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EIGHT
Decima
The rental carrumbled as we drove deeper into the town a couple of hours from our usual home base near DC. Only a few lights still beamed into the night from windows on the buildings we passed.
Blaze pointed to a street up ahead. “Turn left there. Then three streets down, take another left on Elm.”
Julius followed his directions without complaint, like he had since Blaze had first started us on this quest. Garrison stretched out his legs where he was sitting next to me in the back seat.
“Are you planning on finally telling us exactly where we’re going?” he asked in his usual snarky tone.
“We’re almost there,” Blaze said.
Garrison took a deep breath in a rare show of self-control. I’d seen how frequently he and the hacker fell into squabbling, especially during extended trips like this one. “And where isthere? What are we looking at in this place?”
Blaze tore his gaze away from the map on his phone, looking first at Julius. “You’ll see an old theatre in about a mile. Park across the street.” Then he glanced back at Garrison. “A theatre,” he repeated slowly, as if Garrison wouldn’t have understood him when he said it to Julius.
Garrison narrowed his eyes. “No shit, Sherlock. Why are we going to a theatre? I’m assuming it’s not to watch a show.”
Blaze smirked at Garrison. “Finally, you figured out the important question.”
“Finally, you’re getting your head out of your ass long enough to tell yourcrewwhat you’ve been working on for four days straight.”
Julius let out a huff and laid down the law in a firm tone. “What did you find, Blaze? We should know what we’re getting into.”
“Of course,” Blaze said, a little chagrinned now that the boss had stepped in. “I just figured it’d be easier to explain when we can see the place.” He motioned vaguely to the windshield. “This theater is the site of a top-secret event tonight, one I’m convinced is connected to the Blood Hunter’s shady business activities. He might even be there.”
I sat up straighter between Garrison and Talon, who’d been sitting silently, taking the conversation in. “How did you find it? I thought you hadn’t been able to dig up any leads.”
Blaze grinned. “I realized I was looking at the problem from the wrong angle. I was focused on the Blood Hunter himself and the people he works with, but that’s exactly what he’d expect—where he’ll have taken the most steps to cover up any evidence. He doesn’t give his victims quite the same consideration.”
Talon frowned. “What victims?”
“Well, I don’t know for sure. I was just guessing based on Dess’s experience. The Blood Hunter tattooed her with his emblem to claim her as his property when he had her kidnapped. There were other women at the party who had the same tattoo. So I’m assuming at least most of them didn’t come into his clutches by choice.”
My eyebrows jumped up. “You were able to trace some of them?”
“Yep.” He waggled his phone. “I told you I managed to take some pictures of the party while we were there. I ran my image recognition search on several of the women. Most of them didn’t turn up anything, which is suspicious in itself because regular people would be out on social media and so on. But it doesn’t help us. What does help is the two I did find matches for, both of them on the dark web. Both appearing in connection to an event I determined takes place at this theater once a month.”
“They work at the event?” I asked, puzzled.
Blaze rubbed his mouth. “I don’t think it’s quite like that. I couldn’t dig up much in the way of details, but I got the impression they were more like… incentives. I don’t know exactly what goes on at these get-togethers, but it doesn’t seem good. The event’s definitely not listed anywhere official. As far as the general public knows, that theater has been shut down for years.”
Incentives. My stomach turned. The Blood Hunter obviously had no qualms about stealing people away and using them as he saw fit—look what he’d done to me. But the women at the party hadn’t looked like they’d been trained to fight.
No, their purpose had appeared to be much more risqué than that.
Julius parked down the street from the theater, and I peered through the window at the dark building that loomed on the corner ahead of us. No lights at all gleamed in its windows, and only a few cars were parked on the street closer by. But as we watched, a sleek sedan cruised by and stopped just long enough for a thin man in a fitted suit to step out and disappear around back. Then the car drove on. I supposed it’d circle back around to pick him up when the event was over.
I wet my lips. “When we first met, when I was trying to figure out what happened at the household, you told me that they were involved in human trafficking. Was that a way to get under my skin, or did you actually have evidence?”
“That was legit,” Julius said. “I also told you we always research our targets before we agree to go through with a job.”
Blaze nodded. “The Blood Hunter’s people working out of that mansion had been up to a lot of scummy stuff.”
A shudder ran down my spine. I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out what this building had in store for us, but we couldn’t ignore the situation either. I dragged in a breath. “Okay. How are we getting in there to spy on this meeting?”
Blaze pointed toward the roof. “I looked up the blueprints. There’s an attic where they used to stash old equipment, enough room for a person to move around up there but not spacious enough that it’d be used to host a gathering. You should be able to get access from there without anyone seeing you. Of course, first you have to getupthere…”
