Heart of Fire

by Lisa Edmonds

My response was equally impersonal. “It was the only thing I found in the bedroom that looked like it might be helpful. It was between the bed and the nightstand. I think it fell back there and whoever was in here didn’t see it. It looks like case notes.”

  “Good work.”

  “Thanks.”

  Sean held up his phone. “I have someone back at the office looking through the footage from the surveillance camera. Hopefully we’ll have something we can look at soon.”

  “Good.”

  “Anything interesting in there?”

  “Nothing I can see. These notes are from the last couple of weeks, a record of what she and her clients talked about during counseling sessions.” I made a face. “I’m not sure it’s legal or ethical for me to be looking at these.”

  “No one needs to know about it. We’ll make sure those notes are kept safe and given back to Felicia.”

  I said nothing to that, but I could tell from the look in Sean’s eyes he didn’t think that was likely to happen. If Felicia had been taken because of something she knew, then as soon as they had her work files, her usefulness would probably be at an end.

  Sean paced around the apartment and sent a half-dozen texts and e-mails while I read through Felicia’s notes. I did my best to ignore him, but his restlessness and the constant buzzing of his phone grated on my already frayed nerves.

  Just as I was about to suggest he take a walk outside, Sean read an incoming text and came over to me. “We’ve got footage.”

  “Can we watch it here?”

  “Yes.” Sean sat next to me on the couch. He opened the video and the screen filled with a black-and-white image of the front of Felicia’s apartment.

  Despite the low light, the video was surprisingly clear. A few cars went by, as well as a couple of joggers. For a moment, nothing happened.

  Then I saw her.

  She was slim and medium height, wearing jeans, a light-colored shirt, and sneakers, her blonde hair pulled up in a ponytail and face hidden by a baseball cap. She approached the apartment from around the corner, walking briskly. As we watched, she went directly to Felicia’s door, unlocked it, and slipped inside. I noted the time: 6:48 p.m. yesterday evening.

  Sean fast-forwarded the video. Lights went on and off in the apartment as she searched it room by room. Finally, at 7:12, the door opened again and she emerged from the apartment with a black computer bag over her shoulder. She locked the door and headed for the sidewalk.

  “I can’t see her face,” Sean grumbled. “That damn cap.”

  “Come on, come on, look up,” I chanted under my breath as the woman reached the sidewalk and started walking.

  A dark car stopped at the curb next to her. She went to the back door, opened it, handed the bag to someone in the back seat, and got in.

  “There!” I pointed at the screen. “When she starts to get in the car. Can you zoom in?”

  Sean paused the video and used the slider to run the video back. He zoomed in until the woman’s half-obscured face filled the screen, then advanced the video frame-by-frame to the moment she looked toward the camera.

  I sucked in a breath.

  “Do you know her?” Sean demanded.

  I held out my hand. He gave me the phone and I looked at it more closely. I knew her, all right. “Can you send me that image?”

  Sean took his phone back, took a screenshot of the woman’s face, then opened his text messages. A few moments later, my phone beeped.

  I dug my phone out of my bag. The screen said Wolf - 1 New Message. I opened the message and looked at the photo he’d sent.

  “Who is this woman?” Sean wanted to know.

  “Her name is Rachel. I met her last night down on the Stroll. Here she is at seven o’clock, breaking into Felicia’s apartment. I saw her a little after nine. She said she was scared, Sean. I felt sorry for her, and the whole time she was part of it.” My voice shook with anger.

  “Well, this indicates that somehow Felicia is connected to the other disappearances.” Sean tapped his phone on his leg. “Now we’ve got something to go on.”

  I bit my lip thoughtfully. “Let me see your phone again.”

  Sean handed me his phone. I returned the video to its standard zoom, then ran it back to when Rachel was walking on the sidewalk. I watched the car pull up, Rachel get in, and the car pull away from the curb and disappear out of the frame. Then I ran it back and watched it again.

  “What are you thinking?” Sean asked.

  I paused the video, adjusted the zoom until it showed the best view of the car, and handed the phone back. “Does that look like a black BMW to you?”

  Sean frowned and looked closely at the car. “Can’t see the badge or the license plate from this angle, but the body shape and color look right. Traffic cams in the area might be able to get a better picture. I know someone who could help with that.”

  “Cyro?” I smiled a little at Sean’s look of surprise. “I’m not likely to forget him, since he helped save my life.” His mysterious hacker friend had tracked my cell phone when I’d been badly injured, and led Sean to me just in time.

  “Who do you know who drives a black BMW?”

  My smile faded as I debated what to say. Mark’s contract with the Vampire Court forbade us from sharing information with anyone outside the investigation. Until I was told otherwise, I’d have to keep my suspicions about who might be driving the Beemer to myself.

  “I need to talk to Mark,” I told Sean.

  Gold rolled over his eyes and my arms prickled from the force of his anger. “Felicia’s life is at stake. This is no time for games.”

  “Don’t accuse me of playing games with people’s lives,” I snapped, rising. “Whatever else you may think of me, that is one thing I have never done and will never do.” My grandfather played games with lives. People were disposable to him. I might have been forced to kill for Moses, but lives meant something to me.

  He stood and raised his hands. “Whatever else I—Alice, what do you think I think of you?”

  “You made it pretty clear what you thought of me the last time we spoke. You called me irrational.”

  “And you called me a bully and worse for offering to replace the furniture I broke fighting with Vaughan,” he countered.

  “You didn’t offer to replace it. You told me you were going to replace it. There’s a difference!”

  “I could have phrased it better, but you overreacted and I think you know that.” He sighed. “Neither of us handled the situation well that day. I’m used to taking care of things and you’re used to doing everything for yourself, but it shouldn’t have ended the way it did. Maybe this is a chance for us to try again.”

  I rubbed my face. I didn’t know if I wanted to try again, and I didn’t have the energy right now to try to figure it out. “I’m going back to talk to Mark. It will be up to him and our contract with the Court to decide how much he passes on to you.”

  “Alice—”

  “If you want to help, call Cyro and see if he can hack the traffic cams and get us more shots of that car leaving the neighborhood so we can confirm whose vehicle it is. Forget calling the cops about the break-in; if it’s who I think it is, this is way above their pay grade. Mark and I will take care of it.”

  “Damn it, wait a minute.”

  “Take the notes. I don’t see anything in here worth killing someone over.” I tossed the notepad on the coffee table and headed for the door.

  He moved in front of me. “Alice, let’s talk.”

  “Let’s not.” I started to walk past him and we collided, knocking me off balance and into the door.

  Sean grabbed my arms to steady me. “Listen to me,” he began.

  I was thrown against the wall hard enough to make my teeth rattle. Fingers dug into my shoulders and a cry of pain escaped before I could hold it back. My grandfather’s livid face was inches from mine. “Listen to me, you stupid girl!”

  Panic surged. I struck out with both hands, hitt
ing Sean in the chest with a burst of magic. He stumbled backward, fell over the coffee table, and landed on the couch, looking surprised.

  “Don’t touch me. Get away.” My voice sounded strangled. I bent over and put my hands on my knees as I struggled to get a breath.

  “You’re hyperventilating. Try to breathe slowly.” He got to his feet but stayed back to give me space.

  When I looked up, Sean’s eyes blazed with anger that wasn’t directed at me. “I’m sorry. I should have realized,” he said.

  “Should have realized what?” I asked raggedly.

  He rejoined me at the door, his face grave. “I recognize that look in your eyes, that reaction. I’ve seen it in shifters who’ve been abused. You had a flashback. You have PTSD.”

  I turned and reached for the doorknob. “I’m leaving. Whatever else you need or find out, you can talk to Mark about it.”

  “You’re still a pack associate.”

  I stilled.

  “As the alpha of the Tomb Mountain Pack, I call on you to aid me in our search for Felicia.” Sean’s voice was brisk.

  I gritted my teeth and turned to face him. “I’m looking for her anyway, for the Court. She’s part of the case we’re working. I report to Mark, not you.”

  “Your agreement with my pack predates your contract with MDI and the Court. I’ll be happy to pull the paperwork if you want.”

  “What are you hoping to accomplish?” I demanded.

  “I intend to use all of the resources at my disposal to find Felicia. I need your help.”

  “I would have helped you anyway.” I opened the door and stepped outside. “I hereby submit my thirty days’ notice that I am rescinding my status as pack associate.”

  “Duly noted. I’ll need that in writing, of course. Until then, you are obligated to assist my pack in its time of need, to the best of your ability, as per our agreement.”

  “Fine.” I headed for my car as Sean locked up the apartment.

  “Where are you going?” he called to me as I walked.

  “I’ll meet you back at MDI.” I needed a few minutes to myself to figure out how to deal with this unexpected development, and with the way my stomach fluttered every time I looked at him. I also needed coffee, and lots of it. Fortunately, I knew where to find a good coffee shop on the way, but I suspected the rest of the answers would be harder to come by.

  8

  “So, let me get this straight.” Mark sat back in his chair and stared at us across the conference table. “One of the women you spoke with last night appears to be working with the kidnappers, we may have another BMW sighting, and my investigator was just hijacked away from me.”

  “I’m not hijacking her,” Sean said from the seat on my right. “Alice still works for you. As an associate of my pack, Alice is part of our search for Felicia, and my colleague.”

  I shot him a withering look, which he ignored. When we’d worked together during the Amelia Wharton case, I’d referred to him as my “colleague” and it looked like he was not above throwing that back in my face.

  “Your prior agreement creates a clear conflict of interest for her.” Mark turned to me. “You should have disclosed you were a pack associate, Alice.”

  “I’m sorry. To be honest, I didn’t even remember I was.” After our fight, I’d stuffed Sean’s letter identifying me as a pack associate in a drawer in my seldom-used office and forgotten about it.

  “I want to be included in your debriefings so I can assist in the investigation,” Sean told Mark.

  “Our contract with the Vampire Court is very specific about who has access to what information. The Court approved Alice’s involvement, but not yours.”

  “Check your e-mail,” Sean said.

  Mark frowned and reached for his phone.

  Sean settled back in his chair. “Last night, I contacted the Court and spoke to Niara, asking for the Court’s assistance if Felicia’s case was connected to the disappearances down on the Stroll. The Court agreed to pool resources if it turned out I was right.”

  Mark was reading something on his phone, his expression dark.

  “On the way here from Felicia’s apartment, given what we saw on the surveillance video, I spoke to Juliet LaRoche, Niara’s daytime representative, and confirmed Felicia’s disappearance is undeniably connected. As you can see, the Court has amended your contract so I can be an active part of the investigation.”

  “‘At the discretion of the lead investigator,’ it says,” Mark said, looking up. “Which is me. I don’t like your power plays, Maclin, and I don’t need this case to be any more difficult than it already is. And I certainly don’t need my best investigator distracted in the field when we’ve got so many lives on the line.”

  They stared at each other. Sean’s eyes shone gold. Mark’s face was stony.

  Well, this was getting us nowhere. I cleared my throat. “Gentlemen.”

  A heartbeat later, Mark’s gaze shifted to me. “Yes, Alice?”

  I’d had time to think about the situation during my drive to MDI. Once the anger wore off and I set aside my personal feelings about Sean—no small task—it occurred to me we could use this development to our advantage. “Whether we like it or not, Sean’s got access to some resources that might help us.”

  “We have resources,” Mark said stubbornly.

  Sean crossed his arms. “I have a hacker who’s in the city’s traffic camera system as we speak, tracking that black BMW. I’m assuming that’s information you’d like to have.”

  I sighed. “Oh, cut it out, you two. Let’s be adults here. Mark, Sean has access to a hacker who can get into anything anywhere, a security company with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, and a pack of werewolves who want to know what the hell happened to one of their own. Is he an asset, or not?”

  “He would be,” Mark said grudgingly. “If he doesn’t pull any more of this going-over-my-head bullshit, and he signs some paperwork.”

  I turned to the werewolf next to me. “Sean, Mark is the Court’s primary investigator. He’s the best MPI in the city, and he knows how to run an investigation far better than you or I. Will you follow his lead?”

  Sean frowned, then nodded.

  I looked at Mark. “Will that do?”

  “That’ll do.” Mark called Marian to bring the necessary forms to the conference room. Then he sat back in his chair and looked at Sean. “Well, here’s what we know.”

  “Are you hungry?” Sean asked, turning out of MDI’s parking lot and easing into traffic.

  “No.” I checked my e-mail on my phone and found an inquiry from a prospective client who needed wards around her home. I forwarded it to Mark to give to one of his people. I had a feeling this case was going to occupy one hundred percent of my time for the foreseeable future.

  A message arrived from Mark containing a six-photo lineup of older white males I could show Danielle, to see if she could identify John West as the driver of the BMW who picked up Missy Daniels on the night of the fifteenth. It was probably a long shot to hope Danielle would be able to recognize him, but if Cyro didn’t come through with info on the BMW seen leaving Felicia’s apartment, her I.D. might be our only way of linking West to the disappearances.

  “We need to eat,” Sean said. “I’ve been going since before sunrise. There’s a Moe’s on the way. Do you want a burger?”

  I looked up from my phone, irritated. “Sean, I just said I’m not hungry.”

  He set his jaw and drove on.

  Now that he was part of the investigation with the Court’s blessing, I’d had no choice but to declare a truce. I’d reluctantly agreed to share a vehicle for the afternoon, but I didn’t want to be harassed about eating. I got enough of that from Malcolm.

  I texted Mark to see if we had a last name and address for Rachel yet. I was impatient to go after her, but we needed a place to start. Zara—whom I’d woken up with a text message—had no idea where she lived. She said she’d ask around, but most of the women she
knew would be asleep for a while yet after working all night. Mark was contacting a friend in Vice who might be able to find her through arrest records. If that didn’t work out, maybe Cyro could find her.

  “Can I meet Cyro?” I asked.

  Sean glanced at me. “Why?”

  “I’ve never met a hacker,” I confessed. “I guess I’m just curious. What does ‘Cyro’ mean, anyway?”

  “It’s short for Cyanide Rose. I’ll ask, but I doubt it will happen. Cyro’s not very sociable. I’ve never met him.”

  My eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”

  He shook his head. “He’s a black-hat hacker, and wanted by a number of government agencies. He has to keep a low profile.”

  “How did you two cross paths?”

  “Four years ago, a banker hired my company to provide security. About two weeks in, I got a call from an electronically altered voice telling me our client was the CFO for a cabal, which was not something we were aware of or we never would have taken the job. Our client and other key members of the cabal were about to get taken out by a rival and the caller warned me to pull my people out before the hit went down. That call probably saved the lives of four of my people, two of whom were wolves from my pack.”

  “The caller was Cyro?”

  “Yes. After that, we developed a good working relationship. He charges a fortune, but he always delivers.” Sean turned into the drive-thru at Moe’s.

  “Have you ever tried to track him down?”

  “No. I doubt I could, anyway.” He pulled up to the speaker and rolled down his window. “Last chance for a burger.”

  The smell of food made my stomach growl. I relented. “Small cheeseburger, no onions.”

  Sean ordered for us. When he pulled around to the window, I waved a couple of dollar bills at him. He frowned at me.

  “Take it,” I said crossly. “You’re not buying my lunch.”

  With a sigh, he took the money and handed his credit card to the girl at the window. He passed me two paper bags filled with burgers and fries and we resumed our drive toward Danielle’s apartment. I handed him burger number one and unwrapped my own.