by Lisa Edmonds
By the time we arrived at Danielle’s apartment at Eleventh and Maple, he had finished his werewolf-sized lunch, minus the couple of fries he’d let me sneak while he pretended not to notice.
The two-story building looked like a converted motel, with a trash-and-slime-filled hole where a pool had once been and clothes draped over the second-floor balcony railing. The windows of the office were boarded up, the door padlocked.
“You got the lineup from Mark?” Sean asked as we headed up the metal stairs to the second floor.
“Yes.” I nudged a bag of trash out of the way, sending it rolling down the steps to the sidewalk below. “Oops.”
Suddenly, something cold hit me in the chest, and I fell backward with a yelp. I heard disembodied laughter as I clawed desperately for the railing and missed.
Sean grabbed my wrist and jerked me upright, saving me from tumbling down the steps. “What the hell happened?” he demanded.
Wincing, I pulled free of his grip and rubbed my wrist as I looked around, but the telltale cold sensation was gone. I was sure of two things: first, it was the same poltergeist I’d sensed the night before on the Stroll, and second, it had just tried to seriously injure or kill me.
When I didn’t immediately respond, Sean came down several steps so he could look me in the eye. “Are you all right?”
I thought about telling him about the ghostly attack, then decided against it. We weren’t a couple anymore, but as an alpha, Sean’s instincts would compel him to try to protect me anyway. Until I knew why this spirit was pursuing me, I didn’t want to involve anyone else. There was nothing he could do about it in any case, and poltergeists had notoriously short attention spans. It would probably move on to another target soon enough.
“I’m okay. I tripped. Thanks for the save.” I held onto the railing in case the poltergeist came back for another try as we continued our climb up the steps.
“Did I hurt your wrist?” he asked.
“No,” I fibbed. It was throbbing and I could see finger marks where he’d grabbed me, but I preferred that mild discomfort over an ass-over-teakettle fall down metal stairs to a concrete sidewalk.
From the top of the stairs, we navigated a maze of trash, chairs, and broken glass to get to apartment 208 at the far end. The area in front of Danielle’s apartment was swept clean and there were a couple of cheerful potted plants in her window. I knocked on the door.
We waited, but there was no answer. “She’s probably still asleep.” I knocked again, louder.
“Y’all looking for Danielle?”
We turned. The door to apartment 207 was open and a woman in a Seahawks T-shirt and cutoffs leaned against the doorway.
“We are,” I said. “I know she’s probably still asleep, but I really need to talk to her.”
“She’s not there. She didn’t come home last night.”
“Are you sure?” Sean asked.
“I’m sure. I usually hear her come in.” She pointed to Danielle’s front window. “And she always puts her plants outside when she gets home.”
“Is it unusual for her not to be home by now?” I asked.
“Yep,” the neighbor said. “Especially during the week. Weekends, she might work later in the morning and then get some breakfast with friends, but she’d be home by now even then. I’ve been calling her phone, but it’s off. I’m actually kind of worried.”
My stomach churned. “Can I get her number from you?”
“Sure. Hang on.” The neighbor disappeared into her apartment and came back out with her cell phone. She read me the number and I tried calling it. The call went straight to voice mail. I left Danielle a message to call me.
I got the neighbor’s name—Ashley—and gave her one of my cards. “Please ask her to give me a call on my cell. Or if you hear anything, or see anyone snooping around her place, please call me.”
“Will do.” Ashley stuck my card in her pocket. “Y’all take care.” She went back into her apartment and closed the door.
Sean and I looked at each other. “This is not good,” I said. “Rachel was there last night when Danielle described Missy getting into the BMW. What if Rachel told whoever she’s working with that Danielle might be able to I.D. the driver and they took her?”
“There could be a lot of reasons why she’s not home, but either way, Rachel’s our next stop.”
“Assuming Mark’s got a lead on her.” I took out another card, wrote a quick note on the back asking Danielle to call me ASAP, and slid it under the door of apartment 208. We headed back to Sean’s SUV.
When we were inside the vehicle, I called Mark to report Danielle’s apparent disappearance.
Mark cursed fluently and extensively. “Why didn’t you ask her to I.D. West’s photo last night?”
I sighed. “Two reasons. I didn’t have a lineup to show her, and I didn’t want to taint her memory by showing her just a picture of West. Second, I didn’t want to tip my hand that we had a potential lead—and that’s just as well, since Rachel was standing there listening to us.”
Mark grunted. “Those are good reasons. I apologize. I should know better than to second-guess you.”
“Do we have anything on Rachel yet?”
I heard Mark shuffling papers on his desk. “I finally got a call back from my friend in Vice. I have a last name—Barrow—and the address she used the last time she was arrested.” Mark gave me the address.
“Excellent. We’ll head over there now.”
“Get a phone number if you can; we can use it to trace her movements,” Mark said. “Do we have anything from the hacker yet on the BMW?”
I glanced at Sean, who shook his head. “Not yet,” I told Mark. “We’ll see if we can find Rachel in the meantime. I’ll keep you posted.” We said our goodbyes and disconnected.
Sean had already put Rachel Barrow’s address into his GPS. He pulled away from the curb as I stuck my phone in the cup holder and buckled in. “It’s not far,” he said. “Maybe six minutes. How do you want to play it?”
“We’ll go easy. I don’t want to tip her off that we’re onto her. We don’t need anyone else doing a disappearing act, especially if she’s our only known link to the kidnappers. We’re following up on the conversation from last night, asking if anyone knows anything about the two new names I got from Lake. Depending on how it goes, I might mention Danielle to see if Rachel reacts.”
“Who’s Lake?”
Inwardly, I cursed myself. “Special Agent Trent Lake, of SPEMA,” I said reluctantly.
“What does a SPEMA agent have to do with all of this?”
“He’s working on the case too.”
A muscle moved in Sean’s jaw. “And you what, compared notes?”
“Kind of.” I didn’t like the dark look in Sean’s eyes.
“Were you planning on telling me about his involvement?”
“No,” I admitted. “Not his name, anyway. He’s breaking ranks with his partner and bureau chief on this and I don’t want that getting out.” I explained how Lake wasn’t sold on the vampire angle and was looking into the possibility that a harnad was involved.
“When did you talk to him about this?”
“Last night, after I talked to Danielle and the others on South Elm. We, uh, ran into each other and decided to get a cup of coffee.”
“Before or after the convenience store robbery?”
“Before.” I rested my elbow on the edge of the window and propped my chin on my hand as we passed through a residential neighborhood.
“How do you and Lake know each other?”
Something told me Sean would not react well to the news Lake had been following me around for a month and I could not tell him about my role in the death of Scott Grierson. “It’s a long story.”
He stopped in front of a small house with a chain-link fence and an older-model green car parked out front. “Give me the short version.”
“What does it matter?”
Sean’s shoulders were t
ense as he unfastened his seatbelt. “Because I want to know who this guy is and why you’re sharing sensitive case information with him.”
“I didn’t say I shared sensitive case information with him,” I said icily as I hopped out of the SUV and shut my door. We went through a hinged gate and approached the house via an overgrown sidewalk. “I told him he should look into the harnad angle, based on what Carrie told Zara. I didn’t tell him about West or the BMW. And I guess this is the part where I remind you I don’t answer to you—I answer to Mark. If he has no issue with me talking to Lake, neither should you.”
I rang the doorbell. When there was no answer, I tried again. Finally, footsteps approached the door and it opened to reveal a sleepy-looking Rachel wearing a thin T-shirt and tiny shorts.
She blinked at us a few times. When she recognized me, her eyes widened. “Alice? What are you doing here?”
“Sorry to bother you so early,” I said. “I’m following up with everyone this afternoon, making sure you got home safely and to ask if you remembered anything after we spoke last night.”
Rachel’s gaze shifted to Sean, and she smiled. Even without makeup and her hair tousled from rolling out of bed, she still looked good—and then there was the fact she was quite obviously not wearing a bra. Judging by Sean’s grin, none of that had escaped his notice.
“And who are you?” Rachel asked, leaning against the door frame.
“I’m Mac.” Sean held out his hand and they shook.
I cleared my throat. “So, did you remember anything?”
Rachel’s eyes were on Sean. “Nope, sorry.” She looked him up and down and wet her lips. Sean’s grin widened.
I stifled a growl. “We’ve got two more missing women.”
That got her attention. “Who?”
“Do you know anything about Tiana James or Jenny Alvarez?”
Relief flashed in her eyes before she managed to look regretful. “I don’t know them,” she said, then turned back to Sean. “I’d really like to get to know you, though.”
Sean produced his phone. “How about you give me your number and we’ll get better acquainted?”
Rachel gave him her number. I reminded myself we needed her number for tracking purposes. And why should I care whose numbers he had?
“Why don’t you give me your number too?” she asked him. “Just in case you lose mine.”
Sean gave her a number different from the one I had. Burner phone, probably.
My phone beeped with an incoming message. I checked it and looked at Sean. “Well, we should get going. We need to check on Danielle.”
Rachel’s smile faltered. If I hadn’t been certain before that she’d had something to do with Danielle’s disappearance, I was now. My fingertips tingled.
Rachel shivered and rubbed her arms. “Did you guys feel that wind?”
“Cold front coming through,” Sean said with a smile. “You’d better get back inside, where it’s warm.”
Rachel winked. “Call me, Mac.”
“Count on it.”
“Bye.” Rachel stepped back into the house and closed the door.
We headed back to the SUV. “She’s definitely in on it.” Sean’s voice was low as we went out the gate. “I recognized her scent from Felicia’s apartment.”
“Mm-hmmm.”
“Did you see her reaction when you said there were two new victims?” he continued as he walked around to the driver’s side. “She probably thought you were going to say Danielle and Felicia.”
I made a noncommittal sound and climbed into the SUV, dropping my bag on the floor and fastening my seatbelt.
Sean turned the key in the ignition. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’ve got a headache.” I rubbed my forehead.
“Too much coffee; not enough food. Should we grab something to eat on the way back? I could go for a couple of doughnuts or a bagel.”
I shook my head and held up my phone, where a text message from Mark was displayed. “We need to get back to hear what Mark’s got on John West and give him Rachel’s phone number so we can keep track of her.”
“I already sent the number to Cyro. He’s on it.”
“Great. Let’s get to MDI.” I found aspirin in my bag and took a couple with a swig of water.
He pulled away from the curb and accelerated. “You know I wasn’t really flirting with her. It was the easiest way to get her number without her suspecting anything.”
“Sean, it’s fine. Do whatever you need to do to get Felicia back.”
He drove for a few minutes. Just as I was starting to relax, he spoke. “So, you were telling me about this Agent Lake.”
“I wasn’t, actually, but since you won’t let it go, the only salient facts are that he’s not convinced it’s vampires taking women from the Stroll, and that you shouldn’t mention him to anyone.”
“Those are the only salient facts?” he asked dryly.
“Yep.”
“Your scent changes when you talk about him.” His voice had a growly edge.
“No, it doesn’t.” I turned up the volume on the radio and stared out the window. The rest of the drive back to MDI was silent.
9
On paper, John West was a respectable businessman who, despite his age, still ran his investment company and showed no signs of wanting to retire. Thanks to his real estate holdings and investment portfolio, his net worth was estimated to be well over twenty million dollars. Cait reported some irregularities that suggested West was keeping money overseas, probably in the Caymans, but how much she couldn’t be sure. Nothing too unusual about a wealthy and financially savvy person hiding wealth in a well-known tax haven, and we were after West for more than tax evasion.
While we were at MDI going over West’s background with Mark and Cait, Sean got a response from Cyro consisting of a clear image of the BMW’s license plate and a short note stating that no camera angle he’d found so far showed the driver or passengers. The BMW was registered to a shell company called Hampstead LLC, which he had linked back to West.
I’d only needed to see the license plate to know it was West’s car. Sean and I had followed him before and I’d seen it parked across the street from Natalie Newton’s house after Amelia Wharton’s death.
The next step was obviously surveillance, but there we disagreed on how to proceed. Sean suggested a combination of cameras, vehicle trackers, and round-the-clock shadowing, all of which he was willing to provide. With so many lives potentially at stake, however, Mark was understandably worried that any kind of overt surveillance might be noticed and tip West off. We argued about it for a while and got nowhere. Tempers were getting short and Cait departed, leaving us to duke it out.
I’d been doing some serious thinking while Mark and Sean debated. It was several minutes before Mark noticed I’d gone silent. “Alice? What’s on your mind?”
I met his eyes. “We need the sub rosa ward again.”
He murmured the incantation and the ward flared around us.
Sean jumped at the surge of energy. “What was that?”
“Ward of silence, to prevent any kind of eavesdropping.” Mark turned to me. “Let’s hear it.”
“First, I need your word that what I’m about to say won’t leave this room.”
“You have it,” Mark said.
I looked at Sean. “You have my word,” he told me.
I told them about Malcolm. Sean already knew about my ghost, but not that he was unregistered or that I was hiding him from not only SPEMA but also Darius Bell’s cabal. Both men looked decidedly grim at the news that I was breaking federal law by not registering Malcolm, and their expressions darkened further when I said John West had sensed magic at the construction site that might be Malcolm’s own trace.
“Malcolm has multiple layers of strong masking and obfuscation spells,” I added. “I believe he’s virtually undetectable. Even if someone like a high-level mage did sense him, he feels like the ghost of a low-level water m
age.”
“Are you suggesting we use Malcolm to surveil West?” Mark asked.
“I’m suggesting we ask him to. It’s his choice, but if he’ll do it, I think it’s our best option. If Malcolm keeps enough distance, West won’t notice him, and even if he does, he’ll assume he’s just a passing spirit.”
“If West senses him, he might discorporate Malcolm, and that could kill you,” Mark pointed out.
“I don’t think he’d have any reason to discorporate Malcolm,” I said while Sean looked on silently. “Mages sense ghosts all the time. I think the risk is low and it’s really on Malcolm’s part. If there’s a risk of anything, it’s that Malcolm’s masking spells could be disrupted and if that happened near West, he might recognize Malcolm’s magic trace from the construction site.”
“And use that trace to find you,” Sean said. “There has to be another option. This is too risky.”
I cleared my throat. “The risk is mine and Malcolm’s to take, if he’s willing. I’ll head home after this and ask him. If he says yes, I’ll get him to West. After that, I’ll go back to the Stroll and see if Danielle is there or if anyone saw her last night after I left. If I can figure out when she was last seen, we might get a lead on who took her.”
“I’ll come with you,” Sean said.
I shook my head. “They won’t talk to me if you’re there.”
“I’m not going to sit around doing nothing.” Sean looked stubborn.
“Maybe you should call Rachel Barrow,” I said.
Sean’s eyes narrowed.
“She’s part of this,” I reminded him. “She broke into Felicia’s apartment, stole her laptop, and got in John West’s car. She has no magic, so she’s not part of his harnad, but for some reason she’s helping him. She may know where the missing women are or what happened to them. I can’t see a downside to you getting to know her better. Maybe she’ll let something slip or you’ll see something that might help us. Maybe try to get a look at her phone, see who she’s been calling.”
Sean was still frowning. “I’m sure they’re not dumb enough to contact her on her personal cell phone.”
