Hidden Heir

by Amy Patrick

  If Laney came here, Culley would insist on accompanying her. I was satisfied to leave the past in the past—as long as it stayed outside Altum’s borders.

  “I’ll drive,” Nox said. “But you should grab that shower first. There’s only so far your natural Elven ‘beauty’ is going to take you, brother.”

  I reluctantly agreed and showered in record time before we both wolfed down some breakfast and drove into town to Laney and Culley’s house. Nox called on the way to make sure our visit was expected.

  Laney greeted us at the door. A small, rather shy girl, she was dressed but makeup-free, her blonde hair pulled back into a loose ponytail and her cheeks a natural peachy color. Her deep brown eyes brimmed with genuine concern.

  She stepped back from the doorway. “Hi. Please come in and sit down. Does anyone want coffee? Or tea?”

  “No thank you,” I said, eager to get down to business.

  “Coffee would be great. Thanks,” Nox said.

  Laney poured him a cup of coffee and led us into the living room where we took seats on the couch opposite the chair where she sat.

  “I’m sorry Culley isn’t here to help. He’s working in New York right now. He hates to be gone, but he makes good money modeling.”

  She settled farther into the chair, taking a sip from her own coffee cup.

  “After his father’s death, you know, his mother inherited everything, all his father’s homes and money, and she cut Culley off without a cent when he married me. I’ve told him I don’t care. I have everything I need. But he’s got these big ideas about ‘giving me the world’ and all that nonsense. Anyway, I told him what’s going on with Ryann. He offered to fly home immediately and use his Sway to question people.”

  “No,” I nearly barked. Then shifting to a more pleasant tone, I said, “That’s not necessary. I wouldn’t want to take him away from his work. And we have plenty of people with Sway asking around already. Just tell me what you know.”

  “You want to hear about my encounter with Ryann yesterday, I guess?” she said.

  “Yes please. Anything you can tell us might be helpful.”

  “Okay, well first, let me say I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch with you sooner. I didn’t even realize she was missing until late last night when I saw it on Facebook. Emmy posted it.”

  “No problem. Where did you see her? And when?” Nox asked.

  “I was shopping on the Square in Oxford—at that cute little clothing store next to Neilson’s? Ryann was in the men’s section, and I spotted her and ran over to say hi. She was really sweet as always, and she introduced me to Linnea. She told me who Linnea really was, because, you know, she knows I know about y’all. It was about two o’clock.”

  “How did she seem?”

  “Good. Ryann was really happy, like she was in the holiday spirit and everything. She did mention she’d been super-busy with school and work and exams. She said it was her first chance to shop for Christmas, and she was trying to get it all done in one big spree because you didn’t like for her to be out and about too often.”

  A burr of guilt attached itself to me. It was hard to keep on with the interrogation. But I had to. “How long did you talk? Did she say where she was going after that?”

  “No. I asked if they thought they might head up to the outlet mall in Southaven or to the Memphis malls. She said no, that they were planning to keep it local. She said her feet couldn’t take too much walking in one day and that Oxford had everything she needed anyway.”

  “And what was your impression of Linnea? Did you notice anything unusual?”

  “No. Not really. She was quiet. Seemed nice. She mentioned it was her first time Christmas shopping, and I made a joke about Black Friday and told her if she wanted to get an early start with me next year, she was invited. She just seemed like she was having fun.”

  The hope that had carried me here began to crumble. Laney didn’t seem to have any new information. We already knew Ryann and Linnea were in Oxford at around that time shopping. Had she changed her mind and veered off the planned course, deciding to go to the outlets or malls after all? When had their happy day of shopping taken a turn for the worse? And why?

  I stood. So did Nox.

  “Thank you so much for your time, Laney,” I said. “If you think of anything that might be helpful, no matter how small, please let me know.”

  She walked us to the screen door, and I was already out on the porch when she said, “I’m not sure if it’s even worth mentioning, but I did notice something a little… odd about Linnea.”

  “What was it?”

  “Well, you know I had been blind for several years when Culley met me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Without my sense of sight, I found my other senses sharpened, especially my hearing,” she said. “I got really good at discerning people’s voices, and even their intent just from their speech. I always knew what Culley was thinking, even though I couldn’t see his face.”

  She smiled, clearly remembering one of their early interactions.

  “When I met Linnea, she said she was from Oregon, but I could have sworn I detected hints of a foreign accent.”

  “She was born and raised in the Oregon clan,” Nox told her. “I spoke to her family and her clan leader. They said she’d never even left the state until now.”

  “Did she sound Italian to you?” I asked.

  I hadn’t detected any sort of accent from her, but then I had spoken to her very little. If Laney said Linnea had an Italian accent, I was dropping everything and flying back to Rome today.

  Without hesitation, she said, “No. Definitely not Italian. It was… I’m not sure. Maybe it’s just spending so much time around Culley with his mix of Australian and British. Maybe I’m looking for foreign accents. I don’t know.”

  “Perhaps she sounded a bit foreign to you because she grew up in the Light Court, apart from humans, and wasn’t a native English speaker,” I suggested. “You haven’t spent much time around Light Elves.”

  In fact, Laney hadn’t spent any time in Altum because of my lingering uneasiness with Culley. I was the only Light Elf she really knew.

  She nodded as if considering it. “You’re probably right. And maybe now that I have my sight back, my ears aren’t as sharp as they used to be.”

  As Nox and I descended the porch steps she called after us, “Good luck. Just let us know if you’d like Culley to help.”

  Forcing a smile, I raised my hand in a wave. “Thanks.”

  I slid into the passenger seat of Nox’s car and sank into the leather, feeling deflated. I’d been so hopeful when I’d heard someone might have information about Ryann. But this was just another dead end.

  “You okay?” Nox asked. He hadn’t started the car yet, just sat in the driver’s seat, studying me.

  I nodded, still staring straight ahead out the windshield.

  His hand gripped my shoulder. “We’re going to find her, Lad.”

  I nodded again. “I know. I’m just…”

  I couldn’t continue the sentence. I didn’t have to. Nox had known me most of my life. He knew when I was at the end of my rope. There had been no sightings of Ryann since that first afternoon, no clues, no ransom demand. I wanted to stay confident and hopeful, but it was… it was hard.

  “Okay, well unless you want to go somewhere else, let’s head home. Maybe the tracker has arrived.”

  I nodded silently, and he drove. Just as we turned onto the county road that led to Altum, my phone rang. It was Ryann’s father. I was so eager to answer the call, I bobbled the phone in my hands, dropped it, and picked it up again.

  “Michael—have you heard anything?”

  “I talked to my friend, the sheriff. He got the cell phone company involved,” he said. “And they were able to track the phone. It’s still in this region.”

  “What does that mean? Where is it?” I demanded, frantic with excitement over the news.

  “Well, they can only tra
ck a phone to a general location by pinpointing which tower is picking up its signal. But they can’t tell exactly where the phone is—just where the closest tower is.”

  “And? Where is that?”

  A general location was better than nothing. It would certainly help to narrow the search area. In my peripheral vision I could see Nox craning his neck toward me, leaning in trying to hear Ryann’s father as well.

  “It’s the one closest to downtown,” Michael said. “But I know you’ve already searched that area.”

  “We’ll go back. We’re almost to Altum. We’ll pick up some additional searchers and then head to Oxford. We’ll go over every square inch of the place.”

  Michael assured me he would do the same and that he and Maria would ask all their friends to join in the search.

  My soul hummed with new optimism as we entered Altum. I summoned Rikard and started giving orders, instructing him to put together a search party and have them ready to leave in a half hour.

  “We’re going to need some additional cars,” I said to Nox. “And make sure everyone’s dressed appropriately—human clothes only. There might be news crews around now that the search has gone public.”

  He nodded and left the room to take care of the arrangements.

  Your Highness, Rikard said, following me as I speed-walked toward my own quarters to change. Pardon, but the Europeans have returned with Asher. And the tracker.

  I stopped in my tracks and turned around. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?

  Bolting back down the corridor toward the receiving rooms, I left Rikard blinking and no doubt wishing he could say, “Because you never gave me a chance.”

  I felt energized, buoyant. It no longer mattered that the cell service provider couldn’t pinpoint an exact location for Ryann’s phone. We had a tracker. He’d be able to lead us directly to my missing bond-mate, and the fact she was still in the region meant I’d see her soon—very soon.

  The tracker bowed when we met. His long, dark hair swept the floor then settled against his shoulders as he righted himself again. Like all Elven males, he was tall with wide shoulders and long limbs. With his swarthy skin and dark eyes, he bore some resemblance to the humans from his home country of Italy.

  Your Highness, I am Stefano. I’m very sorry for the hardship your family is experiencing. I hope to be helpful to you. I have already located the trail of your bond-mate and the healer’s apprentice.

  “Already?” I was shocked. “That was fast.”

  Alessia spoke up. “We brought some of Ryann’s and Linnea’s things with us for Stefano to examine. And we had to drive through Oxford on the way back from Memphis anyway, so we decided to stop on the Square to see if he could pick anything up. He did immediately. They went into several of the shops and ate at a café called Uptown Coffee. Then they left the Square.”

  “Where did they go? Do you know?” My heart galloped, ready to make a move, ready to go get my bond-mate wherever she was.

  The tracker’s expression turned grim.

  I followed the trail from there through the city streets to the small airport.

  His shoulders dropped, and he looked almost ashamed. That is where I lost the trail. It… evaporated.

  7

  Chapter Seven

  LAD

  “The University-Oxford Airport?” I asked.

  Alessia nodded. “Stefano’s tracking glamour is confounded by only two things. Large bodies of water… and air travel. They must have gotten on a plane.”

  I covered my eyes with one hand as my heart sank to the stone floor beneath my feet. This was unexpected. And it was bad.

  If the girls had been forced onto a plane—or taken aboard unconscious—they had left this area long ago. They could literally be anywhere by now. They could be in Europe, in the clutches of the Ancient Court. It would explain why Ryann hadn’t responded to my mental messages.

  A tremor began in the pit of my stomach. I’d been so sure we were hours if not minutes from finding her.

  I summoned Nox and let the tracker fill him in.

  Nox gripped his keys. “Want to go check it out?”

  “Yes. And tell the search crew to stand down. We’ll take a small group, sway the airport personnel, find out if anyone saw anything and where all the planes that have departed from there in the past two days were going.”

  “Ava could go with you,” Asher said. “She could make sure they’re remembering every detail. And then make them forget afterward that they talked to you.”

  “Yes, thank you. That would be helpful.”

  He nodded and headed for their quarters to tell her.

  “What should we do?” Alessia asked.

  “Be ready to fly again with your tracker, if you’re willing. Maybe we’ll find out where their plane went, and we can get you on the ground there so Stefano can work.”

  “I’ll drive him to the airport in Atlanta,” she said. “It’s a hub, and we’ll be able to jump on a flight to anywhere—even internationally—as soon as we get a location.”

  “Good idea. Thank you.” I started to turn and go, but Wes got my attention.

  “Lad—pardon me but… well, if you like, I could contact my family. They might be able to do a location spell or something.”

  Prior to this moment I would never have thought I’d welcome the intervention of witches, but all that mattered now was finding Ryann.

  “Thank you, Wes. If they’re willing, I’d appreciate the help.”

  As soon as Ava joined us, Nox and I headed for the surface again and back to Oxford. Its airport was a couple miles from the town center and consisted of a single runway with a small but attractive brick terminal building. I’d been there many times myself, as Vancia and Nox owned a couple of private jets, and we’d used them for various kingdom business trips.

  This time we were here to ask questions. Ava assisted us in the memory-spurring department as we questioned each airport employee about the flight activity and passengers they’d observed over the past couple of days.

  We learned from the airport manager that girls matching the description of Ryann and Linnea had indeed boarded a Gulfstream G650 the day they’d gone missing. When asked where the plane had been going, the man came up empty.

  “That’s the weird thing,” he said. “I know the pilot. Randy always files a flight plan. He’s a real by-the-book kind of guy. He didn’t give us any warning—no flight plan, nothing. He just starts taxiing and takes off, and when we tried to talk to him over the comms to ask what the hell he was doing, he didn’t answer. I think he turned them off.”

  “Mind if I check the records?” Nox asked, adding Sway to his “request.”

  “Be my guest,” the guy said.

  Nox looked through all the papers on file in the office then up at me, shaking his head and rolling his lips inward. “No destinations for that plane in the past four days.”

  Ava stepped up to the counter. “Aren’t you supposed to notify someone, like the FAA or something, if a plane just takes off like that without permission and shuts off its comms?”

  The manager stared at her, his face crinkling in confusion. “Oh… yeah… sure. Of course. But I ah…”

  He looked at the ceiling as if the explanation for his oversight might appear there in writing. When his eyes came back to us, he shook his head. “I’m sorry folks. I really don’t know how to explain it.”

  I knew how to explain it. Someone had swayed the man not to interfere. Which meant there was a Dark Elf involved. The tremor in my stomach became an earthquake.

  I clenched my fist and my jaw, working hard not to punch the wall beside me. “What about the person—or people—with them? Can you describe them?”

  He shook his head, his face a portrait of confusion. “There was no one with them. Just the two girls. And the pilot.”

  What? I looked at Nox.

  “What did the pilot look like?” he asked. Clearly he was thinking the same thing I was—perhaps this “Randy
” was Elven?

  “Well, he looked like… Randy. I’ve known him most of my life. We’ve been friends since high school. He’s about my height, five-ten.” He cleared his throat. “Ah… five-nine. About two hundred pounds. Fifty years old.”

  So not Elven then.

  “Is it possible Randy forced the girls aboard?” I asked. “Did you see anything to indicate that?”

  “Oh God no. He’d never do something like that. And he was already on the plane when they showed up. He did come out to help one of them up the steps. I don’t know—maybe she was tired or drunk or something. One of our maintenance crew said she was staggering a bit. A few minutes after they got on board, it took off.”

  I blew out a breath, a band of tension wrapping itself around my skull. “Thank you for your help.”

  “So…” Nox said as soon as the terminal door closed behind us. “No one forced the girls onto the plane. Sounds like maybe one of them was drugged or something, but the other…”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The other boarded of her own free will.”

  I was very afraid I knew which girl had been unable to board without assistance, staggering as she was “helped” aboard. Ryann.

  And if she and Linnea had arrived at the airport alone, if it was only the two of them, I was pretty sure I knew what that meant, too.

  “Linnea was involved,” Nox said, taking the words out of my mouth.

  “I don’t get it,” Ava said. “I thought you showed her picture to the leader in Oregon. I thought she’d never left home before coming to Altum. Could Elias be involved? Maybe he wanted to kidnap Ryann for some reason? I thought the Light Court was above stuff like that. I thought you two were friends.”

  “We are,” I told her. “I don’t think Elias had anything to do with it.”

  “What are you thinking?” Nox asked.

  Just then a woman ran out of the terminal, chasing us down in the parking lot. “Hold on, y’all. Wait.”

  We stopped and waited.

  “Does anybody recognize this phone?” She held out a cellphone with a black and white polka dot case.