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But when he sat straight up, my heart sped exponentially.
Ethan? I silently asked, but he didn't answer.
"Diego, I'm here with my team. I'm going to put you on speakerphone." Ethan put the phone on the table and pressed a button. "Go ahead," he said.
"Darius and Lakshmi have been taken." Diego's accent was melodically accented, but his voice was firm.
A shock wave of alarmed magic crossed the room.
"Taken?" Luc asked. "What do you mean, taken?"
"We were at the Dandridge waiting for our ride to the airport. Darius stepped outside to smoke a cigarette, and Lakshmi joined him."
Darius liked to smoke cloves, and I had a sudden vivid memory of their peppery smell.
"I saw through the window," Diego continued, "a vehicle pulled to the curb. The driver got out, began to chat with Lakshmi and Darius. I thought perhaps he was a vampire, although not one I knew."
"Brown hair?" Ethan asked. "Slender build?"
"Si. You know this man?"
"I may," Ethan said. "What happened next?"
"Our limo pulls up and we walk outside, but the car is gone, and so are Darius and Lakshmi."
"What kind of car?" Ethan asked.
"I do not know. It was large. Black with dark windows."
Ethan's eyes narrowed, and it didn't take much to guess the direction - or violence - of his thoughts.
"Wait," Luc said, leaning toward the phone. "So someone forced Darius and Lakshmi into the car? How?"
Probably the same way Michael Donovan had done it before, I thought.
"He's got a weapon that shoots bullets made of aspen," I said. "A direct shot and they'd both be dead."
"There were no human witnesses?" Jonah asked.
"The bellmen were inside," Diego said, guilt in his voice. "They were helping us gather our luggage."
"How long ago did this occur?" Ethan asked.
"Seven or eight minutes?"
"We will find them," Ethan promised. "Stay at the hotel, inside, around humans, and do not leave until you hear from me."
He didn't wait for an argument, but hung up the phone, then glanced at us. He looked suddenly tired.
"He'll kill both of them," I quietly said. "If we don't get there and stop him, he'll kill both of them."
"There seems little doubt of that," Ethan said. "I have no love for the GP. We are enemies, but that hardly matters now. We cannot blithely turn them over to a murderer." He glanced up at Luc. "And more important, if we do not find them, there is little doubt the GP will blame their deaths on us."
Luc nodded.
"We have to find them," Jonah agreed. His interest was differently motivated from Ethan's. Lakshmi was a friend, an insider who'd helped save the House . . . and to whom I already owed a favor.
"Why Darius and Lakshmi?" Jeff asked. "What does he get out of it?"
"What did he get out of any of them?" my grandfather asked. "He's looking for emotional closure, or absolution, or something he likely won't find with violence. But that doesn't mean he'll stop looking."
I nodded.
"At this point, the reason hardly matters." Ethan stood up. "The rescue mission begins now. Where will Michael go?"
"The warehouse was his chosen location," Luc said. "But now that we know about his connection - and he knows that we know - he won't go there."
"True," I agreed. "But he might look for another place that's meaningful to him. I'll be right back."
I ran upstairs to Ethan's office and grabbed the papers my father had brought over. When I was downstairs again, I spread them out across the conference room table.
Fortunately, my father was very thorough.
"Someone fill us in," Catcher said.
"The materials Joshua provided," Ethan said, scanning the materials. "He's given us information about all the properties held by Carlos Anthony Martinez."
I picked up the contract and skimmed it. "There are three. The warehouse, then the Comstock building, which is a few blocks north of Streeterville."
"That's not far from Navarre House," Jonah added.
"Yep. And the third" - I ran a finger down the paper, which had minuscule type - "is some kind of strip mall in Roseland."
"Opposite directions," Ethan said. "Would he go north or south of the Dandridge?"
"Roseland is a longer drive," my grandfather said, "and for him to delay the thing he's looking forward to doing - the killing . . . I'm not sure he'd opt to make the trip that long."
"Agreed," Ethan said, decision made; he flipped through the documents, but didn't find what he was looking for. "There's no blueprint for the Comstock building."
"Jeff," I said, looking at the phone, "can you get us details on the Comstock?"
"Pulling it up now," Jeff said. "It's a twenty-story building. The floors are divided between commercial units on the bottom and residential on the top."
"How will we find them in a twenty-story building?" I asked.
"Thermal scanners," Jeff said. "We can use satellites to scan at a temp range for vamps, which will give us an idea where he is. Easy-peasy."
Ethan looked skeptically at the phone. "That doesn't sound especially 'easy-peasy.' Are you just saying that to make us feel better, or do you actually believe it?"
"I didn't say it could be legally done," Jeff said. "I just said it would be easy."
Somehow, that actually made me feel better.
"The problem is," Jonah said, "the scanners will also flag any other vamp in the building."
"Yeah, but what are the odds there's a cabal of vampires in the Comstock building?" Jeff said. "If we find a group of three vampires together, it's probably them."
"So we scan the building," I said. "We go in, take out Michael, take Darius and Lakshmi home."
"I want to see the inside of the building," Ethan said. "Can we do that?"
"I've logged into the property manager's site," Jeff said. "Pulling up schematics . . . now. I'm sending them to you."
Luc pressed some keys, and an elevation of a building appeared on-screen.
"Should we ask how you got into the client section of the Web site?" I wondered.
"Better if you don't. Suffice it to say '123kitty' does not a strong password make."
"Duly noted."
