A Torment of Savages (The Reanimation Files Book 4) (27 page)

“This belongs to Dr. Lane,” I said. “I recognize it; it’s definitely his. And these shades belong to Taj. As for why they’re here, I can only think of one reason. Jacob McNabb.”

Kyo’s frown turned into a look of surprise. “You don’t think those items are here arbitrarily.”

“No. I think they were left here on purpose and are meant to be a message. Oh God, this can’t be happening…” I took out my phone and called Taj, but I got the same message I got last night. I then called the Guardian Sun and asked to speak to him, but was told that Taj was not in. Next, I called Dr. Lane’s cell and house phone but both rang out. I then called the morgue and was similarly told that he was not in. From the tone of her voice, I could tell that the receptionist found his absence to be strange. I hung up and looked at Kyo with fear and rage battling for supremacy inside me.

“Taj’s phone is disconnected and he isn’t at work. Dr. Lane isn’t answering either and is also not at work.”

“You think Jacob kidnapped Taj, Dr. Lane, and Carlos?” Kyo said. I heard the slight skepticism in his voice.

“He’s out to ruin my life, Kyo, and obviously he’s targeting anyone I know. We already suspect him of committing murder to frame Ethan and thus cause a huge upset in my life. Kidnapping is nothing compared to that.”

“Okay, but how would he even know about Carlos?” Kyo asked. “Taj and Dr. Lane I can see, but…”

“How did he know all those things he had Taj write about! By stalking my life! He clearly has been following me or has had someone else tailing me and reporting back. So he’s seen me come to Carlos for help.”

“Selene, calm down.” Kyo put his hands on my shoulders, but I brushed them off and started to move toward the exit.

“I cannot fucking calm down,” I said, heading down the ladder. Kyo was close behind. “I knew Jacob was a threat, but I had no idea he would go this far just to try and ruin me. Murder and kidnapping? He’s more insane than his damn brother!” We were out of the juice bar and making quick strides to my car.

“So what are you planning to do?” Kyo asked as we got into my car.

“Confront Jacob and make sure he doesn’t hurt those three.”

“Yeah, but…”

Kyo was interrupted by my phone beeping. I quickly snatched it out of my bag to see if it was Carlos, Dr. Lane, or Taj contacting me. It was an unknown number, but when I read the text message I knew that while it may have come from a burner phone from Carlos, he was not the one who had sent the message.

“Selene? Who is it? What does it say?”

I had just been staring at the screen with a deep frown on my face. I held the phone so tightly my hand was shaking.

“Selene, what—?”

“A bridge that spans two worlds, a place where ghosts can touch the sky, a hidden chamber where you can curl up, hide, and hope not to die. At one of these places your friends’ lives will be undone, if you are not present to save them, before a quarter to one.”

“A poem?” Kyo looked bewildered when I looked up at him.

“I never pegged that asshole for poetry,” I said. “But this is clearly a message from Jacob.” I checked my watch. It was only forty minutes away from quarter to one. “Oh for fuck’s sake. He kidnapped Lane, Carlos, and Taj and sent me a riddle about where they are. And I have forty minutes to figure it out.” I slammed my hands against the steering wheel. “When I find Jacob I am going to rip his heart out through his throat.”

“Three locations.” Kyo had taken my phone so he could read the message himself. “From what you’ve told me I think I’ve figured out two of them.” He showed me the screen and pointed to the first line. “This seems like it’s talking about the Brooklyn Bridge,” he said. “It literally uses the word ‘bridge’ and, as bridges do, it connects two places, which you can romanticize as ‘two different worlds.’”

“Okay, makes sense, what’s the other one?” I was trying to stay calm because flying off the handle wasn’t going to help. But I felt like I was drowning. I had been trying to get help for Ethan, and now it looked like I would have to leave him at the mercy of the PTF and try to stop Jacob from killing three men. Not to mention the fact that my boyfriend was still a missing Savage. Could it really get much worse? Yes. If Taj, Carlos, and Lane died, if Ethan went to jail for murder, and if Micah never recovered his soul. Looked like I had quite a mountain to overcome.

“The one about a lost chamber where you can curl up and die,” Kyo was saying. “Sounds like that bunker Renton was using.”

“It does,” I said slowly, thinking it over.

“The other one I am having trouble figuring out,” Kyo said. “A place where ghosts may touch the sky…”

I was quiet for a few moments as I thought. Then it clicked. “Renton’s bunker and the Brooklyn Bridge,” I said. “If those are correct then it seems as though he’s using locations that have significant meaning to me.”

“So where’s the third location?” Kyo asked.

“The place that has the most significance of all,” I said. “Affairs of the Dead.”

“Makes sense!” Kyo said. Then his excitement deflated. “But which location are they at?”

“Affairs and the Bridge are too public to hold hostages,” I said. “We have to assume that wherever they are he is also, waiting to pull the trigger or stab them or however the son of a bitch plans to kill them.”

“So that would leave Renton’s bunker,” Kyo said. “It’s secluded and no one really knows about it.”

“Yeah…except…”

“What? Why aren’t you driving off?”

“The PCC knows about the bunker,” I said. “It was made more accessible, lighting was even added. So if that’s still a place that’s seeing traffic from the PCC there’s no way Jacob would be able to use it as his kill stage.”

“Makes sense,” Kyo said. “He probably thought you would jump on that one because it’s secluded compared to the other two.”

“A trick riddle,” I said. “Send me in the wrong direction and by the time I realize I’m not in the right place it would be too late. It would take way longer than forty minutes for me to drive to Brooklyn. I think the only place it makes sense for him to be holding them is Affairs of the Dead.”

“But what if that’s the trick?” Kyo asked. I had my hand on the keys ready to start the car and head into Manhattan. “What if he knew you would figure it out and head to Affairs when they’re really at one of the other two places? The Bridge seems least likely, I agree, but has the bunker been in use recently?”

I paused to think. “Not as far as I know,” I said. “Micah told me they’d gotten all of Renton’s things out a couple months ago.”

“See, so that could be where they are after all…”

“Damn it!” I slammed the steering wheel again. “So what do I do, Kyo? I can’t be in two places at once.”

“But there are two of us,” Kyo said. “Divide and conquer.”

“Okay, yeah, but how are you going to get there—?”

Kyo suddenly disappeared from the car and reappeared outside, standing next to my window, which I rolled down.

“I realized that along with being able to conjure my sword, I can still teleport as well,” he said. “I can’t get myself there in one fell swoop, but I can move more rapidly than you can drive. I’ve made myself very well acquainted with the city and the areas of your travails, so I know how to get to the bunker.”

“Kyo, are you sure? This could be dangerous…”

“I’m a human who can teleport and manifest a ghost sword,” he said. “And we are on a time crunch so we don’t have time to argue. Just get to Affairs of the Dead. I will check the bunker then the bridge and call you. Just go.” He disappeared and reappeared at the end of the block before disappearing again. It was the best plan we had for covering the three locations and I just hoped we would be able to prevent a triple murder. I started up my car and drove off, driving as fast as I could without breaking the speed limit.

There were only thirty minutes left.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The first thing I did when I got to Affairs was get off the elevator at the eighth floor to make sure Dr. Lane had not shown up. The receptionist told me that she had not seen or heard from him all day and confessed that she was beginning to get worried. I turned and headed back to the elevator, ignoring her questions about if I had seen him and if I thought she should call the police. I headed up to the tenth floor and marched up to the glass doors. Where I stopped, because the doors didn’t open. Beyond them, the suite appeared empty; I didn’t even see Amy sitting at her desk. I leaned close to the glass and turned my head to see if I could look down the hallway that led to Jacob’s office but it was out of view. When I stepped back, I noticed for the first time the piece of paper that was stuck to the left side of the door saying that the office was closed. I frowned. And when I checked my phone I saw that quarter to one was less than five minutes away. Panic surged through me. I called Kyo but he didn’t answer and that didn’t make me feel good. Had he been able to get to the bridge or the bunker? Did he find them? Had he encountered some other set back?

Worse, what if I had gotten the third location wrong? I had assumed it was Affairs of the Dead, it had made all the sense in the world, but the place was closed. My hands curled into tight fists and I resisted banging them against the glass until it shattered. This had all been a wild goose chase and now it would be too late to save Carlos, Taj, and Dr. Lane. What the hell should I do now?

I lifted my phone to call Kyo again when something occurred to me. I opened the message Jacob had sent and read it again.

“A place where ghosts may touch the sky…” I muttered. I looked at the empty office suite, then raised my head and looked at the ceiling. It clicked. I wasn’t at the wrong location; I was just in the wrong place.

Jacob was on the roof.

I ran back to the elevators, got on, and hit the button for the top floor. A short ride later I was running to the door at the end of the hallway. I flung it open and ran up a short flight of steps where I met another door that I barreled through. Right onto the roof. I stood there panting for a moment, looking around wildly and trying to get my bearings. If I was wrong about this and Kyo hadn’t found them either, I had absolutely no idea what I would do.

But I wasn’t wrong. Toward the middle of the roof I caught sight of a trembling figure sitting bound to a chair. Taj. I took a step forward and whipped my head around, but did not see Carlos or Dr. Lane.

“Taj!”

When he heard my voice, Taj raised his head. It was the first time I saw him without his shades, and his unseeing eyes were wide and still able to convey the terror he felt at his predicament.

“Selene? Is that you?”

“It’s me.” I started jogging over to him when movement in my peripheral made me stop and whip my head to the side. Jacob emerged from behind some large metallic thing that I think had something to do with the building’s air conditioning system. He had a sly smile on his face. In fact, he looked absolutely deranged. Andrew’s face bearing a similar expression flashed before my eyes. The only difference was that Andrew’s mental state was mostly due to outside forces. Jacob’s was all him. That was infinitely more scary and dangerous.

I took a step back as Jacob strode forward, his eyes never leaving my face.

“So nice of you to join us,” he said. He checked his watch. “With two minutes to spare.” He smile widened.

“Where are the others?” I held my ground and clamped down on my fear. I would not cower in front of Jacob.

“Why, do you see them around anywhere?” Jacob spread his hands and moved his head from left to right as though he were looking around.

“It…it’s just Taj?” I looked around again but it was clear there were only three of us up here. The piece of equipment Jacob had stepped out from was the only place someone could be hidden.

The look Jacob gave me made me feel sick. It was a look that said he had won. I had been conquered. My hands again balled into fists. Fists that longed to punch that look right off his face until there was nothing to see under the blood. The dark feeling that surged through me with that thought almost rocked me on my feet.

“Do you take me for a fool?” Jacob said. “Because I certainly did not take you for one. I knew you would unravel my clue and pick this spot as the place to show up. But what good would it have been for me to have all my collateral gathered here?”

“What do you want?” My voice was practically a growl. “You killed that girl, Ailani, and framed Ethan for her murder, now you kidnap my friends. What do you want, Jacob?”

“I thought I already made that abundantly clear,” he said. “I want to ruin your life.” He walked over to Taj and laid a hand on his shoulder, which made Taj flinch. It was all I could do not to run over and wrench Taj away from him. “You see, I thought I was on the right track after I recruited our friend here to help me shed light on your darkest secrets. I thought for sure the uproar would be the beginning of your downfall, but the timing was poor, what with these Savages running around and darkness infesting the land like some biblical plague.”

“So you decided to take a more drastic, deadlier approach.”

“Things weren’t going my way.” His eyes had narrowed and his voice dropped. “And young Taj here was starting to have second thoughts and wanted to back out. I guess I had not totally convinced him that you were the devil. Or perhaps there was a viper whispering in his ear, swaying him.”

“Selene…I’m so…so sorry. I’m so sorry…”

“It’s okay, Taj, it’s okay.”

Jacob’s face looked furious and he slapped Taj across the face, almost causing the chair to fall over.

“It’s not okay!” he roared. “It will not be okay until you suffer the way I have suffered. Until you are broken and torn down, and fallen so far you don’t think you could get any lower. Until your life is in so many pieces you will never be able to put it back together again. Until you are a shell of a human being carrying the weight of losing all the people you love. Like I am.” That last part came out as an anguished hiss. I knew Jacob was a broken man, and I knew it was because of actions on my part, but he had chosen to break the law in order to punish me and I had to stop him.