by I. T. Lucas
His only other option was the Onstar button on the dashboard. Or maybe even honking the horn and hoping someone would come to investigate.
With a herculean effort, Victor heaved himself up between the front seats and tried to reach the button. But his arm wasn't long enough. He had to twist sideways and wedge himself deeper. Grating his teeth against the excruciating pain, he tried but blacked out again.
Chapter 38: Bridget
After midnight, Bridget started to worry. Turner's dinner should have been over a long time ago. If he'd been too tired and had gone home, he would have called her or at least texted. The man might have been somewhat obtuse as far as relationships went, but he was well versed in social etiquette.
It wasn't like him to make an appointment and not bother to inform the other party about his change of plans.
She shot him a quick message. Are we still on for tonight?
There was no answer.
Half an hour later, she texted him again, waited a few minutes, and then called. The phone kept ringing and then went to voicemail.
Something wasn't right.
But what?
Victor was meeting with an old client in one of the city's top-rated restaurants, not with some thugs in a back alley.
Humans were so fragile, though. He could've suffered a stroke, or heart failure, or he could have been involved in a car accident.
Pacing back and forth, Bridget considered her options. She could start calling every hospital in the city, or she could call Brundar and ask for his help.
He would know what to do. When Callie had had her fateful car crash, Brundar had found about it with Roni's help. The kid had hacked into the feed from the security camera in Callie's building, gotten her license plate number, and using that had found that she'd been involved in an accident.
The problem was that Bridget didn't know where Turner lived, and she hadn't had the foresight to write down his Tesla's license plate number. Perhaps Kian knew. Turner must have filled out some forms and supplied basic information when Kian had hired him.
She dialed Brundar's number.
"What's up, Bridget?"
"I need your help. Turner was supposed to come over and didn't. I texted and called, and nothing. It's not like him, and I'm worried."
"I'm going to call Roni. Give me ten minutes to get him out of bed and meet us down in the computer lab."
"Thank you." She was grateful Brundar hadn't asked a bunch of stupid questions. Anyone else would have assumed that she was overreacting or that Turner had stood her up.
Too anxious to wait, Bridget went down to the lab but found the door locked. Since when was William locking up things at night?
Pacing up and down the corridor, she felt like time had slowed down to a crawl and every minute lasted an hour. The underbelly of the keep was typically quiet, but it was even more so at night when all the underground levels were deserted. She could hear her own breaths echoing from the walls.
It was almost as creepy as the crypt.
Damn, in her state, the last thing Bridget needed was to think about death and burial grounds.
As a ping announced the elevator's arrival, the sound loud and clear even though the lab was some distance away, she felt a small measure of relief wash over her. The cavalry had arrived, and instead of two, she heard three distinct male voices.
Anandur was coming as well.
Good, she wanted an army to help her look for Victor, but those three would do for now.
Anandur walked over and patted her shoulder. "Don't worry, we are going to find him. He is an asshole, but we need him."
"Hi," Roni mumbled through chapped lips, sounding like his mouth was stuffed with cotton. It seemed Brundar had dragged him out of bed and hadn't allowed him to stop for a drink of water.
The kid walked over to the door and punched the numbers into the keypad. "Come in." He strode inside and went straight for the fridge. Pulling out a can of ginger ale, he offered, "If anyone wants anything, help yourself."
As distraught as she was, Bridget couldn't help noticing the change the lab had undergone. The place was unrecognizable from the last time she'd seen it. No more maze of cables on the floors with dust bunnies trapped under and around them, and no more burn stains on the walls. The cables were neatly organized, instead of stains there were pictures, and where there used to be a cluttered pile of discarded equipment, there was now a new sitting area with a loveseat and two zero-gravity chairs.
A cold can in hand, Roni sat on his throne-like swivel chair and turned on his computer array.
"The name of the restaurant, please."
"La Gracia."
"License plate number."
Anandur handed him his phone with a picture. "That's what I have, but he might have been using a different car. Turner has a number of them. I hope we will get lucky and he used this one."
Bridget lifted a brow. "What's going on? Why do you have a photo of Turner's license plate? And how do you know that he has several cars?"
Heck, she had no idea that the Tesla wasn't his only one. The guy apparently liked variety, and Bridget had to wonder if it extended to women as well.
Anandur shrugged. "I hate not knowing basic things about a man we are doing business with, especially one who knows way too much about us. But the guy is a master at obscuring his tracks and is obviously paranoid. I still don't know where he lives or where he works."
"Neither do I." It had never crossed her mind to ask. Come to think of it, aside from that one date in a restaurant, they always met at her place. Victor had never invited her to his.
The question was whether he had chosen to do so because he was secretive by nature, or because he hadn't wanted her getting too close.
Hopefully, he hadn't been as secretive with his stuff, and someone actually knew where he was supposed to be. Would someone search for him if anything happened to him? Would they even know he was missing?
"No accidents involving that license plate," Roni said. "I assume no one knows where the guy lives, right?"
Bridget nodded. "Correct."
"Let me try the restaurant."
Roni's fingers flew over his keyboard in a blur, but even as fast as he was, it took him more than half an hour until he finally called out, "Got it. Front door camera is pointing at the valet station. Not the best angle, but it will have to do. What time was he supposed to be there?"
"Seven."
Brundar and Anandur who'd been lounging on the zero-gravity chairs while Roni worked, came over to look at the feed.
"I'm starting from quarter to seven."
Roni set up the replay for quadruple the normal speed. She had no problem following at that increased rate, but the camera was angled in a way that caught only a partial view of the valet station. If not for Turner's distinct bald head, she would have missed his arrival.
"That's him." She pointed.
Instead of the Tesla, he'd pulled up in a Lexus, and as he got out and got closer to the restaurant's door, she saw that instead of his everyday, casually elegant attire, he had on a designer suit.
Roni slowed down the recording and zoomed in to get a better look, then sped the recording back up. "Now we need to see if and when he got out."
It was going too slow. "Speed it up."
Roni nodded. "Done."
Taking into account an average dining time of around two hours and the current speed of replay, Bridget expected to wait at least fifteen more minutes.
The four of them watched several people arrive and leave, then there was one strange scene of a guy leaving his car with the valet and then walking away once the valet took off with it.
About an hour later in real time, Turner got out and handed his ticket to the valet.
"That was short for a business dinner," Anandur said.
Bridget agreed.
A car arrived, and three well-dressed men exited. Huddling, they talked among themselves while waiting for the valet.
When Turn
er's car eased to the curb, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. At the same moment, one of the men stumbled into him, pushing Victor against the car.
The man caught Turner's shoulders, while the other one bent down as if to pick up something, probably the wallet Turner had dropped. The third reached for the passenger door and pulled it open.
The whole thing looked staged, and Bridget braced for the worst.
As if knowing that they were being filmed, the men kept their backs to the camera.
It was clearly an ambush. With the men's bodies blocking Turner from the camera's view, it was hard to tell what was going on, but it looked like he was pushed into the back seat of his own car. The vehicle peeled off, driven by the valet, or more likely by someone impersonating him.
"Dear merciful Fates, help him," Bridget said with a gasp.
Chapter 39: Anandur
Bridget's panic-stricken expression made one thing glaringly obvious. There was much more going on between her and Turner than a professional relationship or a friendship.
Anandur knew that Kian had assigned her to the new project, which meant she and Turner were working on it together, but he hadn't known the two were romantically involved.
Hell, who would have suspected a hot-blooded immortal female like Bridget would fancy a cold bastard like Turner? Maybe there was some truth to the popular belief about opposites’ attraction to each other. Personally, he thought it only worked for magnets. People gravitated toward the familiar. The more in common a couple had, the better chances they had of a lasting relationship.
But then Turner and Bridget had a number of things in common. Both were smart and level-headed. Both had grown sons, and… that was about it.
Maybe it was enough, but he hoped for her sake that it wasn't. There was nothing but heartache in her future if there was. Turner was human, and his crazy idea of attempting transition was just that—crazy. Even if he were a Dormant, he was too old. And he was sick.
"Rewind to when Turner arrived," Brundar said. "I want to take a look at that valet."
Bending over Roni's shoulder, Brundar examined the blurry image frozen on the screen. "Okay. Now fast forward to when he got out. Let's watch it in slow motion from that point on."
The slow motion revealed something they had all missed before. A quick flash of reflected light before Turner was helped into the backseat. It wasn't hard to deduce what it was. One of the men had had a knife and stabbed Turner with it.
The other thing that became clear was that the valet who'd first taken the car wasn't the same one who'd taken the ticket from Turner. Not that the place couldn't have had more than one valet, but they hadn't seen anyone else until Turner had gotten out.
It had been a well-executed ambush.
Bridget was weeping silently, Brundar's eyes were glowing and his fangs were showing, and Roni just looked tired.
"We need to wake up all of the Guardians," Anandur said.
"What can they do?" Brundar asked.
"We need to question the valet. The real one. The fake one is obviously long gone."
As they talked, Roni rewound the recording to where the three men exited the car. "I'm going to run this again frame by frame."
He froze it as the car peeled off and the license plate came into view for a split second.
"The camera got none of their faces, but at least we have Turner's license plate number." He jotted the letter and number combination on a piece of paper.
Anandur leaned closer. "Even better. Look." He pointed at the sticker glued to the rear window. "This is a rental car. They all have LoJack."
Roni started clicking away on the keyboard. "I'm running the license plate to find out which rental company it belongs to."
Anandur patted his shoulder. "Good thinking."
Several minutes passed as Roni's frown got deeper and deeper. "I have bad news. The plates are fake. I checked all of the rental companies, and when I didn't find it, I went to the department of motor vehicles. Nada."
Brundar narrowed his eyes. "Do you think Turner put on fake plates?"
Anandur shook his head. "No. As far as I know, the guy doesn't do anything that is illegal."
"Why would they switch the plates on his car, though?" Roni asked.
"It was part of the ambush. They didn't want him to be found too quickly."
"What are we going to do?" Bridget whispered. "If we don't find him soon, he is going to bleed to death, or if they punctured his lungs, choke on his own blood."
She hadn't said what everyone was thinking, that Turner was already dead. A knife to the back had most likely pierced the lungs or the heart. Both were fatal wounds to a human.
For her sake, Anandur was going to pretend that there was a chance of finding Turner alive. "They probably didn't take him far. I bet they dumped the car somewhere near the restaurant. Let's wake everyone up and search the area."
Chapter 40: Bridget
Hope was a strange thing.
It wasn't rational, it didn't make any scientific or logical sense, and yet Bridget clung to it and wasn't willing to let go even though her mind was screaming at her that she was a fool.
An amateur couldn't have missed the lungs of an immobilized victim up close, let alone a professional. And Turner's assailants most definitely had been professionals.
She wasn't the only one clinging to hope, though.
Her clan had come through as they always did in times like that. Probably more for her sake than for Turner's.
But by the grim expressions on the faces of the Guardians accompanying her on the search, no one expected to find him alive.
Still, William had joined Roni in the lab, and the two of them were hacking into every street and parking lot camera in the area, hoping to locate the Lexus, while she and the Guardians were combing all the nearby alleys.
The area was affluent, and every time Bridget spotted the same model and color Lexus as the one Turner had driven, her heart would flutter with renewed hope. Then a look inside would reveal an empty interior, and her hope would drop into her gut like a stone into a pool of water.
The radio silence from the hackers at the keep meant they hadn't found anything either.
At sunrise, her phone buzzed with a group message from Onegus. Okidu is on his way to pick us up. Please proceed to the nearest major street. A moment later, he sent her a private message. I'm so sorry. We've done all we could.
Bridget texted him back. I know, thank you.
Then even though she was a nanosecond away from falling apart, she fired one to the group. Thank you for searching all night even though we all knew it was futile. I'm grateful for your help.
With that one last thing done, Bridget allowed herself to collapse. Right there, in the dark back alley, between the trash cans, she dropped down on her butt and let the tears fall.
She cried for Turner, she cried for what could have been, and she cried for what couldn't have been but what she'd secretly and against all odds hoped for.
When she was all out of tears, a big shadow loomed above her.
Anandur offered her a hand up. "Come on, Bridget. Time to go home."
She wiped her tears with her sleeve, then tore the bottom of her T-shirt and used the scrap to blow her nose in.
Getting up proved to be harder than she anticipated. Stress and fear had pushed her to keep going throughout the night, but even an immortal had her limits. She was exhausted, physically and mentally.
Anandur bent down and lifted her up.
"Put me down. You are tired too."
He cradled her closer to his chest. "It's not an effort for me. You weigh nothing, and Okidu is waiting with the bus about a hundred feet or so away."
Fates, the entire search party was on that bus.
"I don't want them to see me like that. I'm not injured."
"I beg to differ. Your heart is bleeding. But I'll let you down before they can see us, and you can walk the rest of the way on your own two feet."
"Thank you."
Chapter 41: Turner
Turner had the strangest dream.
The thing was, he couldn't differentiate between the parts that had really happened and those he'd dreamt up.
Had Sandoval invited him to have dinner with his nephew?
That might have happened. The rest he'd dreamed. He felt no pain, which meant that he hadn't been stabbed in the back. And if he hadn't been stabbed, then the fake valet hadn't dumped his car in an alley, leaving Turner to bleed to death. Besides, the dream wound had been fatal.
Surprisingly, for a pessimist like him who had little to no faith in humanity, his brain had conjured a most unlikely rescue. It had been an incredibly realistic dream.
When the homeless guy had opened the back passenger door, Turner had been hit with a wave of stink. In the dream, the stench had revived him enough to hear the man ask if he needed help.
"Do you have a phone?" the man had asked. "I can call 911."
"No," Turner had croaked.
"Oh, hell, they robbed you, didn't they? Left you here to die, didn't they? Now I'll have to drive you to the hospital, wouldn't I? Do I remember how, do I? I do. I do. I have to. I can't let you die. They are watching me, you know. The other they, the good ones. They promised to reward me for a good deed. They did."
The man wasn't right in the head, but he'd gotten behind the wheel and driven the car to the nearest hospital, saving dream Turner's life.
He found it odd that his mind came up with such a clumsy operation. Taking his phone and his wallet but leaving the keys in the ignition was an amateur move. When awake, Turner would have planned a much tighter attack.
Oh, wait. No. He had given the valet one and kept the spare in his pocket. It was a remote ignition key. All the homeless guy had to do was to press a button.
Damn, Turner could still smell the stench.
He wished he could keep dreaming because he needed to thank his savior, give him money, offer him the use of his shower…