The officer frowned. “You were the woman he grabbed?” She looked skeptical.
Emma nodded, pressing her lips together in irritation. Duncan put his hand over hers, silently urging her to calm down. Emma took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to let go of her irritation.
“Do you know why he picked you?”
“No,” Emma answered shortly.
The officer sighed. “None of this makes sense.” She turned to Duncan. “Did you know him?”
Duncan nodded. “He was my keyboard player, Eric Masterson. I fired him yesterday when he found out about our bonding. Eric was never very comfortable with my bisexuality and when he discovered I’d bonded to two people, it sent him over the edge.”
“You’re bonded? Who are you bonded to?” the officer asked, surprised.
“Jake and Emma,” Duncan said, gesturing to his two lovers.
The officer flushed. She looked from Emma to Jake, then flipped a page in her notebook, looking down and biting on her lip. “So, Eric didn’t like the fact that you’d bonded?”
“I think he was more upset about finding Jake and me kissing than he was about the bonding,” Duncan explained, wryly. “He’s never been comfortable with two guys making out.”
“Why did you keep him on tour then?”
Duncan looked at the cop, confused. “We had a contract. The tour is my business, not just a hobby. I can’t very well fire the people I don’t like just on a whim.”
Emma rolled her eyes as the cop nodded in understanding. The woman obviously had all sorts of lame preconceptions. “Do you have any idea what he might have ingested that made him so unstable? Did he have a history of drug use while he worked for you?”
“No, he didn’t do drugs while he was my keyboard player, at least that I knew about. Well, except for some pot now and then.” Duncan smiled charmingly at the woman. Emma wanted to hit him. “I have no idea what he could’ve taken to cause this kind of behavior, though.”
The cop frowned and glanced at the body where technicians were working. “Obviously, we haven’t run any tests yet on him so I’m not sure about this, but there is a new drug in the city that just popped up and we’ve been finding a lot of people dead from it.” She sighed and closed her notebook. “It’s been brutal. The victims seem perfectly normal, amiable even, and then over the course of a few hours, they start to act crazy. Erratic. We haven’t been about to track its origins, though we know it’s a liquid and the kids on the street are calling it ‘Path.’”
“Path? That’s weird.” Emma thought about the missing bonded couples and the ability of those who were bonded to link mentally. She felt ill. “Have you had a lot of missing person reports lately?”
The officer looked at her, surprised. “Yeah, how did you know?”
Jake coughed and Emma prevaricated. “Oh, I’m not sure. I think I saw a news report about it or something?”
“Well, if you think of anything new, give us a call.” She pulled out a card and handed it to Duncan. “I love your music, by the way.”
Emma stared at her and the officer blushed, then walked away. Jake laughed out loud. “Emma, I think you scared her.”
“Oh, please,” Emma muttered, flushing. “She was all over Duncan and you know it.”
“You’re going to have to get used to people fawning on him.”
Emma snorted, then stood up. “I have a bad feeling about this new drug she was talking about.”
“You think it has something to do with the missing bonded couples?” Jake slung his arm around her shoulders as the three of them walked to the exit.
Emma nodded as Duncan grimaced. “Yeah. What was it Eric was babbling about? That he’d be able to ‘read’ anyone he wanted? And she said it was called ‘Path.’ That’s too close to ‘telepath’ to be a coincidence.”
Duncan sighed as he held open the ballroom door for her. “I agree.”
Emma opened her mouth to continue her speculations but then her phone rang. Who could be calling now? She fished it out of her small purse and looked at the unfamiliar number before sliding her finger across the screen. “Hello?”
“Ms. Bell? Is that you?”
Emma frowned as she heard a girl’s voice. “Yes, who is this?”
“Ms. Bell! Oh my God, you have to help us! They kidnapped us, and I can’t call my parents because they threw me out and—” The voice broke off as Emma heard a loud crack over the phone.
“Samantha? Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me, Ms. Bell, please,” Samantha whispered over the phone, her voice frantic.
Emma strained to hear. “Samantha, where are you? What’s happened?” She pressed the phone closer to her ear in an effort to hear. There was some crackling and she hoped she wasn’t about to lose the signal. Jake tugged her to the windows on the opposite side of the hallway.
“They grabbed us right after my dad kicked me out. Jonathan was with me and we were going to go to his house when this car pulled up. They had guns! They hit me and I woke up alone in this room. I don’t know where Jonathan is, but they have other girls here.”
“Samantha, are there windows? Can you tell where you are?” Emma prayed the girl had more information as Duncan rubbed her back soothingly.
“We’re high up and we’re in a city. I think it’s Philly, and everyone here has bonding tattoos. Ms. Bell it hurts! They separated all of us and they keep taking blood samples. And Ms. Bell, Ms. Brown is with them! She’s the one who takes our blood.” Samantha sounded desperate.
Emma felt her blood run cold. “Ms. Brown? The vice principal? Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m positive,” the girl cried. “Please, you have to help us!”
Emma shoved her shock down. She couldn’t afford to get hysterical now. “Okay, it’s okay. I’m going to help you. How did you get access to a phone?”
“It was in another girl’s jacket. The guards didn’t search her because she collapsed as soon as they brought her in. Some guy was yelling in the hall. That was, like, ten minutes ago. You were the only one I could think of to call.”
“Okay, I’m going to get help. Don’t worry.” Emma wondered why the girl didn’t call 911. She glanced out the window, then gasped as she realized she could see a few auras flaring here and there in the city outside. She frowned, wondering, Could I find Samantha? “Samantha, I want you to describe everything you see, inside and out, to me, okay? Can you do that?”
“Yes, okay,” Samantha answered in a shaky voice. “We’re in a warehouse somewhere, locked in an office or something. The windows are dirty, and I know we’re on the second or third floor because we can hear people beneath us.”
Emma concentrated on the girl’s voice, sending her senses out into the city. She leaned against Duncan, unconsciously drawing on his energy and on Jake’s solid sense of where he was in relation to everyone else. She could see the auras of a few people in the city below her. As she looked east, toward the river, she felt a shock in her mind and an aura flared brighter than all the others, a quick flash of scarlet that pulsed and then was gone. She narrowed her eyes. That’s where Samantha is, she thought.
“Ms. Bell, I have to go. I think someone’s coming,” Samantha hissed in her ear.
“All right, Samantha. I’ll find you, I promise.”
“Okay, just—please, hurry. Two of the girls are in a coma or something. I don’t know why, but I think it’s because they were kept from their bond-mates.”
“I understand,” Emma said grimly. “I promise I’ll find you.” She sighed as the phone went dead. She hoped Samantha would be okay. She looked up at Jake and Duncan. “I think I know where to find the missing people.”