“Whoa. Slow down.” He rubbed a hand across his eyes, tucked the sheet around his waist then took the computer from me and settled it on his lap. “Gimme a sec to catch up.”
I paced back and forth on the rug in front of the futon. “I know he has two older sisters. Both his parents are alive, and at least one grandmother. No idea about extended family.” This was the family who’d adopted him when he was fourteen, after the parents who’d adopted him when he was a baby had been killed in a car accident. Even though Idris had been with the Palatinos for less than a decade, I knew he’d fully embraced them as family, as real as any he might’ve been born to.
“I’m working on it, hotshot.” He flicked a glance up as he typed, then raked a more thorough gaze over me. “I like the new look.” A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.
I stopped my pacing, looked down, then rolled my eyes. I still had on what I’d worn to bed: pink tank top and blue panties. No bra. “Oh great. Nearly naked,” I groaned, though I couldn’t fully hide my own amusement.
“Yes, you are.” The smile lingered on his mouth, then he dropped his eyes to his screen.
“It’s not fair.” I plopped onto the futon to watch him type. “I’ve never seen younearly naked.”
“I’m naked right now,” he told me, eyes still on the screen, though the skin around them crinkled in amusement, “but Ihave the sense to keep the sheet over me. It might be too much for you.”
“I can take anything you dish out,” I shot back, grinning. If the view from the waist up was any indication, I had no doubt he’d look good naked.
“I do love a challenge,” he murmured with a low chuckle, working the touch pad and clicking on stuff. “Here we go. Sister, Amber Palatino Gavin. Sister, Rose Palatino. Parents, Angela and Jerome Palatino. All in the Seattle area. Maternal grandmother, paternal grandfather living. Definitely extended family. Aunts, uncles, cousins.”
I nodded. “Let’s focus on the immediate family. Can you get them to a safe spot?”
He gave me a reassuring nod, then glanced at the clock on the end table. “Five-fifteen a.m. I need to connect with Zack. Is he up?”
“No clue,” I lied. I had every confidence he was awake since the demahnk slept about as infrequently as the lords did, but Ryan only knew Zack as human. “He’s usually up before me anyway. I’ll go make coffee and see if I can find him.”
Ryan gave an absent nod, already doing stuff on his laptop again.
I returned upstairs, looked out the back window and was unsurprised to see Zack nimbly climbing over the high wall of the new obstacle course, neck and neck with Eilahn in the predawn light. I turned back to the kitchen and got a pot of coffee going, and a few minutes later I heard a thump on the roof as Eilahn found her favorite spot, and the simultaneous creak of the back door as Zack entered.
“Hey, Zack.” I held out a towel and gave him the rundown of my morning revelations and suspicions while he wiped off a sheen of sweat and mud. “And now Ryan needs your help to arrange a safe house.”
“Good work,” he said with an approving nod. “I’ll go check with him.”
“Thanks.” I grimaced. “I want to be sure they’re safe.”
He gave me a reassuring smile. “We’ll do everything we can. I promise.” He tossed the towel neatly through the laundry room door and into the hamper, then headed down into the basement.
I set to work cleaning the kitchen in an effort to channel my angst and worry. Unfortunately, Zack and Ryan kept the kitchen fairly spotless, and the three minutes it took to empty the dishwasher and wipe down the counters didn’t do much to ease my mood.
I pulled an egg carton from the fridge then fumbled it, barely hearing the squish-crunch of eggs meeting the floor as a truly horrible thought occurred to me. “Zack! Ryan!” Ignoring the mess, I ran for the steps and bounded down. “Check to see if any of his family are missing. One of his sisters? A cousin?”
Both Ryan and Zack turned to look at me, faces grim.
“Oh shit,” I breathed. “Who?”
“His sister Amber and his mom,” Ryan said. “They both went missing a few weeks ago.”
It fit all too well. I sank to sit on the futon as dread clenched at my gut. “Pull a pic of Amber,” I said dully. “I bet she’s our vic from the trailer.”
Chapter 15
Tears of fury stung my eyes as I mercilessly whisked the surviving eggs. A photo of a smiling Amber in her wedding dress confirmed her as the murder victim. Poor Idris. No wonder he was cooperating. Sister tortured and killed, and no telling what they threatened to do with his mom, if she was even still alive. And Idris was the kind of guy who’d do everything he could to protect anyone—even a perfect stranger. This surely ripped his heart out.
Ryan came upstairs but didn’t wisecrack about the ferocity of my egg-murder, which told me his news wasn’t particularly good. I dumped the eggs into a pan on the stove. “Anything?”
“Not really. They were abducted from a mall parking lot in broad daylight,” he told me, voice flat. He pulled two mugs down from the cabinet, filled both with coffee. “They had lunch with some ladies from their church, left the restaurant, but never made it to their car.” Impotent fury swept over his face. “Security cameras malfunctioned, so no vid, and no witnesses have come forward.”
I jabbed at the congealing eggs and let out a number of curses.
“You asked about the last call made on the phone Idris used,” Ryan said as he dumped cream and sugar into one of the mugs, left the other black, then brought them both to the table and sat. “It was from the Austin area about two hours earlier.”
I scraped eggs as I did my best to cling to the sliver of hope that offered. “They stole a cell phone in Austin and headed northwest. Called, then turned off the phone and probably ditched it for good measure.” I sighed. “Not much help. Thanks for checking though.” But then I frowned. “I keep coming back to Tsuneo being in this area. That meanssomething. Maybe Idris was here with him, and they’re moving him somewhere else?”
Ryan grimaced. “‘Northwest of Austin’ covers a lot of ground. We need another lead.”
He was right, damn it. The location clue had felt like a big victory but was virtually useless by itself.
I removed the eggs from the heat, clicked the burner off and mentally shifted gears. “Give me your opinion on something.” I pulled two plates from the cabinet and divided the eggs onto them. “If you were holding Idris against his will and wanted his cooperation—having already killed his sister—would you also kill the mother?”
He remained silent for a moment then shook his head. “Makes more sense to keep her as insurance. A hostage.”
Thin relief went through me. I placed the pan in the sink, nodded. “My thought as well. So, the good news is that she’s probably not dead.” I set one of the plates and a fork in front of Ryan. “The bad news is they almost certainly have Idris’s cooperation.” I grabbed my plate and a fork and thunked down into the chair across from him, mood suddenly bleak over our lack of progress. “Now I know why Idris told me to stop looking for him.”
“You like him a lot,” he observed.
I squirted ketchup onto my eggs, ignored Ryan’s wince as I did so. “He’s like a kid brother. A seriously talented and really great kid brother.”
“I’m sorry. This must suck for you.” He forked some eggs into his mouth, gave me an approving nod.
“It does.” I offered him a slight smile. “You’d like him too.” I paused to eat. “Mzatal loves him,” I said after a few minutes. “Like a son.”
Ryan leveled a deeply skeptical look at me. “Mzatal? Like a son?”
“Yeah.” I started to dump sugar into my coffee, then remembered Ryan had already fixed it the way I liked it. “Crazy, I know, but he really does. Mzatal hasn’t stopped looking for Idris since he was taken.” I took a long sip of coffee, then lowered the mug and gave an evil smile. “And Mzatal slammedJesral after he and Asshole sent Idris to Earth. It was fucking beautiful.”