Cipher sa-4

by Moira Rogers

Once I’m in the air, I’ll send her what I’ve got.”

  “Right after I’ve called Kat,” he promised. “We’ll regroup when you get here. We’ll—” His throat closed. “We’ll find Ben. I swear that we’ll find him.”

  Andrew had already speed-dialed Kat’s cell phone by the time he reached the doorway back into the office, and the pale faces that greeted him removed the last of his hope that Ben and Lia had run afoul of some new and unknown threat.

  Jackson held up a faxed page. “My contact in Biloxi says the ME’s office started the autopsies on the bodies from Pass Christian. Two of them had already been autopsied once, so they rushed tissue samples through the toxicology lab and found significant amounts of embalming fluid in seven of them.”

  “That’s why they burned them.” The numb words seemed to come from someone else. Some where else, miles away. “Most of them were already dead.”

  “And they staged it to look like a group suicide.” Jackson swore.

  Andrew started as the ringing in his ear gave way to Kat’s outgoing voicemail message. “Try calling Julio. He’s with Kat, he’s—” Stupidly, he ended the call and redialed her number. “He’s with Kat.”

  Mackenzie already had her phone out. “On it. I’m sure they’re—” Her voice cut off. Julio’s outgoing message spilled out of her earpiece, quiet and even more damning because the phone hadn’t rung at all.

  Andrew moved without thinking, straight for the door. “Get Anna on the phone. She and Patrick have to run down the leads they have left, see if they can find out where the cult might go to ground.”

  Jackson swore again. “Fuck. Someone should stay here where we have database access just in case they come up with something.”

  “I’m going to check the lofts and a few more places.” His heart was splitting apart, but he sounded so calm that he couldn’t help but marvel absently. “If I don’t find Kat and Julio, I’ll come back, and we can figure out where to go from there.”

  “Shit, all right.” Jackson snatched up his phone receiver. “Be careful, damn it.”

  “Yeah.” He took a deep, bracing breath as he stepped out into the chilly, early evening air. Kat was smart—even if she and Julio had gotten snatched, she’d know what the cult was really after. And she’d tell them whatever was necessary to keep them hanging on, waiting, hoping for a chance to trade her for their precious collar. They had Kat, but she-They had Kat.

  His key chain shattered in his hand, and the metal teeth lining his keys dug into his palm along with the shards of plastic as he sagged against the rough brick building.

  He had to pull it together and hold it together, because the one thing more important than anything else was finding them soon—and alive.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Her head hurt.

  No, scratch that. Her whole body hurt.

  Kat groaned, then wished she hadn’t. The noise set off a throbbing in her skull, an impressive feat when her brain felt about as solid as cotton balls. The only thing that registered was pain—her wrists, her arms, her ankles, everything ached—and the fact that she couldn’t seem to pry her eyes open.

  Drugged. She’d had surgery once, to have her appendix removed. She’d been just fourteen, but she’d never forgotten how it felt to claw her way back into consciousness through that terrifying haze. The anesthesia, making her so numb and confused that her senses had woken up at different times. Her ears first, and then her sense of touch, and she’d listened to her mother whisper to her father that they had to get her discharged before the charm wore out…

  The charm. A silly bracelet with two wooden beads, and her parents had paid five thousand dollars for it. Kat remembered the brush of her mother’s fingers tying it around Kat’s wrist as she struggled to wake up, remembered the feeling—like a soft blanket wrapped around her empathy, cutting her off from the world. A desperate gamble, to bring an empath into a hospital when hormonal spikes put her powers beyond her control, but she’d been so sick, and her parents had been so scared.

  She felt that way now. Sick, sore. Scratching her way into coherency as something coiled around her mind. Not a comforting blanket this time but cold steel, someone else’s psychic strength stifling her own.

  Memories were too chaotic to grasp, but her brain was starting to move now. Falling into familiar patterns. Math.

  Pain plus drugs plus psychic blocks equals…

  Fuck. This time the groan was worth the pain. She deserved it, if she’d let herself get kidnapped.

  “It’s about time you woke up,” a rough but familiar voice whispered. “We’ve got to get out of here, damn it.”

  Ben’s voice, and raspy, like he’d been chain-smoking again. She’d heard it a thousand times over her headset, exchanging teasing insults as they hacked and slashed their way through online video games. Her eyes felt glued shut, but she managed to wet her lips enough to speak. “Ben?”

  “Yeah. Hey.” Something jarred her chair, making the legs skitter across the floor with the grating sound of metal on concrete. “Open your eyes, Kat.”

  That set off the pounding again, like an entire drum line practicing on the inside of her skull. “Ouch.

  Fuck, Ben.” She got her eyes opened, and squinted at the floor between her feet. She had paint on her left boot, boring beige paint that stood out against the scuffed black leather.

  Beige paint. “Julio. I was with Julio.”

  “The guy they keep dosing with horse tranquilizers?” He jerked his head toward the corner. “They’ve got his chair chained to the wall, just in case.”

  Without thinking, Kat tried to lift her hand to rub at her eyes and winced when metal dug into her wrist.

  Handcuffs, cold and unyielding.

  She wasn’t going anywhere.

  In the end she settled for blinking until her vision cleared. Julio was slumped in the corner, but no one had taken a chance on handcuffs holding him. Chains held his arms to his body as well as his legs to the chair, enough of them that it would have seemed absurd if it hadn’t been so damn terrifying.

  Kat looked back to Ben, who was scruffy and exhausted. “Where the hell are we?”

  He shook his head. “All I know is I’ve been here for days. They’re holding Lia too, but they won’t tell me where. They just keep asking questions.”

  Days. That was important for a reason, but her mind still wouldn’t make connections. “What are they asking?”

  “The collar.” He grimaced. “They must have traced my activity somehow when I was pulling records.”

  “Oh God, Ben—” For the first time, she understood shapeshifter guilt. It formed a knot in her gut and made it hard to speak. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t. I figured out the risk early and I kept taking it. I knew what I was doing.” He blew out a harsh breath. “But now we need to get the hell out of here so I can find my girlfriend and rain down some vengeance on these motherfuckers.”

  “Fine. Guilt later, rage now.” Kat closed her eyes and slid her senses along the cool metal barrier holding her empathy in. “Are you blocked too? Or have I got some sort of bad magic mojo just on me?”

  “There’s someone. He’s been keeping me locked in since I got here.”

  “Damn it.” No empathy. She’d gotten so damn cocky about how nothing could touch her. She’d indulged in fits of moral crisis over how dangerous she was, had angsted that her power was so brutal she had to accept a bodyguard to save her attackers from her own lethal skill.

  She should have been learning to squirm out of handcuffs.

  It hurt, but she tried anyway, twisting her wrists as she looked at the corner again. “Julio? God damn it, Julio Mendoza, wake the fuck up.”

  Nothing. Not a single groan, not even a whimper.

  Ben swore under his breath. “Two of the cult whackos have been arguing about his drug dosages.

  Whether they’ve given him enough to kill him.”

  So no shapeshifter, either. Just her and her brain—not even t
he most useful parts of it. Kat drew in a calming breath, dragging the air deep and holding it as Callum had taught her.

  “I don’t need to learn how to breathe, ” she’d told him.

  “Most people do” had been the typically Callum-esque answer.

  Breathing didn’t help her situation, but it did help her fear. A minute later she craned her head to look at Ben. “Okay, we’re smart. We’re a couple of geniuses. Let’s rescue the shapeshifter and get the hell out of here. Are you handcuffed or tied?”

  “Cuffed.” Ben scooted his chair closer to hers. “Near as I’ve been able to tell, we’re not in a city.

  Sometimes when it’s quiet I can hear crickets outside, but no cars unless someone’s coming or going.

  That’s all I’ve got.”

  She wiggled, but the chair was solid. Maybe Julio could have bent the metal to free his arms, but Kat was just as likely to dislocate something. “Blocking our powers takes expensive charms or sustained effort. Have you got a charm tied to you somewhere?”

  “Not a damn thing.”

  So somewhere, not too far away, a spell caster or a psychic was watching their power drip away as they fought to keep Kat and Ben contained. “Then I’m going to make life hell on whoever’s shielding us.

  I’ve got psychic fuel to burn.”

  Ben’s eyes gleamed with a surprisingly feral light. “Together, we can make one hell of a headache.”

  Across the room, Julio stirred with a low grunt. His chains rattled, and he mumbled something unintelligible.

  Relief surged. Whatever they’d done to Julio, he was strong enough to survive it. All they needed to do was get free. “Wake up, Julio. Wake up. There’s beer. And naked women.”

  Another mutter was all she got as his head fell back and lolled to one side.

  Kat closed her eyes and gathered her will. Slowly, like a hard drive spooling up, until she was wound tight and damn near vibrating with the need to let go. To push. “Ready?”

  Ben’s handcuffs clinked as he clenched his fists. “Ready.”

  “Me first,” she whispered. “Give me ten seconds, then throw everything you’ve got at them.”

  “Got it.”

  Maybe she’d learned something from watching the wolves circle, but her strategy was pure Zola. A testing jab against the shields, then a strong push with half of her strength. No projection—not when breaking through could injure Ben and Julio—but every scrap of sensory empathy she had.

  For eight seconds she pushed against the barrier. It stretched with her, like a rubber band pulling taut, but didn’t snap. On the ninth beat, she eased back, as if giving up, and for the briefest moment she swore she sensed satisfaction lacing the walls of her mental prison.

  Zola’s favorite trick—encouraging an opponent to underestimate her.

  On ten, Kat gathered her strength and slammed it outward.

  For one moment, one heartbeat, the iron cracked.

  The man who slammed through the door held a gun in his outstretched hand. He pointed it in Kat’s direction for a moment, then lowered it. “That’s a bad idea, Miss Gabriel. Len is here to protect you and your friends, and you’re making that difficult.”

  If it had just been her…but it wasn’t. Ben and Julio were just as helpless as she was. Gritting her teeth, Kat let the mental attack fade away. “Tying us to chairs and drugging us was part of the protection too?”

  “Yes.” He held up the gun, its barrel pointing at the ceiling as he brandished it. “Otherwise, we may have no choice but to kill anyone who may not have the information we need.”

  The collar, Ben had said. Clearly whoever had kidnapped him didn’t realize Jackson had already destroyed it.

  If she told them, they might not believe her. If they did believe her…

  Time, that was what they needed now. Time for Jackson to cast a spell or for Anna to use her contacts.

  Kat licked her chapped lips and winced. “May I have a glass of water?”

  “No.”

  Without empathy, Kat had to fall back on the lessons Callum had forced her to learn. Body language.

  She took in the blank expression, the cold eyes, the easy grip on the gun. This wasn’t a tense man, or a frightened one. This was a man so far gone into madness that he wasn’t even angry.

  Dangerous. He was dangerous, and he clearly wanted her to start talking. Fast.

  Kat swallowed. “What do you want to know?”

  His jaw clenched. “Where is the collar?”

  Truth or lie. She had a split second to decide. “I don’t know.”

  The man shook his head. “Try again, Miss Gabriel.”

  We don’t have it. An answer guaranteed to make them all useless—and therefore expendable. So she met his gaze and put everything into the lie. “I told you, I don’t—” His dispassionate expression didn’t change as he lowered his arm and shot Ben.

  The sound was deafening. Like thunder in a closet, rattling through her almost hard enough to distract her from the sick feeling of something wet and warm splattering across her face.

  The shot.

  He’d shot Ben.

  He’d shot Ben.

  Shock held her rooted in place as the man turned without a sound and left, leaving Kat alone in a room with an unconscious shapeshifter and the lifeless body of her friend.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Most of the faint hope Andrew still harbored died when he found Kat’s cell phone wedged in a storm drain outside the warehouse. Julio’s car was still parked on the street, and there was no sign of either of them.

  He kept it under control as he drove to Kat’s apartment. Mackenzie and Jackson would be checking any and all of the public places they could have gone, like Mahalia’s or Dixie John’s, so he could do this.

  With any luck, they’d be watching an old sci-fi movie with the lights down and the telephone ringer off, and they wouldn’t even realize Kat had dropped her phone.

  The last shred of possibility, and it flared into desperation as he stood outside the apartment and heard movement inside. He pounded on the door. “Kat?”

  He had to knock again before the door popped open. Sera stood there in sweatpants and an inside-out tank top, both clearly hastily donned. “Kat’s still at Julio’s…” She trailed off as she studied his face, then swore softly. “What happened?”

  He gripped the edge of the doorframe. “They’re not here?”

  “No.” Sera pivoted and got to the dining room table in two steps. She picked up her phone and flipped through the screen. “She texted me…this afternoon. Said she was going to help Julio paint a room, and they might go out later. That was the last I heard.”

  If anyone had unearthed them somewhere, getting drunk and playing pool, Andrew would’ve gotten a call. “They’re missing.”

  “Shit.” Sera shoved her phone into her pocket and snatched up a hair elastic from the kitchen table.

  “Where’s the last place anyone saw them?”

  “I found Kat’s phone over at the warehouse.” His heart thumped painfully. “I was about to go back to Jackson’s office. He’s—he’s already looking.”

  “I’m coming with you.” She shoved her foot into a shoe while twisting her wet hair into a knot at the back of her head. “Grab my keys off the counter, will you? Do we need something of Kat’s? For Jackson, if he needs to try to use magic?”

  “I’ve got her phone.”

  Sera hopped on one foot and pulled her other shoe on. “What about Julio’s phone? Maybe her friend from Birmingham can track the phone to Julio, if he’s still got it. Trigger the GPS or something?”

  “Ben’s missing too.” He shoved her keys at her and turned for the door. “We’ve got to move.”

  She did, grabbing a leather jacket off the back of a chair without bothering to find a warmer shirt. “Is Anna on her way?”

  “Should be.” And Patrick too, someone with reason enough to hunt down the bastards who’d done this.

  “I’m driv
ing.”

  He counted the streets and turns between the apartment building and Jackson’s office, trying to find a way to keep himself centered and calm. Using the little things to distract himself from disaster.

  Anna’s car was parked in front of the office, but it was Miguel who met them at the door. “Nothing?”

  “No,” Andrew said shortly. “Jackson?”

  Miguel shook his head. “Patrick sent Anna some info, and Jackson’s been helping her run some of it down.”

  The inside of the office didn’t look like chaos had descended. Jackson and Mackenzie were both on the phone, and Anna was scribbling something on a white board in the corner.

  Sera touched Andrew’s arm, just the slightest brush of fingers, but her energy swept over him like a warm breeze in a cold room. “She’s with Julio, and Julio’s not going to let anything happen to her. We just need to get to them.”

  Somewhere to the left of Alec’s deserted desk, Andrew had lain on the carpet, bleeding. Dying. He had half-memories of Kat leaning over him, her tears splashing hot on his skin as she screamed herself hoarse.

  “I told her this was over,” he found himself confessing. “I promised her better than this.”

  “I know.” Sera pulled at his arm, planting one hand in the center of his chest to urge him to sit on one of the empty desks. “You sit, and you take a deep breath. Then you take another. Then you find out where the cult is, and you kill every person who had a hand in kidnapping Kat. And no one will touch her again.”

  “That’s a damn bloodthirsty suggestion for someone who’s trying to calm me down.”

  “We all have our roles. You don’t run with a lot of submissive wolves, do you?”

  Jackson slammed down his phone and rose. “Not good news, I guess.”

  Andrew held up Kat’s phone. “I found it outside our building. Can you…?”

  The other man’s eyes clouded. “I tried a tracking spell already. I was able to lock on to Kat, but the location kept jumping all over the map. Someone’s scrambling it.”

  Andrew squeezed his eyes shut. The cell phone’s plastic casing cracked in his hand, and he forced himself to relax his grip as he opened his eyes. “So what’s next?”