing?”
“Waiting around next to the car.”
“They’re late,” Blake said.
“Yeah, or something,” John said next to him, frowning. “I don’t like it.”
“Yeah, you and me both.” Thirty minutes hadn’t given them any time to prepare for this. They were winging it, and Blake could only hope that everybody would think on their feet and make the right decisions when it came to it.
“I hear something,” Oliver suddenly said. “I think it’s a boat.”
“Samson? You see anything from where you are?” Blake asked.
“Definitely a boat approaching. A small motorboat,” Samson confirmed.
“How many people on it?”
“Not sure. One driving it. But there could be more hiding in the hull.”
“Okay. Sharpshooters, get ready!” Blake started issuing his orders. “All teams: move in.” He motioned to John and they descended all the way down to the embankment until they reached the paved area. Communicating by signs now, so as not to be overheard by the approaching vampires, they moved closer, using the buildings and parked cars to give them cover.
Blake could hear the engine of the motorboat being throttled down, and knew the boat was coming to a stop now, somewhere between buildings A and B.
A loud bang suddenly jolted him.
“What’s that?” he hissed into his mic.
“Fuck if I know,” Amaury cursed.
“I’m going in,” Blake growled.
“Wait!” Samson cautioned, but Blake was already running.
“Cover me!”
~ ~ ~
Lilo paced back and forth in Blake’s office. There wasn’t even a window to help her wile away the time, something she hadn’t noticed until Blake had left. Every few minutes she looked at the clock on his wall. There were actually three clocks. One showed the current time, the second counted down to sunrise, the third to sunset. And the less time there was left until sunrise, the more nervous she became.
She wished somebody would tell her what was happening. Had Ronny’s associates brought Hannah with them? What was happening right now? Were they all safe?
The ringing of Blake’s phone made her jump. She raced toward it and grabbed the receiver, afraid that the ringing would stop before she could get to it.
“Blake?”
“Lilo? Oh thank God, it’s you.”
The female voice couldn’t possibly belong to the person she thought. “Hannah?”
“Yes, Lilo, it’s me. Oh God! It’s terrible. I’m free, but Lilo, he’s hurt so bad. Blake is hurt so bad, and some of the others, they’re dead. I don’t know what to do.”
An iron fist clamped around her heart and squeezed. “Blake? Oh no! Please no!” She couldn’t go through this again. She’d almost lost him once, she wouldn’t survive a second time.
“Listen, Lilo. I’m in Blake’s car. He’s with me. We’ll be at HQ in a minute. But I don’t have the strength to get him into the building. He’s too badly hurt, he can’t move on his own. Help me!”
“I’ll be down there. Please, Hannah, hurry. I can’t lose him.”
She slammed the receiver down and charged to the door, ripped it open and ran for the elevator, pressing the button several times before the doors opened. She jumped in. The ride down to the first floor couldn’t have taken more than fifteen seconds, but it felt like an eternity. All she could think of was Blake. He was hurt. He needed her.
Oh God, what had happened at Fort Mason? What had these monsters done to the men of Scanguards? How many of them had died? A sob worked itself up from the pit of her stomach to her throat. She tried to force it down. Blake needed her. She had to remain strong.
When she reached the first floor she practically flew through the lobby, ignoring the questioning look of the woman behind the reception desk.
A guard stood at the glass exit door. He glanced at her visitor badge and nodded as she breezed past him and barreled outside onto the sidewalk.
She searched for Blake’s Aston Martin, but couldn’t see it. Had Hannah not gotten here yet?
Please, please!
She prayed silently. Don’t let him die.
“Lilo! Here!”
She whirled her head to the side and saw Hannah wave to her from the corner. “He’s here.”
Lilo ran toward her friend. “Hannah!” She’d never been more relieved to see her friend. Hannah looked exhausted and worn out, dark circles under her eyes, her red hair an unruly mess, her clothes rumpled.
When Lilo reached her, Hannah was already running toward the car, which was parked halfway down the block.
“You should have double-parked right in front!” Lilo called out, tears brimming at her eyes. How were they gonna carry Blake inside?
“Help me, Lilo!” Hannah waved to her as she opened the passenger door of Blake’s car. “Quickly. He hasn’t got much time left.”
She raced to the car, and Hannah stepped aside, so she could tend to Blake. Lilo reached out and bent toward the interior—but nobody was sitting in the passenger seat.
“Where is he?” She spun her head to Hannah, but it was too late.
Her friend pressed a cloth to her face. Lilo gasped in surprise and sucked in the vapors emanating from the cloth: chloroform.
“No! Help!” But nobody heard her muffled cries.
She tried to fight it, but all the strength seeped from her body and she collapsed, darkness descending on her.
39
Blake stared at the human who’d arrived with a small motorboat and then calmly walked into the arms of the vampires waiting for him. With a permanent marker somebody had written For Scanguards on his white T-shirt.
“They sent a fucking pawn!” Blake ground out, while the man continued to stare blankly into the distance.
“Drugged out, just like the other guy,” Wesl
ey confirmed. “They must have known we were coming.”
Blake kicked against a trashcan. “Fuck!” No matter how careful they’d been, he’d always known that there was a chance that Norwood and his guys had been watching Ronny, though there hadn’t been any indication of it. “How’re we gonna find Hannah now?”
Several of his colleagues grunted in displeasure, and in the midst of it all, his cell phone vibrated. He pulled it from his pocket and looked at the display.
Pressing the answer key, he said, “Thomas?”
“Can you talk?”
“Yeah, they didn’t show. They sent a drugged human instead. No sign of Hannah.”
“I wish I could say I was surprised, but I just got alerted that Hannah’s access card was swiped to enter the garage.”
“You mean somebody took her access card and managed to get inside Scanguards? How is that even possible?” There were more levels of security than just the access card. “They would have had to have her fingerprint, too.”
“I know. That’s why I pulled the video feeds from the levels accessed with Hannah’s card. Hold on.” He paused for a second. “Thanks, Eddie. Blake, you’re not gonna believe this: Hannah entered the garage. It’s her, without a doubt. She went to the main parking level and accessed the emergency key hold.”
This made no sense. “If she escaped somehow, then why wouldn’t she just go upstairs to the staff office and report back?”
“Blake, I don’t think she escaped. There’s something about her… Eddie, zoom in on her face again… There! Blake, I think she’s drugged.”
“Oh shit! Where did she go?”
“That’s just it, she took one of the keys, then went to parking level B2. Eddie, go to the recording for level B2… There, she comes out of the elevator, heads for the cars. Oh no.”
“What?” Blake barked into the phone.
“She took your car. Let’s see…”
What was she planning to do with his car?
“She left with it. I don’t know where to, but she drove out of the garage about twenty minutes ago.”
“It makes no sense. Why would Norwood make her steal my car? They must realize that we can trace it with its built-in locator chip. Something isn’t right.”
“I’ll go through all the footage again to see if we’re missing anything, or if she let anybody else in, but so far I see nothing.”
“Blake!” Ronny suddenly called out, holding his cell phone in the air. “It’s Norwood. He wants to talk to you.”
“Stay on the line, Thomas,” Blake ordered and took Ronny’s phone with his other hand, already barking into it. “Norwood, you little shit! What’re you up to?”
“Is that a way to greet the man who’s in possession of the one thing most precious to you?” Norwood drawled.
“I know you drugged Hannah,” he started, but Norwood cut him off.
“But I’m not talking about Hannah. I’m talking about Lilo.”
Blake’s heart stopped.
“Such a beautiful woman. A little limp right now, but,” Norwood continued, “she’ll wake up eventually.”
“You really think I’m gonna believe you have her?” He pressed the mute button, then switched to his own cell phone. “Thomas, run to my office and check on Lilo. Now!”
“On my way.”
He pressed unmute on Ronny’s phone and concentrated on Norwood’s words, continuing to listen with one ear to his own cell phone.
“I’d like to trade her and Hannah for Ronny and the drugs. And this time, no games,” Norwood warned.
Meanwhile, Thomas’s voice came through the other phone. “She’s gone, Blake. Disappeared.”
Blake’s fangs descended and his hands turned into claws. “I’m going to rip your throat out when I find you!”
“Such idle threats,” Norwood said coolly. “Guess you believe me now. So let’s see how much she’s worth to you.”
~ ~ ~
Blake slammed his fist into the wall of his office, leaving a dent in the drywall. “How could this happen?” He’d failed Lilo. He hadn’t kept her safe. She was in the hands of a madman. “Why didn’t I see this coming?”
John stood in silence next to Ronny, who appeared to be crushed by this setback.
Wes put a hand on his shoulder, but Blake shrugged it off. “Nobody saw this coming. They must have drugged Hannah to somehow get her to trick Lilo into meeting her. The guard said Lilo went rushing out the door, but he didn’t see where she was heading.”
Blake nodded to himself. “Lilo is smart. She wouldn’t have fallen for it if Hannah hadn’t been convincing.”
“Maybe that’s why Hannah stole your car,” Wes mused. “What if she needed it to convince Lilo that you sent her?”
For a moment, he contemplated the question. “However they convinced her, we need to find where they’ve taken her. Quickly.”
“We’ve already located your car. I’ve sent a team there, but I’m pretty sure they just dumped it. Hannah knows the car is equipped with a GPS tracker. She would have ditched it as soon as she didn’t need it anymore,” John said.
Blake turned to Wes. “Can you scry for Lilo?”
“With what? It was hard enough finding something with Hannah’s DNA in her flat. And the little I found didn’t get me a reading on her. It’s even harder with Lilo. So unless you have a vial of her blood, I’m afraid, we’re out of luck. A couple of hairs won’t be powerful enough to make the crystal work.” Wes gave an apologetic shrug.
Ronny suddenly lifted his head. “You said with blood you could locate somebody?”
“Yeah, I can.”
“Maybe you can find Norwood or one of his associates. The drug they put into that human with the motorboat has blood from one of them in it.”
Wes approached him. “What do you mean?”
“But you can’t scry for vampires, it doesn’t work,” Blake interrupted. “You weren’t at Ronny’s interrogation. He already told us about the other vampires’ blood.”
Wes lifted his hand. “Let me hear him out. How is it done?”
“Well, I give them the raw drug, but if we don’t individualize it, it won’t work over long distances. We might as well use mind control. So if the vampire wants to control the human over long distances and make sure nobody else can control him, he has to mix some of his own blood with the drug. Like a bond, so to speak. So the human will respond to his master, and only to him.” Ronny looked at Wes, as if to verify that he understood.
“I get it.” Wes paused and started pacing. “Hmm. Like a homing pigeon. Clever.” A spark appeared in his eyes. “I think I have an idea.”
Blake’s heart beat excitedly. “What kind of idea? Please tell me you know how to find them.”
Wes nodded. “I might. But I’ll need Ronny’s help in the lab. Where’s your recipe book? I didn’t find it in the cabin.”
“Recipe book?”
“The formula for the drug.”
Ronny tipped his finger to his temple. “That’s the only place it’s safe from Norwood. That’s why I’m still alive.
Wes nodded. “Good. Blake, keep that drugged human we picked up tonight ready for me. I think there might be a way of using the bond to his master as a way to turn him into a homing device. If I can isolate the vampire’s blood from the drug and alter the composition a little, I think I can do it.”
Blake’s chest swelled with hope. “Wes, if you can do this and find them, you know I’ll owe you big.”
“And this time I might just cash in on all the favors you owe me.”
Blake met Wesley’s look and nodded. To get Lilo back, he’d do whatever was necessary.
40
Lilo felt groggy, her limbs were stiff, and her head ached. She was coming out of a daze, somebody shaking her with both hands on her shoulders. With difficulty she managed to open her eyes. At first, she had trouble focusing.
“Lilo! Oh God, Lilo!”
The voice brought her back to reality. In an inst
ant she remembered everything. Her eyes flew open.
It was Hannah shaking her awake. Lilo shot up on the uncomfortable cot.
“Hannah?”
“What did they do to you? How did they get you? What are you even doing in San Francisco?” The questions were fairly spewing from Hannah’s mouth. She looked distressed, close to tears. At the same time she looked different from earlier. More lively. More animated. Real.
“You don’t know, do you?” Lilo asked, grabbing Hannah’s hands and squeezing them.
“Know what?”
“Hannah, you called me at Scanguards and told me to come down because Blake was hurt. You said he was dying, and you needed my help.”
She shook her head. “Lilo, I’ve been in here, locked up for I don’t know how many days.”
“Honey, they drugged you. The men who took you, they made you set a trap for me, and I marched right into it.”
Tears rose to Hannah’s eyes. “Oh, no, Lilo! I’m so sorry!”
Lilo threw her arms around her friend and pulled her into an embrace. “No, I’m sorry. If I’d been there for you when you needed me, this might not have happened.”
Hannah sobbed. Lilo took her by the shoulders and eased her back to look at her. “Don’t cry. Please. I’m here now.”
“You shouldn’t have come to San Francisco. Now we’re both in trouble. And it’s my fault. I should have listened to Ronny and left with him.”
“Ronny told us everything.”
“You saw Ronny?” Her eyes widened. “How?”
“Blake and his men captured him.”
Hannah slammed her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God!” Then Hannah cast her a cautious look. “How much do you know?”
Lilo sighed. “Everything. Or almost everything. I know about Scanguards, I know about the vampires, the drug Ronny is producing for Norwood, the danger we’re all in.”
Hannah shook her head. “I’m so sorry I dragged you into this. I never wanted you to have to deal with this.”
