Forging Day (Crucible of Change Book 1)

by Noelle Alladania Meade

  I grabbed onto Leo. “That bastard has Cordie. I’m going to find him and make him wish he’d never been born.”

  This time my phone rang. It was Mikah. “Olivia, they took him. The police just called me as next of kin. They found Berto’s van on the side of the road. There was a note on the dashboard. It said ‘payback’.”

  “Oh, no! Mikah—Cordie’s missing, too. They just found her car, but they didn’t say anything about a note.”

  Leo walked back into the room, tucking his phone into his pocket. “That was the state patrol. There was a note in Cordie’s car, too—and it said ‘payback’.”

  I heard Mikah yelling into the phone, so I put it back to my ear. “Olivia! We’re on our way home. Some officers are on the way. We’ll meet there.”

  “Cops are coming over again,” I said.

  “State patrol, too,” said Leo.

  Sharon didn’t say anything. She just took both of our hands and squeezed them, and then she went rigid, staring into space. “I see you talking to someone. You’re making plans. She’s angry.” She shook her head, taking a deep breath. “I hate when that happens.”

  “Sharon, who were we talking to?”

  “Didn’t I say? It was Vivian.”

  * * * *

  Mikah, Kat, and Tessa made it back to the house just before representatives of the various law enforcement agencies arrived.

  Sharon ushered everyone in. Lieutenant Clark and Officer Webster were here from the police. We got Trooper Garrison and Trooper McKenzie from the state patrol. I led them over to the large gaming table where we had our werewolf notes. “Let’s meet over here. It might be helpful.”

  Sharon made introductions. “I’m Officer Curtis. Leo and Olivia are the siblings of Cordelia Mitchell. This is Mikah, Berto’s husband.”

  I said, “I know Colby Green is behind this. He’s the werewolf that raped and murdered those women in the park. He took Cordie and Berto to get back at us.”

  Trooper McKenzie snorted in disbelief, but he was the only one with that reaction. “Werewolves? Yeah, right. This is a serious investigation. We’re here to get information on Cordelia Mitchell from her family, not play games.”

  “Look at me!” I demanded. “Am I a fairy tale? Ask Officer Curtis or Lieutenant Clark about werewolves if you won’t take my word. If you’re not going to listen, maybe someone else should come out instead.”

  His lips tightened into a white line and he glared at me. I should work on that tact thing Sharon keeps talking about.

  Lieutenant Clark actually spoke up to support me. “I understand it’s difficult to believe, Trooper McKenzie, but the murders in the park over the last month were all carried about by a werewolf. My officer here,” he gestured at Sharon, “was a witness to, and victim of, this werewolf.”

  “Colby Green, the man we think is behind this, attacked me and Kat here at the house the other night. I fought him off and hurt him pretty bad, but not enough to kill him. I got a text this afternoon from a number I don’t recognize. It just said ‘payback’s a bitch’. We started calling people, and we couldn’t reach Berto or Cordelia. We were trying to track them down when we got the calls that their vehicles were found, abandoned. There were notes saying ‘payback’ in both cars. Look at my phone.”

  I handed the phone to Lieutenant Clark. He and Officer Webster both checked out the text before handing the phone to the troopers.

  Korembi chimed in, “You forget, Olivia, but I found these on the driveway.” He handed the broken sunglasses to Officer Webster. “We not be knowin’ who they belong to, but there’s blood on them.”

  Trooper Garrison was looking at the phone when it dinged to signal an arriving text. He handed it back to me. I opened the message, and it was all I could do to not drop the phone.

  “Bet you feel like this right now,” was all it read, below a picture of me being sodomized while I looked back over my shoulder with tears on my face. My hand shook as I handed the phone to Sharon.

  “It has to be Colby. It couldn’t have been anyone else,” I said flatly.

  Another text came in, and Sharon read it out loud. “I know the cops are there. My droogies are watching you. Get rid of them and I’ll tell you what you have to do to get your sister and the fairy back. I’ll be in touch as soon as they leave.”

  “You have to go,” I told them. “Colby’s crazy. You guys saw what he did to the girls in the park. He has my sister. He has Berto.” That monster had my sister. I couldn’t stop shaking. “Leo, what are we going to do?” Kat hugged me as I cried. “This is all my fault. Colby only took them to get back at me,” I wailed.

  “Stop it! Colby is a crazy bastard. You’re not responsible, he is. And it’s not like you could read his mind,” said Kat.

  “I let him use me. If I’d kicked him out the first time he pushed me, Cordie and Berto would be safe now.”

  “I have a suggestion,” said Leo. “If they really are watching the house, they’re going to look for four people leaving in two cars. I’m closest in size to Lieutenant Clark. I say we swap clothes. He stays here, and I ride out with Officer Webster. What do you say? We can meet at the station and I’ll let you know all we’ve found out so far. Lieutenant Clark can stay here and coordinate things on this end.”

  Other than them looking nothing like each other, it wasn’t a bad idea. Mikah paced, his hands clenched into fists, while Clark and Leo debated. “Hurry up. God knows what they’re doing to Berto while you think about it.”

  Lieutenant Clark stood up. “I agree. We need to do this now. It’s the best plan on the table. Let’s change, and as soon as you leave I have a call to make.”

  Gracie had been hovering around Kat ever since she got home. She abruptly stood up and said, “I should be leaving now, too.”

  “No!” said Mikah. “Nobody leaves but the people they’re expecting to see going. You wanted to hang around with Kat. Now you’re here. Park it.”

  Her face turned red, and for a second it looked like she was going to argue with Mikah, at least until Kat took her hand and shook her head no. She looked around at all of us before she pulled loose from Kat and went to sit at the farthest point of the library away from us.

  While all our Goth drama was going on, Lieutenant Clark and Leo went to make the switch.

  I spent the time biting my nails to the quick. I didn’t care what they said. I knew this was my fault and it was up to me to fix it. I was the one who let the monster in the door.

  It was ten long minutes after the last car pulled away before my phone dinged again with another text.

  Good. Maybe you can be taught. Here’s how we’re going to play this. You’re going to show up alone at the address I give you. You’re going to have one hundred thousand dollars in cash. I know your little fairy friend is good for it. If you don’t show up at all, eventually they’ll both die, but not before I’ve played with them. If you’re late, or I see someone following you, I flip a coin and kill one of them. If my droogie fails to check in on time and tell me how cooperative you’re being, they’ll start to lose body parts. Since it’s late and the banks are all closed, I’m going to be generous. I’ll give you until tomorrow to collect the money. When you and boyfriend get back from the bank, I’ll be in touch.

  I texted back. How do we know they’re even still alive? If you’ve hurt them already, you can forget any deals.

  Give me a minute. You’ll be getting a video call. I suggest you answer it.

  I paced, waiting for the phone to ring. Finally! It was Colby. Even back in Human form, the left side of his face was a horror show. The empty eye socket was a burned ruin. He wasn’t even trying to hide. Kat stood by me, but everyone else stayed out of view of the camera.

  “You look tense,” he said. “I can fix that…later. Anyway, here’s what you wanted to see.” The camera panned to show Cordie and Berto bound back-to-back to a pair of solid-looking metal folding chairs. There were both gagged and I could hear Cordie sobbing. There was a li
ttle dried blood on Berto’s face and Cordie had a claw mark above her eyebrow and a black eye, but they were both dressed and I didn’t see any other injuries.

  He panned the camera a bit further, and I saw two other male werewolves in the background. Someone was on the floor, chained by the ankle to a steel support post. The man was covered in bite marks and blood, and one of the werewolves was licking his fingers. The raw whimpers let us know he was still alive. At least for now.

  I watched, horrified, as one of the werewolves bit the man again and mounted him from behind. I could hear Cordie screaming behind her gag. Colby turned the camera back to himself, but I couldn’t stop hearing those noises in the background. “Let’s give my boys some privacy, shall we? I’ll see you tomorrow, Olivia, and we’ll have lots of fun. Either that, or your sister and I can play, and then I’ll give her to the team when I’m finished with her. It’s up to you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  We Need a Response Plan

  The call ended. Even Sharon and Lieutenant Clark look shocked. I dropped the phone on the table, not even wanting to touch it.

  I went to Mikah and hugged him hard. “We’re going to get them back, no matter what it takes. I promise.”

  He hugged me back, clinging like a man drowning at sea. “Without Berto, my life is nothing. Please God, keep him safe. He’s a good man. A healer. You have to watch over him.”

  “You can’t go with him,” Kat told me. “You know what he’ll do to you. There has to be another way.”

  “And if I don’t go? We know what will happen to Cordie and Berto. It’s simple. We just have to figure out where he’s holding them and get them out before that.”

  “We know he’s in a house,” said Sharon. “An apartment wouldn’t have a basement like that. From what I could see of the construction style, I’m guessing we’re looking for a single-family home built in the sixties or seventies.”

  “If he owned a house, he wouldn’t be living in that crappy apartment,” I said.

  “He has to have at least one other associate,” said Lieutenant Clark. “I’m inclined to believe him about someone watching the house. He called too quickly after the patrol cars left for there not to be a watcher. You don’t see that style of basement in the immediate area, so the werewolves we saw in the call couldn’t be the watcher. They wouldn’t have had time to get from here to there in time.”

  “We’re getting silver bullets made, but they won’t be ready until after noon tomorrow. We don’t dare face three to four werewolves without silver weapons. He’s going to have to see us going to the bank in the morning, but we can’t move too fast or he’ll call before we have the bullets.”

  “You still can’t just go off with his partner.” Sharon paced the width of the library. “And we don’t dare try a tail or we risk the lives of the prisoners.”

  “What if you wired me, like they do on cop shows? Or put some kind of tracker on me? He’d know you can track my phone, but maybe you could hide something smaller in my clothes?”

  “We can’t just leave them with that maniac until tomorrow!” I’d never seen Mikah so close to losing it. He was always the stable one in our group. No matter what happened, he always kept his calm.

  “Mikah, we’ll find him.”

  “How? They could be anywhere in the freaking state at this point.”

  “No. They have to be reasonably close, given the timing of things. I’m not a cop, but I’m guessing somewhere in the Denver metro area, which still doesn’t narrow it down as much as we need it to. Can’t you guys use the phone number from his call and try to track that cell phone? They do it on TV all the time.”

  Lieutenant Clark gave me that look. “It doesn’t work quite like TV, Olivia. You know that. I’ll see what we can find out about the phone. We’re not going to let you go off alone with anyone, either. Even if you did agree to his terms and make this exchange, what makes you think he’d keep his word and release anyone once he had you?”

  While the Lieutenant placed his call, I called Leo from the landline to update him on the new developments.

  “I’m coming home,” he said, “but first I’m going to pay our silversmith friend a visit and see if he can’t hurry things along for us. Don’t worry. I’ll be careful. I don’t think they even know I’m out of the house right now.”

  I hung up with Leo. The lieutenant was still on the phone. “Sharon? Didn’t you say you had an image of us talking to Vivian?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Can you remember anything else? Where did it look like we were talking to her? Was it inside or outside? Was it night or day?”

  “Stop!” She put her hand up. “Let me try and focus.”

  She sat and closed her eyes. After what felt like a long time, she said, “It wasn’t day, but it wasn’t full night, either. She was still wearing a suit. It seems like it was inside, but the two of you were the strongest impression. Like both of you were the only color characters in a black and white movie.”

  Kat was rummaging through a drawer. “Here. I’ve got it.” She handed me Vivian’s contact card from the neighborhood watch meeting. It had a number and said to call her any time.

  The number rang directly to voice mail. “Vivian, this is Olivia Mitchell. I need to speak to you immediately on a personal matter of some urgency. Please call me the minute you get this, day or night.” I left the number for the land line, repeating it twice, and hung up.

  The phone rang not even fifteen minutes later. Caller ID was blocked. I grabbed it. “Hello?”

  “To whom am I speaking?”

  “This is Olivia Mitchell. Is this Vivian?”

  “Yes, it is. May I ask what your matter of personal urgency is, Ms. Mitchell?”

  “Don’t hang up. It has to do with Colby.”

  “As I indicated to the press, I was as surprised as anyone else at the horrible things he’d been involved with.”

  “My friend says that’s not entirely true, but I don’t care about the past. I need to know if you know where he is. He’s taken my sister and my friend. This is a matter of life and death. If you really weren’t involved with his ‘activities’, then you have no reason not to help us.”

  “I’m not prepared to discuss this over the phone, Ms. Mitchell, and in any case, while I sympathize with your plight, I suggest you discuss this with the police.”

  “You don’t think this is your problem, do you? Why don’t you think about this—once he’s done with us, what’s to stop him from coming after you? You’re next on the list, and you know it.”

  “I see. You may have a point after all. I’ll call you back.” She hung up without waiting for an answer.

  When the phone rang again, it was another unfamiliar number. “Hello?”

  “It’s Vivian. I switched to my private phone, just to be on the safe side. What exactly is the situation?”

  “Like I said, Colby has my sister and my friend. He’s threatening to kill them, or worse, if I don’t exchange myself for them. He wants a bunch of cash, too. He obviously has someone watching the house. The police were already here. He wouldn’t talk to us until his man confirmed they’d left.”

  “Why did I not listen to my mother?” Vivian said half under her breath. “Never fuck the help.” I heard the drumming of fingernails through the phone. “What is it you think that I can do for you, Ms. Mitchell—oh, hell with it−Olivia?”

  “Colby isn’t in his apartment. Do you know of any place else he might have gone? We’re looking for someplace with a basement, maybe an older house, like sixties or seventies. It has to be in reasonable range of the metro area. Does he have family or friends with a place that might match that?”

  “He doesn’t have any family in town that I’m aware of. He certainly didn’t own a house. He was living off of one of my credit cards until I had it canceled. That’s probably why he demanded cash from you. I’m not hiding him or helping him. The bastard nearly ruined my campaign.”

  “Didn�
�t he have any of his own money?”

  “Of course not. He couldn’t hold a job longer than a month without getting into a fight with someone or getting ‘the talk’ from Human Resources for improperly interacting with his female coworkers.”

  “Why were you dating him?” I really wanted to know.

  “Let’s lay out some things before we continue. I know about Lyons. If you pass on this information, I will tell certain parties where to find you. Now that we’ve gotten that unpleasantness out of the way, where was I? Oh, yes. Sometimes I had cases where the witnesses required a little hand-holding. Surprisingly, people are reluctant to testify against criminals with friends who might burn down their homes or dismember their families. I had Colby and his boys help them do their civic duty. I’m on the side of the angels on this. I made the city safer by putting these animals in jail. Over the course of things, I discovered some of Colby’s other talents—he was generously endowed and adventurous in bed. Such a shame he had to go over the line and actually kill those girls. What a waste.”

  I heard her long fingernails clicking against the phone. “Hmmm, there might be something. I have a number of rental properties. I used to send him to collect rent when the tenants got behind. I suppose it’s possible he made copies of the keys and is squatting in one of those places. I have a few that are vacant at the moment. Do you have a piece of paper? I’ll give you the addresses. Keep in mind, if I give you this information, I expect to hear my name mentioned only in the most positive of lights. I have been completely cooperative with the efforts to apprehend the sociopath Colby Green. I can be a good friend, Ms. Mitchell. I can be an even worse enemy. If that’s all you have for now, I’m keeping my masseuse waiting.” She reeled off the information, and hung up without waiting for an answer.

  I relayed the information to the others. “The question is, how do we check out these addresses without Colby knowing we’re doing it?”