“Yes.” He held up the gun, its barrel pointing at the ceiling as he brandished it. “Otherwise, we may have no choice but to kill anyone who may not have the information we need.”
The collar, Ben had said. Clearly whoever had kidnapped him didn’t realize Jackson had already destroyed it.
If she told them, they might not believe her. If they did believe her…
Time, that was what they needed now. Time for Jackson to cast a spell or for Anna to use her contacts.
Kat licked her chapped lips and winced. “May I have a glass of water?”
“No.”
Without empathy, Kat had to fall back on the lessons Callum had forced her to learn. Body language.
She took in the blank expression, the cold eyes, the easy grip on the gun. This wasn’t a tense man, or a frightened one. This was a man so far gone into madness that he wasn’t even angry.
Dangerous. He was dangerous, and he clearly wanted her to start talking. Fast.
Kat swallowed. “What do you want to know?”
His jaw clenched. “Where is the collar?”
Truth or lie. She had a split second to decide. “I don’t know.”
The man shook his head. “Try again, Miss Gabriel.”
We don’t have it. An answer guaranteed to make them all useless—and therefore expendable. So she met his gaze and put everything into the lie. “I told you, I don’t—” His dispassionate expression didn’t change as he lowered his arm and shot Ben.
The sound was deafening. Like thunder in a closet, rattling through her almost hard enough to distract her from the sick feeling of something wet and warm splattering across her face.
The shot.
He’d shot Ben.
He’d shot Ben.
Shock held her rooted in place as the man turned without a sound and left, leaving Kat alone in a room with an unconscious shapeshifter and the lifeless body of her friend.
Chapter Eighteen
Most of the faint hope Andrew still harbored died when he found Kat’s cell phone wedged in a storm drain outside the warehouse. Julio’s car was still parked on the street, and there was no sign of either of them.
He kept it under control as he drove to Kat’s apartment. Mackenzie and Jackson would be checking any and all of the public places they could have gone, like Mahalia’s or Dixie John’s, so he could do this.
With any luck, they’d be watching an old sci-fi movie with the lights down and the telephone ringer off, and they wouldn’t even realize Kat had dropped her phone.
The last shred of possibility, and it flared into desperation as he stood outside the apartment and heard movement inside. He pounded on the door. “Kat?”
He had to knock again before the door popped open. Sera stood there in sweatpants and an inside-out tank top, both clearly hastily donned. “Kat’s still at Julio’s…” She trailed off as she studied his face, then swore softly. “What happened?”
He gripped the edge of the doorframe. “They’re not here?”
“No.” Sera pivoted and got to the dining room table in two steps. She picked up her phone and flipped through the screen. “She texted me…this afternoon. Said she was going to help Julio paint a room, and they might go out later. That was the last I heard.”
If anyone had unearthed them somewhere, getting drunk and playing pool, Andrew would’ve gotten a call. “They’re missing.”
“Shit.” Sera shoved her phone into her pocket and snatched up a hair elastic from the kitchen table.
“Where’s the last place anyone saw them?”
“I found Kat’s phone over at the warehouse.” His heart thumped painfully. “I was about to go back to Jackson’s office. He’s—he’s already looking.”
“I’m coming with you.” She shoved her foot into a shoe while twisting her wet hair into a knot at the back of her head. “Grab my keys off the counter, will you? Do we need something of Kat’s? For Jackson, if he needs to try to use magic?”
“I’ve got her phone.”
Sera hopped on one foot and pulled her other shoe on. “What about Julio’s phone? Maybe her friend from Birmingham can track the phone to Julio, if he’s still got it. Trigger the GPS or something?”
“Ben’s missing too.” He shoved her keys at her and turned for the door. “We’ve got to move.”
She did, grabbing a leather jacket off the back of a chair without bothering to find a warmer shirt. “Is Anna on her way?”
“Should be.” And Patrick too, someone with reason enough to hunt down the bastards who’d done this.
“I’m driving.”
He counted the streets and turns between the apartment building and Jackson’s office, trying to find a way to keep himself centered and calm. Using the little things to distract himself from disaster.
Anna’s car was parked in front of the office, but it was Miguel who met them at the door. “Nothing?”
“No,” Andrew said shortly. “Jackson?”
Miguel shook his head. “Patrick sent Anna some info, and Jackson’s been helping her run some of it down.”
The inside of the office didn’t look like chaos had descended. Jackson and Mackenzie were both on the phone, and Anna was scribbling something on a white board in the corner.
Sera touched Andrew’s arm, just the slightest brush of fingers, but her energy swept over him like a warm breeze in a cold room. “She’s with Julio, and Julio’s not going to let anything happen to her. We just need to get to them.”
Somewhere to the left of Alec’s deserted desk, Andrew had lain on the carpet, bleeding. Dying. He had half-memories of Kat leaning over him, her tears splashing hot on his skin as she screamed herself hoarse.
“I told her this was over,” he found himself confessing. “I promised her better than this.”
“I know.” Sera pulled at his arm, planting one hand in the center of his chest to urge him to sit on one of the empty desks. “You sit, and you take a deep breath. Then you take another. Then you find out where the cult is, and you kill every person who had a hand in kidnapping Kat. And no one will touch her again.”
“That’s a damn bloodthirsty suggestion for someone who’s trying to calm me down.”
“We all have our roles. You don’t run with a lot of submissive wolves, do you?”
Jackson slammed down his phone and rose. “Not good news, I guess.”
Andrew held up Kat’s phone. “I found it outside our building. Can you…?”
The other man’s eyes clouded. “I tried a tracking spell already. I was able to lock on to Kat, but the location kept jumping all over the map. Someone’s scrambling it.”
Andrew squeezed his eyes shut. The cell phone’s plastic casing cracked in his hand, and he forced himself to relax his grip as he opened his eyes. “So what’s next?”
“Skip tracing,” Anna said from her position by the white board.
“What the hell is that?”
“We trace the paper trails. Known associations.” She drew a line between two names and capped her marker. “Hazelton has a sister with a Louisiana driver’s license, and one of the other cult members inherited her dead mom’s rental properties on the Gulf. If we track it all down…”
“We could find where they’ve gone to ground.” Jackson rose and walked over to examine the board.
“If they’re snatching people, they need a place to take them.”
Mackenzie held up her phone. “Tell us what to do. Who to call.”
He didn’t have a clue. This was Jackson’s specialty, Anna’s, anyone’s but his. He was an architect before he was a wolf, before he’d been tasked with taking care of everyone in his charge.