Natalie Leigh’s building was as pristine as always. The morning light reflected off the building’s dark glass, and that bit of brightness imbued me with hope. I walked inside, lost in my thoughts, and ran into what felt like a brick wall. Cool hands on my arms steadied me, and I looked up and met the gaze of a familiar face and the strong scent of herbs swirled around me. It took me a moment to place the large man as the one I’d seen in the lobby when I’d visited Natalie alone about the burned body case. He dropped his hands and stared at me, as if his eyes would bore through me, sweat gathering on his forehead.
I stepped aside, uncomfortable. Did he work security for the building or something? A suit adorned his body, but he carried himself like professional muscle. He lugged a bag, and I wondered if that was where the herbal scent had come from. Perhaps he was a customer of Natalie’s?
Or a supplier?
I felt his eyes on my back, and I waved at the receptionist. Recognizing me, she nodded and reached for the phone. The witch, it seemed, wasn’t one for surprises. I didn’t look back, but headed for the elevator. Encouraging the man by acknowledging him was a bad idea.
Waiting patiently for the elevator to ding, I checked my cell phone. Still no call from Costa. No half-assed explanations. No attempts to get me to listen. No screw-yous. The fact that he hadn’t even tried to call somehow made it worse. It hadn’t been long, of course. Yet if he really cared, wouldn’t he have followed me out of the hotel?
But no. No chase. No call. No worries—for him, anyway.
I grumbled and stuffed the phone back in my jacket as I boarded the elevator. I turned back and hit the button for Natalie’s floor. The large man no longer watched me, and the revolving door still spun from his departure. One less thing to worry about.
I knew should call Costa and give him a chance to explain. Tell him what I was taking to Natalie. That would be the mature thing to do. His partner was a bitch, but that didn’t mean that he was as bad as her words made him appear. And I had a feeling that what he’d confided in me the night before wasn’t a story he told carelessly, if he’d even shared it before. But as the light behind the numbers counted off the floors in the elevator, I couldn’t force myself to take out my phone to make the call.
Natalie’s office door stood ajar, but her office itself was empty. I frowned and rubbed my arms. Nothing appeared disturbed, no rustled papers or knocked-over chairs. Perhaps she just hadn’t arrived for the day?
Her day planner sat on her desk, so I gave the office and waiting room a quick once-over and then flipped it open. Today, she showed appointments starting at seven o’clock and going clear through eight tonight. For Natalie, appointments almost certainly meant she was in her casting room, which was situated down a hallway from her office. I’d seen it once, when we cast the locator spell to find Elaine. A spell we’d cast in vain.
I whistled under my breath. The rest of her upcoming week appeared just as full. When did she have time for a life? Or even to eat?
It was nine now, and her calendar listed an appointment from eight until ten. So where were they? Her note was in shorthand, but it looked like some sort of luck spell had been scheduled. A private client, then. The police department didn’t believe in luck.
The door leading to the hallway between her office and spell room stood closed, and I considered for a moment going back there to see if she was busy casting. I grimaced. No. Probably not the smartest idea. Magic was tricky. I was no expert, but I was pretty certain that no one would be happy if I interrupted her spell. Who knew what the consequences could be? For all I knew, barging in there might make her blow us all up.
I glanced longingly at her computer, but jarring her mouse revealed the screen to be locked and that a password was needed. Just as well. How bad would it look if she walked in to find me on her computer? No way would she believe that I was just on there to Google some information while I waited. I suppressed a sigh and pulled out my phone. The screen was small and the speed wasn’t up to what a real computer could do, but it would have to work.
I loaded the tiny browser and tapped my fingernails on her desk while I waited for the search screen to load. When the box finally popped up, I typed in “Anchorage, Witch” and hit enter. It might be a long shot, but Anchorage was out of the way. It wasn’t exactly a bustling city for visiting Covenant members. A high level member—or former member—might earn a spot in the paper if news was slow.
The search came up with hundreds of pages of results, and I scrolled through the first page without clicking on any of the links. Most were for local coven’s websites. The second page netted very similar results, with the exception of one link.
The Anchorage Daily News listed an article about a bigwig witch visiting for some sort of new bill signing. I hit the link and waited impatiently for it to load. After what felt like forever, the page slowly came up, one inch at a time on the small screen, almost too small to read. I zoomed in on the page and checked the date. Four months ago. Yes. That fit the range all right. I scrolled down and then stopped abruptly.
No flipping way.
The name stood out to me on the screen as if bolded, as did his very small but very happy face on the included picture. Viktor Koslov. That put him in the right city during the right timeframe for two incidences: Anchorage and Chicago. And he was a powerful witch, powerful enough to have twisted a succubus’s powers. Chicago might be a coincidence, but Anchorage, too?
As I stared at the picture, something else caught my attention. A large man stood in the background. The man I’d run into downstairs. My heart stopped.
Natalie.
If Koslov was involved in this, Natalie might not be safe. We’d had her looking into witches capable of pulling off the power transfer. I pushed up from the chair and strode toward the door to her casting room, but my hand froze on the knob. So what if Viktor had been in Alaska with the creepy man from the lobby? He might be one witch of many, especially if the legislation they passed was a big enough deal for him to go there to show his approval.
What if I was wrong, and I walked in there and someone got hurt?
I gritted my teeth and stepped away from the door. I pulled my phone out and hit the back button. Thankfully, the search screen loaded quickly, and with shaking fingers I typed in, “Koslov, Phoenix” on the small screen.
Time moved even more achingly slowly as I waited for the results to load. Finally, after what felt like hours, the first page of results appeared. As I took in the short summary of the first listing, my breath caught in my throat.
Two months ago, Viktor Koslov had been in Phoenix.
Perfect timing for when the succubus disappeared, and near the time a pile of ash had been found as well.
The evidence was circumstantial but convincing. Not only could Koslov have committed the crimes, he’d been in at least three cities at the right time to have done it. And according to Natalie, no witch would have been able to twist a succubus’s power with the councilman in the same city without him knowing. The burned victims still didn’t make sense unless…
An image of the professional muscle I’d seen downstairs flashed in my mind, and I rubbed my arms against a sudden chill. Could that man be the key? His grip had been cool, like Costa’s. Was the professional muscle a salamander?
He’d smelled of herbs. Had Viktor sent him back for something? Natalie had to have rare, difficult-to-find herbs in her spell room. Maybe she’d had something Viktor wanted badly enough to send his man back for them. Or even more likely, he’d come back to make sure the scene was cleaned of anything that could be linked to Viktor.
I grabbed the knob and twisted, yanking open the door to the hallway that led to her casting room. Risks be damned. Natalie had to know as soon as possible that Viktor Koslov—one of the most powerful witches in the country, if not the world—was our kidnapper. Our killer.
Chapter Twelve
Deafening silence hit me; the only noise touching my ears was my own frantic footsteps. I
made my way down the hall to the casting room and, feeling awkward, knocked.
The noise echoed in the hallway, but no sounds answered it. I knocked once more before tentatively opening the door. I stepped back, but no lightning or fire or ice flew from the room to strike me. The room was dark.
“Hello? Natalie? It’s Detective Whitman.” I felt along the inside of the wall, fumbling until my fingertips touched a light switch. I flipped it on, then took in the room before me.
Spell ingredients littered the ground—herbs intermingled with pieces of glass and wire. Scorches touched the walls and bookcases. Her circle, which had been etched into the concrete floor as well as painted, didn’t look right. I stared at it for a moment before I realized that the paint had been smudged, nearly removed from a one-foot section. Deep scratches trailed across the etching.
What the hell had happened? Burn marks—maybe from the salamander? The scratches could have been from a dodged spell. A lethal one by the looks of the scraped floor. Maybe Natalie fought them and lost. I looked over the room one last time before deciding that I wasn’t knowledgeable enough about witchcraft to figure out exactly what had happened, and then I headed back to her office.
Had she been taken? The room looked like it had been through a battle, and I was pretty certain that two witches fighting would probably create a mess at least that big. I flipped back a page in her planner and my stomach dropped. Last night, penciled in for seven thirty, was the name Viktor.
I plucked her phone from the cradle and looked at the screen. The fancy output had several sorts of lists, including who she’d called, calls she’d missed, and incoming calls she’d actually answered. I thumbed through the list of outgoing calls for yesterday. Several before seven thirty.
I tried the first. A woman answered with an informal,
“Hello?” I muttered a, “Sorry, wrong number,” and hung up the phone. The next number was to a deli down the street—probably her lunch or dinner order. I got lucky on number three.
La Maison.
One of the nicest hotels in the area, it was undoubtedly where Koslov stayed while he was in town. The building was also adjacent to the alley where we’d found the burned remains.
“Viktor Koslov’s room,” I said to the operator.
“One moment, please.” The phone clicked and started ringing through, and I slammed the phone back on the cradle.
This was all my fault. I glanced at Natalie’s picture, propped on her desk. She smiled from the arms of an older woman. My stomach sank. I had to help her. And fast. I itched to call Costa, to tell him what was going on and get his opinion on where we should go from here, but I couldn’t do that. It wasn’t proper procedure, for one. I had to call this in to my boss. For another, I didn’t trust Costa. Oh sure, I knew enough about him to know he wasn’t a criminal, but that didn’t make him trustworthy when it came down to it. I’d only known the man for a few days, and his partner’s words still reverberated through my mind.
I picked up the phone to call the station. Vasquez was going to love this.
The lieutenant didn’t sound happy to hear my news, but after the third time I went through all of the evidence—
the dates, the M.O., the mess in Natalie’s casting room—
he conceded that I might be on to something.
“All right. But this had better be airtight, Whitman.
He’s a goddamn Covenant council member. Are you still at the witch’s office?” Vasquez sounded irritated, but not angry. That was good. He might actually believe me.
“I’m at Natalie’s, but I’ll head over to La Maison.” I tapped Natalie’s pen against her desk and wished that I had called from my cell phone. At least I’d be more mobile than I was calling from Natalie’s landline.
“The hell you will,” Vasquez grated. “You’re to stay as far away from that hotel as possible. You’re too close to this case, and I don’t need any fuckups in the takedown.”
“This is my sister, Vasquez!”
“I know that.” He lowered his voice. “I’m not saying you haven’t done some damn good investigating here, Whitman. You’ve gotten us enough to pick him up and search his room, at least. But you can’t be there.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.” And with that jaw-dropping announcement hanging in the air, he muttered, “I’ll be in touch,” and hung up the phone.
I gaped at the phone and tried to move past Vasquez’s apology—something akin to a meteor hitting a house in its rarity—to try to plan my next move. I couldn’t go to La Maison. Ignoring Vasquez in this would almost certainly cost me my badge. And what if we didn’t catch Koslov?
Then I’d be completely shut out. No, I couldn’t go there.
I frowned and considered what I knew of Koslov and this perp’s M.O. Chances were very slim that Elaine or Natalie would actually be at the hotel. It was a nice place and while I was certain they gave their best customers a lot of latitude, two kidnapped women would not go unnoticed or unreported. No. He’d keep them somewhere no one would notice them. My money was still on a warehouse or other out of the way dump.
I took a file folder from my bag and then stared at the list that the vampire Magister had given us. Even with me, Costa, and the officers Vasquez had ordered to help, we’d only checked half of the warehouses on the list. I looked at the plotted map and frowned. None of the warehouses were near La Maison, per se. Most were clear across town.
Only two dots stood out on the map that were anywhere near Koslov’s hotel. He’d want to keep her close, right?
“Great,” I muttered. It was a long shot, but what else could I do? Going to the hotel wasn’t an option. I might as well check out the warehouse. I couldn’t just sit and wait to hear back from Vasquez.
I locked Natalie’s office door on my way out. It was an easy to open handle lock, but I didn’t have a key for the door outside the waiting room, which could be secured with a sturdy deadbolt. Then I took the elevator down to the lobby and stopped at the reception desk. “When was the last time you saw Natalie Leigh?”
“Pardon?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at my tone.
I flashed my badge to remind her that I wasn’t just a pretty face, and asked her again. “When?” She shrugged. “No idea. A few days, I guess. I see her going to lunch occasionally, or out for appointments.”
“Days?” I asked incredulously.
“She doesn’t check in with me; I work for the whole building. She’ll send her schedule down occasionally.
E-mail me when she doesn’t want walk-ins. But other than you cops she doesn’t get a lot of unexpected traffic.”
“All right. No one goes into Natalie Leigh’s office,” I told the woman. “No one except cops. Got it?” Her eyes widened, and she nodded hurriedly. Backup would arrive soon. It would have to do. I couldn’t wait around for them, even if they weren’t under orders from Vasquez to keep me there, which they probably were.
I headed for my car and hoped that Koslov was already being cuffed.
Of the two warehouses that were closest to La Maison, I decided the one by the lake was probably the most likely place. It was slightly farther from the hotel than the other building but was situated in a more industrial area. The other building looked like it might just be close enough to a nearby strip mall for noise to be overheard. Other than a few distant large plants and some storage units, the one I chose to check first was quite isolated.
I parked a block from the warehouse and examined my phone. I should call Costa. I knew that. But I’d be damned if it wasn’t difficult. I considered calling Mac instead, but she’d almost definitely been pulled in for the arrest at the hotel. Besides, I didn’t want to put her job in jeopardy. Astrid would be much the same. Calling anyone on the freak squad was a bad idea. The ones who would help me could endanger their careers by doing so. The rest—like Vasquez—would order me expressly not to do what I planned. My only hope of a career after this was not receiving that direct order. That left Costa.
And
his freakishly stunning redheaded partner.
I ground my teeth and hit his number. Three rings and it went to voice mail.
“Flipping A,” I muttered. Was Costa in on the hotel bust, too? I didn’t think Vasquez would likely be willing to pull the OWEA agent in for the bust, but if he hadn’t had a choice...Costa could have been at the station when I called. It would have been difficult to hide an operation like that from the OWEA agent if he’d been in the building at the time. Forgetting to call him was one thing, something Vasquez might do. Lying to an OWEA agent’s face was something else altogether.
Maybe he just didn’t want to talk to me.
Swallowing around a lump in my throat, I redialed his number. This time it went straight to voice mail. I took a deep breath and said, “I’m checking a warehouse near La Maison. Not sure if Vasquez filled you in, but I think our guy might be keeping them here—Elaine and Natalie.” I let out the breath in a big whoosh. If Vasquez hadn’t explained everything to Costa, he was out of luck.
I couldn’t leave all the details on his voice mail. I didn’t have the time or the patience. I left the address of the warehouse in a long rush and then hit end on my phone.
At least someone would know where I was.
I left the car parked a couple of blocks from the warehouse, and then pulled a crowbar and flashlight from my trunk.
Getting in and out quickly was more important than making a quick getaway—I hoped. I stood by a building next to the one owned by the Chevaliers and did my best to stay out of sight. I kept my gun in its holster and carried the crow bar in one hand and the flashlight in the other.
The warehouse was old, but not as old as the ones we’d looked at across town. The metal was rusting in places, but it didn’t look ready to fall over any second.
The only window I could see was in the front door, along the top. Enter through the back or the front? Finally I decided to make my way to the back. I strode around and approached from behind, careful to do my best to appear I belonged. Sneaking around would cause more suspicion if someone saw me. Then again, in this area, dressed as I was in my neat skirt suit and short heels, just the sight of me was likely to draw attention.
Succubus Lost (Files from the Otherworlder Enforcement Agency, #2) Page 11
