Heart of Fire (Alice Worth Book 2)

by Lisa Edmonds

  Diaz sat back and regarded me. I’d given them a detailed statement about when and where I’d seen Mark the day he was killed, and then the detective brought up what I’d said in the alley. At first, I thought he just wanted to argue, but I was beginning to wonder if some doubt was creeping into his mind about whether a vamp had killed Mark. There was something in Diaz’s eyes that said he was listening.

  Ferguson, however, wasn’t having any. “The fact is there is a vampire bite on Mr. Dunlap’s neck and vampire saliva in the wound. It is entirely consistent with a vampire bite.”

  “It’s not entirely consistent, for the reasons I just stated,” I said. “The facts definitively exclude a vampire bite as the cause of death. It is, however, entirely consistent with exsanguination via two large-bore needles and planted saliva.”

  “Is it possible that a vampire used needles to drain the body?” Diaz asked.

  “Possible,” I said. “But unlikely, since blood isn’t just a source of nutrients for vamps. The life energy within the blood is essential for their continued existence. Stored human blood lacks that energy. Aside from jokes about vampires making ‘withdrawals’ from blood banks, vamps don’t store human blood. It wouldn’t do them much good. They need a living human donor or they might as well be drinking tap water.”

  It was starting to compute with Diaz; I could see it. He was adding two and two and getting four now, not three.

  I’d brushed against both of them when we were walking into the interview room and hadn’t sensed any residual blood magic—not that its absence cleared them of involvement with the harnad, but it moved them down the list of possible suspects within the department. I’d been hoping Brody would be Diaz’s plus-one in the interview, but no such luck.

  “You and Mark were looking into the women who have gone missing from the Stroll,” Diaz said. “Sharon Dunlap says you both thought a harnad is taking them, not vampires. What proof do you have?”

  I shook my head. “If we had proof of who took them, whether it was vamps or mages, we would have brought it to you. That’s what we were hired to do.”

  “By the vamps,” Ferguson said snidely.

  “Yes, by the vamps.” I looked at Diaz. “Are we done?”

  He tapped his pen on the table. “For now, unless there’s anything you’d like to add to your statement?”

  “No.”

  “Then thank you for your cooperation.” We rose and filed toward the door. Diaz offered me his hand and I shook it. Ferguson just looked at me.

  We went down a short hall. Ferguson went left, heading into the bullpen of cubicles that were the detectives’ offices. Diaz led me toward the main doors of the Major Crimes division.

  A dark-haired man in a suit came in through the doors, carrying several folders. We bumped into each other as Diaz was reaching for the door.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” the other detective said absently. He headed for the coffeemaker as Diaz and I headed down the hall.

  Our walk downstairs was silent. As we approached the side door, Diaz paused. “There aren’t any harnads in the city.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  Diaz hit me with that cop stare. “We’ll find who killed Mark. If you find evidence that will help our investigation, you’re required to turn it over to us.”

  “I know my job, Detective. I want these bastards caught and I want them to pay for what they’ve done.”

  He nodded once as if I’d said the right thing and reached for the side door. “Then be careful,” he told me as I stepped out into the night.

  “You too, Detective.” The door closed behind me.

  I dug my phone out as I walked to my car. I had two text messages and a voice mail. The text messages were from Sean, letting me know he was ready to meet when I was free, and Kim Dade, saying she had Brody’s phone records now and was analyzing them. She’d already sent me Brody’s basic info, including a picture, which was how I’d known who to bump into on my way out of the bullpen.

  I hadn’t sensed any residual blood magic on Brody, which probably meant he hadn’t gone to the warehouse, but he’d definitely falsified the statements of Travers and Andrews, so he was involved somehow.

  The voice mail was from Lake, and it was a long one: three full minutes, recorded a little over an hour before. I sighed, got in my car, and shut the door. No sense putting off listening to it. I braced myself and hit Play.

  For several seconds, I didn’t hear anything. Then I heard what sounded like a car door opening, shuffling sounds, and some muffled thumps. He must have accidentally called me without realizing it. That explained the three-minute recording.

  I was about to hit Delete when someone spoke. “Who the hell is this guy?” I didn’t recognize the voice.

  Another unidentified voice, also male. “I don’t know. He’s out, though. Shit, this guy is huge. Help me move him so I can get his wallet.”

  I went cold.

  More rustling, then a heavy thump. A few seconds later, one of the men swore. “He’s a fed. Look.”

  “Why is a SPEMA agent tailing West?”

  “Hell if I know. You better call in and find out what he wants us to do.”

  A long pause, then: “Yeah, this is Bobby. We got West, but there was this big guy in a truck watching him. We hit him with a sleep spell and he’s out, but we just found out he’s a fed. His I.D. says Special Agent Trent Lake, with SPEMA. What do you want us to do?”

  Another long pause. I waited, my heart in my throat.

  “Fine, we’ll bring him to the warehouse,” the man said finally. “Gary’s driving the BMW and I’m driving the van, so we need someone out here pronto to drive this guy’s truck unless you want someone to find it here.” Pause. “No, if we lock it up, nobody’ll think nothin’ of it until we move it.” Pause. “Okay, yeah, no problem. We’ll put him in the van with West and head your way now.”

  “I’ll pull the van around,” the other man said.

  “Yeah, go do that. Hey, what’s this?” A loud rustling. “Shit, it’s his phone! He called someone before—” The voicemail ended.

  I looked at the screen. Delete Message?

  I was breathing hard and my heart raced. Hands shaking, I carefully saved the message, then started my car and backed out of my parking space as I called Sean.

  He answered on the first ring, his voice warm. “Hey, Alice. You done at the—”

  “I need you to meet me right now across the street from West’s office,” I interrupted. “How far away are you?”

  “Twenty minutes.” I heard a door slam and running footsteps. “Or less.”

  “Make it less.”

  23

  Sean listened to the voice mail twice, his face grim.

  We were sitting in Sean’s SUV, in a parking garage four blocks from West’s office. By the time we got to the alley behind the convenience store where Lake was apparently watching West, it had been almost two hours since Lake’s voice mail and there was no sign of West’s car or Lake’s truck. Bobby and Gary were long gone with West and Lake.

  I’d asked Malcolm to go look for the harnad warehouse, never thinking that it was West who might be targeted next. Had there been a coup in the harnad, or had we been mistaken all along about who the harnad’s leader was?

  A quick look around confirmed there were no security cameras on the surrounding buildings that would give us a view of the alley. There were cameras on the exterior of the convenience store, but the owner told Sean they only showed the pumps. We left and went to the garage to figure out our next move.

  Sean’s phone reported that West’s car had left the parking lot twelve minutes after the voice mail. One of Sean’s employees informed us the BMW was parked on the street outside West’s house. Presumably, Gary hadn’t been able to cross the wards protecting the house and had opted to leave the car on the street instead.

  My hands shook with adrenaline. “Why was Lake tailing West? How did he even kn
ow who West is?”

  “I don’t know.” Sean did something with my phone and his beeped. “I sent myself a copy of the voice mail.” He turned my phone off, pulled off its back, and removed the sim card.

  “Hey!”

  He stuck the phone in the cup holder. “They know who he called,” he reminded me. “They have your number and probably your name. If they have the resources, they could use this phone to track you. They’ll find out where you live. You can’t go home.” He sent someone a text and received an almost instant reply. “I’ve got someone heading over to watch your house.”

  I rubbed my face with my hands. “They took Lake to the warehouse. We have to get him, Sean. There’s no way they’ll let him live.” I thought of what they might be doing to him and felt sick.

  “Stop,” Sean said, squeezing my hand. “Those thoughts won’t help us find him. Focus on what we know, what we can do.”

  I took a deep, shaky breath and let it out. “We have to find that warehouse.”

  “You said Brody hadn’t been there as far as you could tell, so we probably can’t get it out of him. We haven’t heard from Malcolm, so he hasn’t found it yet. Who else knows where this damned warehouse is?”

  I’d had a plan percolating in the back of my brain for several days, but it was so far out in left field that I had mentally consigned it to a drawer labeled “For Emergency Use Only.” If this didn’t qualify as an emergency, I didn’t know what would.

  “I have an idea,” I said.

  When Rachel Barrow opened the door, her smile was radiant. She was so focused on Sean that she didn’t see me silently waiting off to the side of the porch. “Mac,” she said, leaning against the doorway. “I’m so glad you finally called me back. I thought you’d forgotten about me.”

  Sean grinned. “I didn’t forget.”

  He moved so fast she didn’t have a chance to make a sound. In a blink, he had an arm around her throat and a hand over her mouth and they were inside the house. I entered behind them and closed the door.

  Rachel’s eyes widened when she saw me. She started screaming into Sean’s hand.

  “Be quiet, or I’ll snap your neck,” Sean told her.

  The muffled shrieking stopped.

  “I am the alpha of the Tomb Mountain Pack,” Sean continued.

  The blood drained out of Rachel’s face.

  “Felicia Lowell is one of my wolves. You were involved in her kidnapping and I would like very much to tear out your throat. You have one chance to live past tonight. You are going to do exactly as Alice tells you to do. Nod if you understand.”

  She nodded rapidly.

  We hadn’t really planned in advance to play this as “good cop/bad cop” or “nice mage/angry werewolf,” but it looked like that was what was happening. I wasn’t really in the mood to play the good cop, but if one of us wasn’t at least marginally nice to her, she might be too scared to do what we needed her to do.

  I stepped in front of her. “We know about the harnad taking the women from the Stroll for their blood. I’m betting you help them identify the best targets.” I could tell from her expression that I’d guessed correctly. “You are going to make a phone call to whoever your contact is and tell them there is a new girl on the Stroll who has earth magic. Her name is Katie. She’s blonde and she’ll be down at Eleventh and Elm tonight.”

  She stared at me, her eyes wide.

  Sean spoke again. “We will be listening to the conversation. If you say one thing that deviates from what Alice just told you or let on in any way that you are being coerced, I will break your neck, but I won’t kill you. I’ll take you back to my pack and let Felicia’s mother and brother tear you to pieces. Are we clear?”

  She nodded again.

  “I’m going to move my hand now. Stay quiet.”

  The second Rachel could talk, she said, “They’ll kill me.”

  “They won’t,” I said. “We’ll make sure of it. I can promise Sean will kill you if you don’t do as we say. I’ve already had to talk him out of killing you twice. I don’t think he’ll listen to me a third time.”

  Rachel made a little noise and tried to shrink away from Sean, but his arm was still on her neck. She sniffled. “I’m sorry about Felicia. She was really nice.”

  “Why did they take her?” I asked.

  “Bobby asked me if any of the girls were shifters, said they’d pay me double if I knew any. There aren’t any shifter girls on the Stroll these days; they make way more money booking online. I needed the money, so I told him about Felicia.”

  “Why did you break into her apartment and steal her laptop?”

  Rachel didn’t ask how I knew about that. “To make it look like she was taken by someone she knew at work.”

  Sean’s eyes glowed. “How much did they pay you?”

  She whimpered. “Four hundred dollars.”

  “So, you made two hundred dollars each time you helped them pick a target?” I asked.

  “Three hundred if they had magic,” she said.

  “Blood money,” Sean snarled. “All of it blood money.”

  Literally, I thought. “And Danielle? You told them she saw the driver of the black BMW, didn’t you? They took her because of you.”

  She didn’t reply, but I saw it in her eyes. She’d told them about Danielle because she thought her source of additional income might go away if Danielle had identified the driver of the BMW.

  I took the anger and put it away. “Are you ready to make the call? Can you be convincing?”

  She nodded. “I’ll call Bobby.”

  I spotted her cell phone on the table and reached for it, but she shook her head. “They gave me a special phone to call him.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In my room, in the closet. Blue shoe box.”

  I brought it to her. It was a prepaid phone. Sean kept his arm on her neck.

  “Deep breaths,” I told her. “Be calm. Make the call.”

  Rachel held out her hand for the phone. I turned it on and gave it to her. She unlocked it, scrolled through the contacts list to the one labeled Pizza, and hit Call.

  The phone rang twice, and then a man answered. “Antonio’s Pizza. Pick-up or delivery?”

  I recognized the voice as one of the men on Lake’s voicemail: Bobby, the man who’d driven West’s BMW away from the scene.

  “It’s Rachel. I’ve got a pick-up for you.” Rachel’s voice was even and calm. I gave her a thumbs-up.

  “Give me a description,” Bobby said.

  “Girl named Katie. Blonde, kinda tall.” She eyed me. “Pretty but thin. She’s been hanging at Eleventh the last couple nights. She’s got magic, too.”

  “Why haven’t you mentioned her before?”

  “She’s new, Bobby,” Rachel said petulantly. “She used to work out by the airport, now she’s down on Elm.”

  “How do you know she’s got magic?”

  I raised my hand and green fire ran along my fingertips.

  Rachel nodded. “I saw her playing with little green flames on her fingers,” she said. “I Googled it. Green fire is earth magic, right?”

  “That’s right,” Bobby told her. “Blonde named Katie at Eleventh. Got it.”

  “You gonna get her tonight? I need some money.”

  “Yeah, I’ll head that way in a few. After we get her, I’ll drop the cash off as usual.”

  “Okay,” Rachel said. They disconnected.

  She turned the phone off and handed it to me. “How’d I do?” she asked anxiously.

  “You did good,” I told her. “Who should I be looking for?”

  “Red two-door Mazda. Bobby’s got kinda longish blond hair and usually wears a black jacket.”

  “How does he incapacitate them?” Sean asked.

  She jumped at the sound of his voice. “A sleep spell. He told me they fall asleep and they never feel a thing.”

  “A lot of women may be dead because of you,” I told her. “Doesn’t that bother you at all
? Or was it just about the money?”

  “We all gotta do what we gotta do,” she told me shortly. “I’ve been a hooker for four years. I’ve been beaten almost to death twice. I’ve been raped more times than I remember. I thought I’d get some money saved up and get out of here. Go somewhere else, start over.”

  “Those girls had dreams, too,” Sean snarled. “Felicia dedicated her life to helping people, and you sold her for four hundred dollars.”

  I reached out and touched her arm. “Sleep.”

  She dropped. Sean let her go and she hit the floor hard.

  We looked at each other over the unconscious body of Rachel Barrow. “What now?” Sean asked.

  “Call Bryan and have him send someone to pick her up. The vamps can hold her for now, until we can turn her over to the feds. I’ve got to get changed.”

  “I would prefer to be the one getting kidnapped,” Sean said.

  I shrugged and applied lipstick, using the mirror on the back of the visor. “If you think you can pass as a blonde named Katie, go for it, but even if you could fool them into picking you up, you still wouldn’t be able to take down the wards once you got inside the warehouse.”

  He growled.

  I capped the lipstick and stuck it in the black vinyl handbag I’d borrowed from Rachel’s closet. I’d also borrowed a shimmery, see-through shirt that tied above my waist and a red bustier. I was wearing my own jeans and boots, but had to raid Rachel’s makeup and jewelry collection to round out my outfit. My blonde wig was part of the “quickie” disguise kit I kept in my trunk.

  Transformation complete, I blew Sean a kiss. “How do I look?”

  He laced his fingers through mine. “Brave.”

  I frowned at him. “Brave? I was hoping for hot, sexy, gorgeous, or something more along those lines.”

  “Have I mentioned that I find brave women extremely sexy?”

  I snorted. “You just be ready to ride in with the cavalry when Malcolm shows up and tells you the wards are down,” I told him, touching the spell crystal I’d tied to his wrist. “He’ll jump to you and give you the all-clear. It’s a good plan.”