by Tina Folsom
The kitchen was in disarray, the two bedrooms appeared unused. Blake followed the various camera angles as the hybrids moved through the property.
“Empty!” Damian announced.
“Yeah, the house is empty,” Ryder confirmed.
“Shit!” Samson cursed and turned to Blake. “We missed him. He must have taken her someplace else.”
“He might have never been there,” Blake conceded and pressed the button for the mic. “Boys, look for any signs that Mendoza or Isabelle were there.”
“Ok,” Benjamin replied.
Samson bent over the mic. “Can you smell her scent? Grayson?”
Grayson marched into the living room, when he suddenly stopped dead. The camera on his forehead picked up what he saw.
“Oh God, no,” Grayson murmured. “Please don’t let it be her.”
Blake felt a lump in his throat that prevented him from speaking. The dust that covered the old worn carpet was unmistakable. In the absence of a fireplace in the house it could only have come from one source: a dead vampire—or hybrid, for hybrids disintegrated into ash when they died just as a vampire did.
Next to Blake, Samson had jumped up. “No! No!”
The sound of pain and despair in Samson’s voice nearly tore Blake’s heart into a million pieces. He had to be strong now and think clearly, because his boss was in no condition to do so.
“Comb the place! Now!” Blake commanded. “Turn over every piece of furniture. Check his computer. Go through everything!”
Grayson nodded numbly, while Ryder squeezed his shoulder. “Maybe she managed to kill him.”
Grayson whirled his head to him. “Then where is she?” He pointed to the sofa. “I can still smell her. She was here.” He lifted his head toward the ceiling. “Dad, Isabelle was here. We’re too late. Too late!”
A string of vile curses rolled over Grayson’s lips.
“He left his cell phone. Wonder why,” Damian suddenly said and pulled a phone from beneath a stack of papers. “Must have forgotten it. It was hidden underneath all this crap. Didn’t even see it at first.”
His brother joined him, reaching for it. “Let me see.”
Damian handed it to Benjamin who pressed the iPhone’s home button. “Hey, it’s not locked.”
Blake zoomed in on it. “Is that the voice memo that’s open?”
“Yep,” Benjamin confirmed. “He must have been recording something.”
Damian looked over his shoulder. “Hey, it’s still running. Look!”
“Let me see,” Grayson demanded and snatched the phone from his friends.
“How long is the recording?” Blake asked.
“Over six hours,” came Grayson’s reply. “Weird…”
“Go back to the beginning and—”
But Grayson had already had the same idea and pressed the button to replay the voice recording from the beginning.
There were sounds of doors opening and closing, footsteps, some shuffling, voices in the distance, coming closer.
Then, finally, the voice of a man proclaimed, “Here she is.”
In the middle of it, Thomas’s cell phone rang and he turned away, answering it quietly. Blake tuned out his words and concentrated on the monitor.
An angry grunt. “Who the fuck is that? That’s not Kimberly Fairfax!” It was the voice of a second man. “What am I paying you good money for?”
The first man, who had to be Mendoza, replied, “But that’s her. She was right where you said she would be.”
“That bitch isn’t Kimberly. Who the fuck knows who she is! Fucking idiot! Should’ve done it myself!”
“Please, let me go.”
“Isabelle,” Samson murmured.
“I told him I wasn’t Kimberly, but he wouldn’t listen!”
“Shut up, you bitch!” That was Mendoza again, but he was cut off by the second man.
“Don’t!”
It sounded like a slap. Had the stranger snatched Mendoza, preventing him from hitting Isabelle?
“You’re still gonna have to pay for her,” Mendoza demanded. “I did my job. Not my fault that she switched places with that other bitch.”
“Of course.” The words of the unidentified man sounded just a little too smooth and accommodating. “You’ll get what’s due to you.”
A second later, Isabelle’s high-pitched scream tore through the speakers. “Oh God, no!”
A chuckle. Then silence. Footsteps.
“Now you and I are alone.” It was the voice of the stranger.
“Please let me go,” Isabelle pleaded. “I won’t say anything about this. To anybody. I promise. My father will pay you a lot of money if you release me unharmed.”
The man laughed, a cold laugh devoid of any emotion.
“I’m sure he would. But it’s not money I’m after.”
“Please don’t kill me!”
“Oh, I have no intention of killing you. At least not yet. You can be of use to me. You can help me get what I really want.”
There was the sound of feet or hands hitting against furniture.
“Don’t bother. I’m stronger than you. Now let’s go, and don’t give me any trouble, or I’ll change my mind.”
Moments later, the sound of a door being slammed could be heard, then silence.
Blake exchanged a look with Samson. “She’s alive.”
Pain shone from Samson’s eyes. “And as long as he doesn’t have Katie, Isabelle is safe. He’ll use my daughter to make an exchange.”
“That’s my thought, too,” Blake agreed. “Anything from Haven or Wes?” He looked over his shoulder, to where Thomas was standing now, shoving his cell phone back into his pocket.
“Shit!” Thomas cursed.
Instantly alarmed, Blake rose. “What is it?”
“After Haven couldn’t find Katie at home, we had a few men comb the area for her, retrace her last steps…”
The door was ripped open. Haven charged in, a grim expression on his face, clutching something in his hand.
“Where is your sister?” Blake asked.
He stretched out his hand, and Blake focused on the item in Haven’s open palm. “We found her cell in an alley around the corner. No sign of a struggle.”
“Her car?”
Haven shook his head. “Nowhere to be found. She’s gone.”
Samson cursed and slammed his fist against the wall. “Fuck! We need to find her. She might be our only connection to the madman who has my daughter.”
Nobody in the room said what they were all thinking: what if the kidnapper had already snatched Katie?
“She might be out there doing her own investigation. She was adamant about wanting to help,” Haven admitted, though he didn’t sound like his usual confident self.
From the corridor, the sound of footsteps came rapidly closer.
Blake squeezed Samson’s shoulder. “We’ll find her. As Haven said, she might just be out there thinking she can help. Doesn’t have to mean that guy got to her. It was three hours before sunrise when she left me the voice message around half past four.” He pointed to the monitor, indicating where the boys had just discovered Isabelle’s previous location. Then he glanced at the wall clock, making quick calculations in his head. “Sunrise was at 7:20. According to the recording, the kidnapper figured out only shortly before sunrise that his accomplice snatched the wrong girl. He wouldn’t have had a chance to get to Katie, not during daytime.” Then he addressed Thomas, “Put an APB out on her car.”
Wes rushed in. “I have a better idea.”
All heads turned to the witch.
“I can scry for her. It’ll take me an hour or two. I need something personal to get a lock on her. It’ll get us to the general area of where she is. Once we’re closer, I’ll scry again to get a more accurate location. It’s not quite like GPS, but it’s better than nothing. I can find her.”
“Do it!” Samson ordered.
“I’ll get a crew ready,” Blake interrupted. “An
d then we’ll pick her up wherever she is and won’t let her out of our sight anymore. She must have the letters with her. Once we get our hands on them, we’ll have a better idea whether they can offer us any clues that can lead us to the kidnapper.”
“I’m going with Wes,” Haven offered.
Wes shook his head immediately. “You may be needed here. But I might need some fighting power, just in case. You never know what our dear sister has gotten herself into.” He motioned to the monitors. “I’ll take one of the boys with me.”
“Not on your own, you won’t,” Blake objected and jerked his shoulder toward the screen. “Any of them will run roughshod over you. I’m coming with you. You’ll need more than just one hybrid to back you up.” He turned back to the monitors.
“I heard that,” Grayson commented.
“You were supposed to.” Blake refrained from rolling his eyes. “Guys, mission is over. Come back to HQ. Bring the cell and Mendoza’s computer and drop the stuff off with Thomas. He’ll run the recording through voice recognition and see if we can get a match.” He exchanged a look with the head of IT, who nodded.
“On our way,” Ryder responded.
“And I’m coming with you to find Katie,” Grayson added.
Blake lifted an eyebrow and gave a wry laugh. “Of course you are.” He switched off the mic and turned to Samson. “He’s a lot like you, you know.”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”
16
Katie gave Luther a sideways glance as he brought the car to a stop at the end of a dirt road. It was pitch black outside. The moon was obstructed by clouds and the only artificial light around them were the headlights of her car.
Luther had gotten rid of the ripped and bloodstained shirt he’d worn the previous night and helped himself to a fresh one from the closet of the house they’d slept in.
“We’re here,” he announced and switched off the engine.
Katie was already reaching for the door handle, when she felt a hand on her forearm. She spun her head to Luther. Even in the darkness his eyes seemed to sparkle with gold flecks.
“You can still change your mind and wait here for me.”
“Not a chance.”
He grunted as if he’d expected her response. “Suit yourself.” He opened the driver’s side door and got out. Katie followed on the passenger side.
The chill of the December night air was more severe here. They were at a slightly higher elevation than San Francisco, and though it didn’t snow at this altitude, she could feel the difference in temperature. Instinctively she shivered despite her cardigan. She always kept a change of clothes in the trunk of her car, but unfortunately a thick jacket had not been part of her emergency overnight bag.
“Should have taken that jacket from the closet.”
At Luther’s words she glanced at him. “I don’t steal.”
He scoffed, a derisive look in his dark orbs. “No you don’t, do you? You’ve never even taken as much as a piece of candy as a child? Never committed the tiniest of crimes?”
Her pulse began to race as memories tried to push to the surface. She clenched her jaw. “I don’t steal,” she repeated.
Luther nodded as if he’d caught her in a lie. “Of course not. You’re as pure as the driven snow. Is that why you want to become an accessory now? Because you want to know what it feels like to commit a crime?” A low grunt echoed through the night. He stepped away from the car and walked toward the thicket.
Katie marched after him. “I’m not committing a crime.”
He looked over his shoulder. “Oh yeah? What do you call what we’re about to do?”
“Investigating.” She caught up to him and did her best to keep pace with his long strides.
Luther shook his head. “So you don’t steal, but breaking and entering is okay. What other crimes do you manage to justify to yourself? Just so that I’m prepared.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Do you consider killing a vampire a crime?”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Just want to know if your sense of justice extends to vampires. Or whether I’ll need to watch my back to avoid a stake in my heart.”
“I didn’t stake you when you were sleeping.”
“I didn’t sleep,” he claimed, but Katie knew it was a lie. “I was aware of you at all times. If you’d tried anything, I would have had you pinned to the ground in a millisecond.”
“That’s funny,” she responded, “considering you had a nightmare I couldn’t wake you from.”
Luther whirled his head to her, glaring at her. “That’s a lie!”
It wasn’t. In fact, she’d awoken from an uneasy few hours of sleep when she’d heard Luther’s voice. He’d been resting on the couch. When she’d entered the living room, she’d found him tossing. His hands had turned into claws, his fangs fully extended. But his eyes had been closed.
“I shook you by your shoulders, but you didn’t wake.”
“I’m warning you. I don’t have nightmares.”
He looked ahead and increased his tempo, anger rolling off him in waves so violent that she could almost see his aura. It looked like flames were licking around him, trying to consume him.
Equal parts frightened and fascinated, Katie ran her eyes over the powerful vampire, while trying hard not to be left behind. She wasn’t used to this kind of tempo, had never been a runner, and felt woefully out of shape for this kind of nightly exercise. If Luther didn’t slow down, he’d leave her in the dust. He continued to charge ahead as if he didn’t care whether she followed or not.
“Slow down!” she called out to him, but he didn’t seem to hear her.
It irked her that he showed no regard for her limitations. After all, she was human, or witch, not a vampire, who could run without breaking a sweat.
Desperate to make him slow down, she searched for something to make him listen. She grasped at something she’d heard Luther cry out during his nightmare. “Who’s Vivian?”
Luther came to a dead halt. His shoulders pulled back, his hands curled into fists. But he didn’t turn his head, didn’t look over his shoulder. Which was almost worse than if he’d whirled around and glared at her.
Only the breaking of twigs beneath her shoes was audible as she caught up with him. When she reached him, she heard the deliberate breaths that came from Luther. She recognized them. Those were the breaths of a person trying desperately not to succumb to a fit of rage or panic. She knew, because she’d been there before. Been at the point where the sheer mention of a name, of an event, catapulted her back to that moment, making her relive her ordeal again.
And at this very moment, she regretted having asked the question. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, choking back a tear. “That was uncalled for. It’s none of my business. I apologize.”
“No, it’s none of your business. So stay out of my life, or you’ll regret it.”
She already did. But it was too late to take anything back. Too late to turn around and start fresh. They were both in this now, and they had to see it through. Soon, she would have the name of the man who’d kidnapped Isabelle, and with Scanguards’ help, they would catch the guy and rescue Samson’s daughter.
“Now move,” Luther ordered gruffly. “If you can’t keep up with me, you’d better turn back now.”
Katie focused all her energy on her legs. She had to see this through. She owed Isabelle, and more so, she owed Samson. He’d been instrumental in saving her life twenty years earlier, and now was the time to pay back her debt.
Even if that meant duking it out with a vampire who clearly couldn’t stand her.
“I’m coming,” she murmured to herself.
17
Luther bit back a curse. He knew Katie would be trouble. He just hadn’t expected the trouble to start this early. Or his reaction to it to be so uncontrolled.
The nightmares had gotten less frequent than twenty years ago, but they’d never stopped. At leas
t this time he hadn’t dreamt the version where his bloody hands clawed into Vivian’s pregnant belly. The symbolism of that particular dream didn’t escape him. It signified his own guilt, because it had been his unborn child that had killed her. He had as much blood on his hands as if he’d killed Vivian with his own claws.
He’d come to the conclusion that there was only one way for history not to repeat itself: he would never commit to another woman.
“You okay?” Luther grunted, glancing at Katie, who walked next to him.
He’d slowed his tempo, knowing his anger had made him unreasonable. It wasn’t her fault that he’d had a nightmare, and that she’d heard him call Vivian’s name. In fact, he was surprised that she hadn’t bolted, and had instead tried to wake him from it.
Luckily, Katie hadn’t succeeded, or he might have unwittingly unleashed his rage on her. A fellow V-CON had once found himself at the mercy of Luther’s claws, when Luther had awoken during a nightmare. Because of some temporary overcrowding in the prison, several V-CONs had had to double up in cells for a few weeks, until a number of prisoners were moved to facilities in other parts of the country.
Katie didn’t reply. Well, maybe he deserved the silent treatment.
“We’re almost there.” He didn’t expect an answer.
“I didn’t mean to listen to what you said in your sleep.”
He grunted, not knowing how to respond to the apology. Thank you? Yeah, that didn’t sound right. He was glad that in the distance ahead of them, a concrete wall appeared. Luther could already see it with his vampire vision, but he knew Katie’s eyes couldn’t penetrate the darkness like his. He reached his hand out and grabbed her elbow to stop her.
Her breath hitched. “What?” Her green eyes sparkled like precious emeralds in a bed of black velvet. Lush and tempting. More beautiful than any jewel.
“Once we’re inside, you have to follow my commands to the letter. Do you understand?”
Katie nodded.
“There’s an emergency access tunnel leading into the center of the prison. We’ll use it to get in.”
