Page 53 of John’s Yearning

The two women exchanged greetings.

“You can take my picture. The software works best the less years you have to shave off somebody. Eddie showed me how it works,” Isabelle said.

“You would do that?” Savannah asked.

Isabelle smiled. “I was kidnapped once myself, and I know how frightening it is. Anything I can do to bring your little girl home, I’m happy to do.”

Savannah reached for Isabelle’s hand and clasped it. “Thank you, thank you so much.”

“Well,” Thomas said and turned back to the computer. “Let’s get to work.”

23

It took the team at Scanguards a mere thirty minutes to create several pictures from Isabelle’s original photo, upload them to the photographer’s site and add a client file with a fake address.

“Now we wait,” Thomas said.

“How long?” John asked.

“No idea. It’s the middle of the night. Not sure if the hacker is up right now monitoring his spiders. If he is, it may be just a few minutes. If not, it could be hours.”

“Okay. I guess you don’t need us right now,” John said and upon Thomas’s confirmation looked at Savannah. “There’s something I need from your flat. And you need to pack a bag.”

“A bag? Why?”

“Because you can’t stay at your place anymore. Knowing what we know now, I don’t think it’s safe. They’ll try again.”

“Okay.”

To Thomas, he said, “I’ll be back soon. If you get a location on the hacker before that, call me.”

He led Savannah out of the computer lab and back to his car.

After leaving the garage, Savannah said, “Isabelle seems to be a very well-adjusted young woman, despite what’s happened to her.”

John gave her a sideways glance, guessing what she was thinking. “With the right help and support a kidnapping doesn’t have to leave permanent scars. Isabelle went through a traumatic experience, but she’s come out of it a strong young woman.”

It had helped that all of Scanguards had been mobilized to find her. During her capture, she had held onto the belief that her father would move heaven and earth to save her. And he had. Buffy didn’t have a father to protect her. Instead, John would now move heaven and earth to save her.

“It’s given me hope,” Savannah admitted. “And your colleagues… they are all amazing. Smart, and skilled. Without them—”

“Don’t sell yourself short. Your idea to upload new pictures was brilliant. I’m confident that it will lead us to the hacker. And once we have him, we’re almost there.”

“I hope you’re right.” She sighed. “You said you wanted to get something from my flat. What is it?”

“The ransom note.”

“Why? There’s nothing on it. And I believe the kidnapper when he says there are no fingerprints.”

“I agree. He wouldn’t be so stupid. He would have worn gloves, but there’s a strange smell to the paper. It’s very distinct.”

“I didn’t smell anything.”

And she wouldn’t have, because it was too faint for a human’s nose. But his vampire sense of smell had picked it up. “I’m going to have our forensics guys check it out. It may help us in narrowing down where our kidnapper is holing up.” Because if the paper had been kept in the same location as the kids, its smell might give them clues as to the type of building the children were in. “I meant to bring the ransom note earlier, but—” Crap! He didn’t want to remind her of what they’d done in her flat earlier. “—when I saw Buffy’s photo, I forgot all about it.”

Had she noticed his pivot? He cast her a quick sideways glance, but couldn’t detect what she was thinking about. Maybe he was the only one who couldn’t get their passionate encounter out of his mind.

Once they were inside her apartment, John said, “Pack only what you need for a couple of days. I’ll get the ransom note.”