Cipher

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.

He couldn’t do this.

That’s complete bullshit. His mother’s voice, musical and determined. She’d never accepted the words from him, and she certainly wouldn’t if she were around now, with so much on the line.

Andrew stood. “Can we find out when Patrick last spoke to Ben?”

Anna didn’t have to check. “Four days, he said.”

So they’d had plenty of time to find a place and hole up. “We keep looking,” he said finally. “We track down everything we can, every lead, and we check them all out.” In the absence of magic, it was all they could do.

“How do we do that when each place could be hours away in any direction?” Miguel asked quietly.

There was only one thing he could think of. “Wynne Albrecht. We’ll use the cult’s own tricks against them.”