Doubly Protected [Werewolves of Hanson Mall 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (8 page)

“You made a lot more progress than I did, though. I didn’t think of anything useful. Maybe I can order dinner from one of the restaurants here though, and bring it to Hawthorne’s apartment and we can eat there tonight. Perhaps by then we’ll have thought of a few more ideas,” said Dylan.

Maelor put his empty cup down on the counter. “I need to get going. Your idea sounds good. Let me know what time to be there, and if Hawthorne doesn’t agree we’ll meet in my apartment instead. If we’re to talk freely we can’t do that in a restaurant anyway.”

* * * *

Dylan spent the first few hours of the day answering e-mails and letters, and sorting out the kind of disputes that could morph into battles if he didn’t stomp on them fast. By lunchtime though, he had a few minutes to catch his breath, and texted Hawthorne.

If I bring food, can Maelor and I eat at your apartment tonight please?

He had to smile at the typical Hawthorne-style answer.

What sort of food?

Anything on Sam’s Steakhouse menu, or The Dragon Palace menu.

The Dragon Palace will be good. How about six thirty?

It’s a deal.

He texted the details to Maelor, who replied,
Get lots of prawn crackers.

Laughing, Dylan pulled up the next item on his to-do list, but thoughts about the mental well-being center kept running around in his mind. The problem was, everything could be completely innocent. Wealthy people, celebrities, and people in positions of power did tend to airbrush inconvenient family members out of the picture, and sending them somewhere to be cared for, but locked up safely, was an obvious step.

But how could he add any knowledge to the investigation? It wasn’t as if he was wealthy or had a mentally impaired or addicted relative he wanted cared for. Besides, if the institution wasn’t kosher he certainly wouldn’t want to be responsible for sending anyone into danger. Sighing, Dylan returned to his work, reminding himself to order their meal tonight in plenty of time. That made him smile. Would Hawthorne let them into her bed again, even though it was so soon? Could he and Maelor woo her into their arms? He would settle for kissing and cuddling her. Actually, even just talking to her brightened his day considerably. She was a hell of a woman. Their woman, his and Maelor’s. She just hadn’t quite realized it yet.

* * * *

Even though Dylan had phoned through his order to The Dragon Palace in good time, the line had been long and it was actually after six thirty as he hurried through the glass doors into the professional suites, and juggled the bags of food to get his swipe card out of his pocket to open the elevator door.

It was only after he’d called the elevator and gotten in that he realized Sophie, the receptionist, had left for the day but the doors to the professional suite hadn’t been locked. Sighing to himself he opened the elevator again and got out, grumbling mentally that sure as hell by the time he locked the double glass doors to the foyer area the elevator would be gone again. But it needed to be done. Someone must have forgotten to lock the professional suites entry, maybe assuming Sophie was still around. She often stayed after her shift officially ended at six.

He dumped the bags of food on her desk, and swiped his keycard over the mechanism that closed the doors, then tripped the switch so they’d only open on command of a swipe card. He gathered his bags of food up again and saw that Sophie’s desk drawer was wide open, and her purse was sitting in it. Shock ran through his veins and his heart beat faster. Sophie would never ever leave her drawer unlocked, far less open. He could only guess she’d been preparing to go home and someone had interrupted her. Someone who had left the outer doors open.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and called Maelor.

“You’re late. What’s the holdup? Have they run out of prawn crackers?”

“I have the food but something appears really wrong. Sophie’s vanished.”

“I’m on my way. Call Cadfael.”

Dylan clicked off the call and punched in Cadfael’s number. “I’m sorry to interrupt, sir, but Sophie’s disappeared. Her purse is still here but she isn’t, and the outer doors were unlocked. I’ve told Maelor.”

“Rhion, get Hawthorne and stay with her and Willow. Willow, don’t let anyone into the apartment for any reason at all. I’m on my way down, Dylan.”

All the blood left Dylan’s body as he realized Cadfael was interpreting this as an attack on Willow and Hawthorne. Hell. And he’d called Maelor to come down here leaving Hawthorne unprotected.
How could I be so stupid? If she gets hurt it’ll be all my fault.

Dylan wondered if he should go upstairs to guard Hawthorne, but Maelor might have told her not to open the door, the way Cadfael had instructed Willow. Dylan paced up and down, staring out the glass doors into the mall, opening the door to the stairwell and peering up the stairs, and then pacing some more.

The ding of the elevator arriving startled him so much he jumped and whirled around. It was Cadfael and Maelor.

“Hawthorne?”

“I left her with Willow. She didn’t want to go. She was complaining about not getting her prawn crackers.”

“Tell me exactly what’s going on,” said Cadfael.

Dylan pointed to Sophie’s desk, and Cadfael picked up her purse and riffled through it. “Her wallet is still here, but her swipe card isn’t unless she has it on her person. Actually, she usually leaves it in the top drawer of her desk during the day, doesn’t she?”

Maelor and Cadfael reached for the top drawer together, but there was no swipe card. Sophie’s territory was extremely neat and tidy so anything out of place would have been very obvious.

Maelor scrolled through his cell phone and began giving orders. “You know what her car looks like and where she usually parks it? Check to see if it’s still there. Walk through every level of the parking lot and make sure she’s not lying in some corner hurt. And do not tell anyone what you’re doing. Understand?”

Dylan waited with a sick feeling in his stomach as Maelor gave very similar instructions to two other teams of security guards, before saying, “Dylan, you and I’ll search the tower. Cadfael, can you stay here to be command headquarters until I get back?”

Dylan realized Maelor was giving orders to their Alpha, but security was Maelor’s area of responsibility, and the thought that Sophie might be lying hurt somewhere meant they needed to get moving fast.

“You don’t intend to call the police?” asked Cadfael.

“Not until we’ve done everything we can. It’s not like we can share with them our fears about anti-wolf sentiment and a missing receptionist isn’t going to interest them much.”

Cadfael nodded and sat down at Sophie’s desk.

“The stairwell is the most obvious first place to look. He could have pushed the door open and shoved her inside.”

Dylan had already looked up the stairs several times while waiting for Maelor to arrive but nevertheless he followed Maelor into the stairwell for a proper look. By the time they’d made their way up one flight of stairs though, some of the panic was leaving his body and he was starting to think more clearly.

“We know he didn’t get Willow or Hawthorne, and he wouldn’t have been able to get into any apartments with Sophie’s keycard. I think we should look for her on the fourth floor. If he got angry and knocked Sophie unconscious when he couldn’t get to Hawthorne, he wouldn’t go walking up endless flights of stairs or carry Sophie’s body around the mall. He’d have dumped her in the nearest empty room.”

“You’re right.” Maelor started to run back down the stairs, so Dylan followed him.

They burst out of the stairwell to see Cadfael carrying Sophie out of the First Aid room.

“Call the nurse,” Cadfael ordered.

Dylan was glad to stop running and make the call. “Ay-lee, Sophie’s hurt. Can you come help her?”

“Hurt how? No, don’t answer that. I’m on my way.”

As he’d expected Maelor was already kneeling on the floor talking softly to Sophie, who Cadfael had sat on a chair. He turned to the elevator, waiting for the arrival of Nurse Eilidh. Her name was Celtic, as many of their names were, thanks to the ethnicity of the original inhabitants of the area. But since it was difficult to pronounce, most people learned to say it phonetically, Ay-lee, just as he’d reverted to saying in a time of stress. She was a very competent, no-nonsense nurse. She’d know exactly what to do to help Sophie. The question was, where was the person who’d done this to her, and was it as they’d all assumed, Jackson Bailey after Hawthorne? Or was this a coincidental attack?

Dylan went and got Sophie a bottle of water from the refrigerator in the First Aid room, but then wondered if he should give it to her or not, so was still holding it when Eilidh appeared.

The nurse kneeled on the floor beside Sophie, and Maelor stepped to the side giving her space. In a businesslike manner Eilidh checked Sophie’s eyes and placed a gentle hand on her forehead, then ordered, “Tell me exactly what happened, Sophie.”

“It was maybe twenty after six. Dylan, you’d just left. I was packing up for the day when a man I didn’t know arrived and went straight to the elevator. Of course the door didn’t open for him and he turned to me and wanted to know why the door wouldn’t open.”

Sophie stopped talking and ran a hand over the back of her head. Eilidh touched her shoulders and bent for a closer look at the back of Sophie’s head, parting her hair to check her scalp.

“There’s no blood but you do have a lump. What did he hit you with?”

Silently Dylan handed over the bottle of water and Eilidh gave it to Sophie who took a sip.

“I don’t know. I didn’t see it coming. I asked the man his name and the name of the person he was supposed to meet and I picked up the telephone to call them and tell them he was here, but he yelled at me and demanded I make the elevator work. I said his friend would come and escort him, he just needed to tell me who to call. He came across to my desk, saw the swipe card, and snatched it, and when I reached for the card he must have hit me. It’s all a blur until I woke up in the First Aid room just now.”

“That means he could be anywhere in the tower Sophie has access to. So the conference room on level six, some of the offices, and she can open the elevator at many floors. We’re going to need more help to search. The three of us can’t monitor it all ourselves.” Maelor pulled his cell phone out again and began making calls.

The nurse took Sophie back into the First Aid room. Dylan thought Sophie looked pale, but she was a brave woman and sensible as well. Besides, she wasn’t even complaining, which said a lot about her strength of character. She must have been scared when Hamilton attacked her. Assuming it was Hamilton of course. They’d need to get her to identify him when she’d recovered a bit. Likely her head was aching badly right now and she’d need some rest and peace first.

As for himself he foresaw a hell of a lot of walking up and down stairs. They’d need to lock the elevator to prevent anyone escaping in it by snatching someone else’s keycard.

As if Maelor was reading his mind he said, “Cadfael, you stay here as command center. Keep the glass doors locked and the elevator locked. Put your own swipe card somewhere someone won’t find it easily. That means the only way anyone can get out of the tower is through the stairwell and they’ll have to walk all the way down to this floor to exit. You can watch that from Sophie’s desk as well as man the phones for us. I’ll get everyone to report in to you after they’ve checked their area.”

“What do you want me to do?” asked Dylan.

“I’ve told everyone to meet us in the stairwell of their floor. We’ll go up to the top floor and work our way down, locking the stairwell doors behind us as we go.”

Fuck. Stairs. This was so not how I planned to spend tonight.
Dylan picked up the bags of now cold and greasy food from Sophie’s desk and dropped them in the trash.

* * * *

Hawthorne and Maelor had been laughing and joking over the menu from The Dragon Palace when Dylan had called Maelor, and Maelor had raced her up to the tenth floor and almost thrown her into Willow’s arms. She understood his need to hurry to find out what had happened to Sophie, but didn’t see why she couldn’t stay in her own apartment. But it seemed no one was listening. Cadfael was just as adamant that Rhion stay to protect her and Willow as Maelor had been that she be watched over.

“As if anything could happen to us here inside the professional suites,” Hawthorne complained to the shut door.

“Rhion, we’ll be fine here together. You should go and help them look for Sophie. She might be hurt,” added Willow.

“And Jackson Hamilton could be hiding in the stairwell waiting for me to go so he can attack both of you. I’m not going anywhere and neither are you,” said Rhion.

Hawthorne still didn’t think his presence was necessary, but since it was obvious the men weren’t going to change their minds she said, “Well let’s eat then. I don’t imagine Dylan will be bringing our meal any time soon. What can we make?”

Willow had been in the middle of preparing tacos, so they finished cooking, ate, and sat around talking and worrying about Sophie and about what could be happening. At one stage they heard people moving outside in the hallway but Rhion wouldn’t let the women anywhere near the door, and they thought it was their own people anyway. Cadfael texted them to say Sophie was safe, although she’d been bashed on the head. He also asked Willow to send a picture of Jackson Hamilton to Eilidh’s cell phone for Sophie to look at to see if he was the man who’d done it.

“Facebook. I didn’t unfriend Bailey deliberately so I could know what he was doing and likely there’ll be a photograph of him on Facebook,” said Hawthorne.

But there were no pictures of either Bailey or Jackson on their profile pages.

“How about the well-being center’s website? Are there any pictures of him there?” asked Willow.

But no, again there were a few pictures of the outside of the building, but nothing of the inside, and no picture of Jackson.