by Bianca D'Arc
“The information I have begins to make more sense,” Ezra said contemplatively. “I closed down Jonathan’s connection to the sex slavers, but they didn’t stay out of business for long, much to my disappointment. They started up again, and rumor has it they’re still using Bolivar, and pretty much the same routes Jonathan established. I’ve been following his trail all over the western part of the country, but he keeps coming back to the Lake Tahoe area. That’s why I settled on this place being his base of operations. If he was keeping prisoners, they’re likely around here somewhere, and he comes back to get a hit off their power. Does that sound about right?” Ezra asked Gabe, seeming to defer to Gabe’s superior knowledge of magic for the first time.
Gabe’s lips formed a tense, grim line. “It sounds exactly right. We need to figure out where he’s stashed them. If any of his prisoners are still alive, we need to find them and see if they can be saved. It might be too late, but they are innocents in this mess. We need to at least try to help them.”
“Agreed,” Ezra and Margo said in unison.
The waitress returned with their order, and a few minutes were spent sorting out the dishes and drinks. They ate a bit and continued the discussion as they demolished breakfast.
“There are a few things I can try to locate them, but it would help if I knew who I was looking for,” Gabe said unexpectedly. Margo had figured he’d leave the tracking to the shifters, but it looked like he had other means for sniffing out a scent. “Do you have any data on the women he’s chosen?” Gabe asked Ezra.
“I’ve got five names, going back about two years,” Ezra replied, his expression grim. “I tracked the last two for short distances but lost the trails pretty quick just outside town. I’m beginning to think Bolivar covered their tracks with the same magic he used on your family, Margo.” He reached into an inner pocket of his jacket to retrieve his smartphone and went through a few screens before landing on the information he wanted. He read off a list that meant little to Margo, except for one name.
“Theodora Jackson,” Margo repeated, getting the men’s attention. “Collin put out a BOLO within the agency for her.” Margo used the acronym for Be On the Look Out. She figured the guys would understand. “Her family hired him to find her. She’s a bear shifter, if I remember correctly. She was described as shy and rather submissive for a bear. I have a picture of her somewhere.” Margo scrolled through her own phone’s screens until she found the image she remembered from Collin’s alert and held out the phone so the men could see it.
“Pretty girl,” Gabe commented. “I might be able to do something using her image to help locate her.” He didn’t say what Margo was thinking—if the girl was still alive.
Ezra was oddly speechless, but the look in his eyes as he saw the girl’s photograph was haunted. Margo figured he was taking this harder because the missing woman was the same species as he was. Maybe he even had a little sister or something that the woman reminded him of. Whatever it was, Ezra wasn’t sharing, and Margo had to respect that.
“All right,” Margo said, taking charge of this part of the meeting. “Theodora will be our starting point, then. I know Collin will be happy if we can find her. Or find out what happened to her. While Gabe does his magic thing, I’ll call my boss and let him know we might finally have some movement on the case. I bet he’ll throw us some more support if we need it now that we have a link to an active case on his books.”
“That would be good.” Ezra seemed to have finally found his voice again. “We can use all the help we can get. As you can probably tell, I don’t usually work with a lot of support staff.” Ezra actually managed to crack a tiny grin as he uttered those words. “Right now, our assault team consists of us three. If we’re going to be freeing up to five prisoners—speaking optimistically—then we probably need a few more boots on the ground.”
Margo nodded. “You got that right,” she told Ezra with a kind smile. Whatever had come over him a moment ago, he seemed recovered now. “Gabe, do you need anything from us to do your magic thing?” she asked, just to be sure.
“If you could send me a copy of the girl’s photo, that would help. Other than that, I just need a little quiet and some space. The hotel room should work. I’ve already warded it and cleansed the energies. Unless there’s a sacred circle nearby, it’s the next best thing.”
“As far as I know, the nearest circle is way out in the desert. Unless you really need it, you can save a lot of time and effort if you can do your work here,” Ezra told him.
Gabe nodded. “All right, then. Here it is. I’m heading back to the room.”
“I’m going to call my boss, and then, if you don’t mind, I’d like to nose around town with you, Ezra. Maybe you can show me some of the scent trails. Bear noses are reputed to be really good, but we wolves aren’t too shabby in the tracking department. I might be able to find something you missed.”
“Well, it’s worth a shot, I guess,” Ezra said without taking offense.
Margo was glad he was being reasonable about her desire to recheck his work. Some men might’ve gotten upset about it, but Ezra was proving to be a very sensible guy…for a bear.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Gabe wasn’t thrilled leaving Margo with Ezra, but he knew he had work to do that would require a bit of contemplation and quiet focus. Having Margo with him would have been nice—but a little too distracting. After all, he was proposing to do the spell work in the same hotel room where she’d ravished his body the night before. Having Margo and that big decadent bed in the same space would have sent his mind back to last night, and he’d have to exercise a great deal of restraint to do his work and not try to convince her to do it all again, right then and there.
And that certainly wasn’t going to find these poor girls any sooner. He focused on what the women Bolivar had selected might be going through. Those unlucky souls needed freeing, and Gabe had to put forward his best efforts on their behalf. Anything else would be selfish in the extreme, and his mama hadn’t raised a cad who would put his own pleasure before the fate of those imprisoned women.
He didn’t know why he felt so certain that they were going to find at least some of the women Bolivar had selected alive, but he took it as a good sign. If his instincts were insisting some of them were alive, they just might be. He had to focus on saving them, not on finding their bodies.
It might come to that later, but for now, he was staying as positive as possible and focusing on the ones he could save. He would also find any that had already succumbed, if only to give comfort to their families and free their souls if Bolivar had been so evil as to trap their immortal essence on the mortal plane. Some mages could do that, Gabe had heard, and judging by what Bolivar had managed up to now, it might be something he was capable of doing.
Gabe had to be on guard and keep his wits about him. Bolivar was a dangerous bastard, and Gabe had to remember that at every moment. Chances were, the other four names on Ezra’s list of women had been mages or latent magic users of one sort or another. If they had been trapped by Bolivar, that meant the man had some dangerous power in his arsenal. Gabe would be tested when they finally met face to face, but he was reasonably sure of his abilities and confident that he could overcome anything Bolivar tried to throw at him.
He hoped.
But he definitely wasn’t going to share that little niggle of doubt with Margo. As far as the lovely wolf was concerned, Gabe was certain of his own invincibility. It wouldn’t do to show the Alpha female any weakness during this crucial stage in their courtship. The idea now was to prove his worth to her wild side, not show how all-too-human he could be.
Gabe left the restaurant and headed up to the room. The sooner he did his spell work, the sooner he could get back to Margo and get the rescue operation underway. He had a lot to prove to her, and this might be the best way—actually doing some real good for some lost souls.
Efficient as ever, Margo had sent the image of the lost girl to his cellphone. He
propped up the phone as he took a seat on the couch at one end of their small suite. The couch was near the window, and Gabe rearranged the furniture a little so that he could face outward, toward the window, directing his energies out there, where the girl, Theodora, might be hoping and praying for rescue.
Gabe reinforced his wards, setting them so that only Margo would be welcome to pass their boundaries. Then, he set to work. First, he had to let loose the spell he’d been working on in his mind since before they had left Pennsylvania. He had consulted with a couple of his relatives when he’d first heard that Bolivar might be clairvoyant, and they’d all agreed on the best way for Gabe to go about crafting a spell that negated that gift.
Nobody could tell Gabe exactly how to do it because it wasn’t something that was done every day. In fact, nobody they knew had ever had need of such a spell, so Gabe was going to have to craft it himself. But that was all right. Gabe had a special talent for creating new spells, which wasn’t something most magic users could do.
In fact, the ability to consistently craft new and useful spells was a gift given to only a handful of mages every few centuries. Gabe was something special, even among the talented folk in his own family. Not only could he spell-craft with the very best, but he also had the sheer magnitude of power to back it up.
Many spell-crafters weren’t especially strong mages. Throughout the ages, spell-crafters often were subordinate to more powerful magic users and wrote their spells for others to use. Gabe was a rather remarkable exception to that general principle.
Having had plenty of time to think about what he wanted to put into the spell, Gabe was more than ready to unleash it. He began the chant, clearing his mind and the space around him of interfering energy first then focusing on the intent of the words of high magic he’d selected to accomplish his goals.
As he chanted, Gabe gathered his personal power and put it into the spell. He called on the earth and sky, the water in the lake and the fire in the sun. He blended the elements into something he could use and then unleashed his intent upon the unseen world. He could feel his magic spread out like a wave, and Gabe knew that if Bolivar was anywhere—near or even at the farthest reach of Gabe’s power—that spell would blind him to coming events where Gabe and his team were concerned. Perfect.
That had gone off like a charm, if he did say so himself. He’d deliberately designed the spell to allow Bolivar to continue to use his clairvoyance for other things—just not for anything relating to Gabe’s mission. It had been tricky to isolate things, but Gabe thought he’d come up with the perfect solution.
If he’d just blocked Bolivar completely, that would have tipped him off that an adversary was coming. Gabe didn’t want to give Bolivar any advantage when it came to the showdown they were going to have. No, there was going to be an accounting, and Gabe was going to be certain Bolivar finally paid for his multitude of sins.
The spell finally set free, Gabe gathered himself for the next task of the day. He looked at Theodora’s image on his cellphone, touching the screen to get it to lock in place. He focused on the bear shifter female and her plight while he used a simple locator charm that was one of the first things taught to Llewellyn mages. It was a simple but very useful spell that almost any mage could use.
Gabe focused on the woman and sent his energies out to find her. The answer came back almost right away, but the information it imparted was confusing. Gabe did the spell a second time, just to be sure, and again, the same result came back to him.
Well, then. He’d just have to puzzle it out.
*
Ezra showed Margo around the back alleys where he’d caught scent of their prey once or twice, but the trails were long gone by now. Still, Margo’s investigative instincts perked up, and she started making connections between the places Bolivar or his quarry had been scented and the types of establishments in the vicinity of those places. There was a pattern slowly emerging, but she’d have to sit down with a pad and pencil to figure it out.
Back in her office, she had a giant whiteboard where she brainstormed things like this. Margo liked the visual aid of actually writing things down and studying them. It helped her process through different bits of information. But her beloved whiteboard was back home, so she’d have to make do with whatever she could find here. Which gave her an idea…
“Ezra, is there an office supply place nearby?”
That simple question led her to a small store, where she could pick up a few things that would help her set up a mini office right in her hotel room. Ezra went off on his own, with a promise to circle back around later in the day to compare notes. Now that she had some data to work with, Margo planned to work through lunch while she examined the information she’d been able to collect that morning.
At the stationery shop, she bought a small magnetic whiteboard and some different colored markers to go with it. She couldn’t keep the board—not while her only mode of transport was a motorcycle—but she could easily just wipe it off and leave it behind for the hotel to deal with, or she could give it to Ezra, if he had a use for it. Either way, it would help her sort out her thoughts on the case right now.
New purchases in hand, she headed back to the hotel and went up to the room. She opened the door, and her eyes widened at the intense magical glow coming from within. Gabe was doing his thing again. Must be. She went in quickly and shut and locked the door behind her.
Margo’s gaze sought out Gabe. She found him levitating slightly off the couch he had angled to face the window more than it had before. He was sitting cross-legged, but to her shock, there was a good three inches of empty air between his butt and the somewhat stiff cushions of the couch. Holy crap.
He was staring out the window, a look of concentration on his handsome face. She wasn’t even sure he was aware of her presence. How he hadn’t heard her coming in the door, she wasn’t sure, but he didn’t even turn his head or acknowledge her presence in any way. Spooky.
Margo decided to leave him be and went about the business of unpacking the bag she’d brought from the office supply store. She worked quietly, opening the plastic-wrapped items and the little box of magnets and pens. She set herself up on the bed, spreading out a map of the area she’d also picked up next to her whiteboard and phone. While she’d been in the office supply place, she’d also taken the opportunity to print out a few of the photos she’d taken of the environments in which Ezra had found traces of scent on his initial hunt.
Margo pinned these images to the edges of her new whiteboard with magnets and then wrote in what she already knew, trying to connect the dots. She also made marks on the map of all the locations where Ezra had found traces of Bolivar or the women he’d abducted.
Now that she had a visual reference, she was able to see things a little more clearly than she had while roaming the streets with Ezra. There were commonalities. Among them, the traces of the women were all found near some of the seedier hotels in the area. That was significant. Perhaps the cheap accommodations were being used as waypoints as the bad guys moved the women around from city to city on their way to the coast for shipment overseas.
Disgusting as that thought was. Margo shook her head and kept going, concentrating on the clues she’d found that morning and adding that to what was in Theodora’s file. She kept one eye on Gabe, but he hadn’t budged from his swami stance, and he was still hovering. The golden glow in the room had lessened a bit and was more concentrated around Gabe’s person at the moment. Margo had no idea what that meant, but Gabe looked okay, so she didn’t worry too much.
She worked steadily for about an hour. About the time she started thinking about lunch, Gabe seemed to come out of his trance. He blinked a few times as he lowered slowly back to the couch. Turning his head, he found her immediately.
“Sorry. I knew you were there, but I wanted to double check my findings. Hope you didn’t mind,” he told her. Gabe unfolded his legs and stood, shaking out his entire body as if his muscles had stiffened
.
“How long were you like that?” she asked, curious.
“Since I got back to the room. I released the spell that will screw with Bolivar’s clairvoyance where we’re concerned, then I launched into search mode.” He scowled a bit. “I double checked and ran the search pattern twice because I don’t know what to make of the results. What have you got there?” He walked over to the bed and gazed down at the map and whiteboard she’d been working with for the past hour.
“I like to use visual aids to puzzle through the data,” she told him. “Ezra showed me the places he’d found scent, but it was all gone by now. I took some photos with my phone and stopped to print a few out.” She gestured toward the small prints that lined the edges of her new magnetic whiteboard.
“I keep seeing the glowing outline of a mermaid, a ship’s anchor, a wagon wheel with flowers planted on it somehow, and a calico cat with orange paws,” Gabe said almost absently as he unpinned four pictures from her small collection and gave them a closer inspection.
Margo got up on her knees on the bed and looked at the pictures he’d selected. Sure enough, there was a blurry hotel sign in the background of one that was neon…in the shape of a mermaid. The next showed a ship’s anchor farther down the same street. Again, the anchor itself was in the background and somewhat blurry as her camera lens had been focused on the street in front of a convenience store.
Another image was one she’d taken of an alley where Ezra had said he’d caught a scent a while back. At the end of the alley, in the distance, there was a house. A plain old house. But, in the front yard was a wagon wheel propped on its side, what could be a planter attached to its middle. Margo remembered taking the photo, but she’d been focused on the alley, not the house.
And then, the final photo, taken from the end of the alley, showed the house more clearly. There was a big tree in front of the house, not on the property itself, but across the street, closer to the alley’s mouth. In the tree, looking right at the camera, was a calico cat with orange paws. The look on its little face could be interpreted as exasperation if Margo venture a guess at understanding cat expressions.