Embraced by Darkness (32 page)

“I take it the twins didn’t take this too well?”

“They were witnesses to the mauling, and apparently neither of them said a word before or after the trial. Doctors said it was shock.”

“And the wolf? How long did she survive after serving her time?”

“Two days. She was found by her sister shot with silver and beheaded in her apartment.” I hesitated. “Her head was never found.”

“Wonder what they did with it?”

“I don’t think I want to know, thanks.”

He grinned. “No sense of adventure, that’s your problem.”

“Too right. The boys were suspects but apparently had watertight alibis. They were both at a nightclub, and plenty of people saw them.”

“An easy thing to arrange if you’re a face-shifter.”

“Yep.” I moved on to the next file. I had to hand it to Sal—when she went digging, she really dug far and wide. Next were two passport photo shots, and I frowned. Neither of the men looked anything like the man I’d seen in the club. The man who’d been called boss.

Of course, it was always possible that he was head of security rather than one of the twins, as I’d been presuming, and therefore it was totally possible for him to be called boss without actually being the owner.

“What?” Rhoan said.

“Wait.” I went into the system and did a photo search through the motor registration and licensing departments. Once I had my photos, I split the screen and put them both up.

“This,” I said, turning the laptop around and pointing to the passport photos, “is the Jorn and Yohan who came into Australia fifteen months ago. And this”—I pointed to the license photos—“is the Jorn and Yohan who own the club. And he,” I added, pointing at the license photo of Jorn, the paler of the twins, “is the man who smelled like Jared.”

“Jorn Duerr, Jared Donovan, and what was the other guy’s name? Jim Denton? Same initials, same man?”

“Good possibility. So does that mean it was Jorn who chatted up all the women on the island?”

“The only way you’re going to know that is by asking the women themselves.”

“Sorry, I’ve had my quota of speaking to the dead for this week. But we could try talking to the parents.”

He glanced at his watch. “It’s not too late now to make some calls.”

“You’ll help?”

He nodded. I placed the laptop on the coffee table, took a quick sip of my coffee, then rose to get my cell phone. He took two numbers, I took one. But it took longer than I thought it would to get information, simply because talking to anyone who has suffered a loss was hard—especially when the mere act of talking to them again raised their hopes of possible leads. A possible ending.

“Okay,” Rhoan said, when he hung up from the last of them. “According to the parents of my two ladies, neither of their daughters slept with anyone up there. They did, however, mention meeting a human who was trying to chat them up. One lot can’t remember a name, the other thought it was something like Yuri.”

I leaned back in the sofa with the remains of my cold coffee. My leg was aching and I couldn’t be bothered getting up to refill my cup. I sipped it, and tried to bluff my taste buds into thinking it was iced coffee. “Mine think it was John. Which means both twins are working the island. What I don’t get is, why would they wait until the women are back home before they abduct them? Why not do it while they’re away from normal surroundings?”

“I think you need to ask our two suspects that. But,” he added hastily, as I made motions to get up. Never an easy thing to do when you had a sore leg, I might add. “Not tonight. Tonight you need to sleep and rest. Tomorrow we’ll head over to the club together and suss out the place.”

“Jack might not be happy about that. They are, after all, human.”

“I said suss the place out, not beat them up. We can do that
after
we get some evidence. Right now, we have nothing but theories.”

“And a background that points to a long history of kidnapping crimes.”

“They weren’t convicted of anything in either England or Germany. If we move too soon, we’ll lose them here, too.” He paused. “Do you think they could be behind the truck and the shooting attempts on your life?”

I frowned. “Why would they even suspect I was onto them?”

“We share the same surname as Adrienne. She disappears, you appear. A suspicious mind wouldn’t think that was an accident.”

“But how would they track me? I mean, no one but you and Kellen knew where I was going from the airport.”

“They put trackers on your car. It wouldn’t be hard to slip one into your purse.” He rose. “Where is it?”

“Over near the door.”

He walked over, picked up the purse, and started fishing through it. After about five minutes, he dropped the purse and walked back. “There you go.”

The thing in his hand was about the size of a dime. Which was rather large for trackers, these days. Hell, I’d had ones the size of a pinhead embedded into my foot. And then there was the ones in my ear. “Jared helped carry my bags the day I left the island. I wonder if he slipped it in then?”

“Could be.” He dropped it on the ground and stomped on it. “Might be worth you going in disguise tomorrow.”

“Good idea. I still have those wigs Liander gave me.”

He nodded. “Then go get some rest. You look beat.”

“If I tried telling you to go rest, you’d have a tantrum.”

He gave me a grin. “Too right. I’m a boy. Boys can look after themselves. You’re a girl. You need to be loved and protected.”

I tossed my empty cup at him. “And you said you hadn’t been listening in on my conversation with Kellen.”

He laughed and caught my cup one-handed. “So I lied. Now go get some rest.”

I did.

R
hoan pulled into one of the many vacant spaces in the parking lot and stopped the car. He leaned forward, crossing his arms over the steering wheel as he stared at the building that housed Mirror Image.

His look was one of amusement. “God-awful-looking place in daylight.”

I pulled at the black wig irritably, then said, “Doesn’t seem to stop anyone from coming, though.”

Indeed, the lot was half full, which wasn’t bad considering it was barely eight in the morning. Even the Blue Moon would be ecstatic to have this sort of crowd at this hour, and
that
place was doing the best of all the wolf clubs.

“They’ve got an awful lot of security lining the building.”

“Cameras and infrareds are pretty much the norm nowadays, aren’t they?”

“They’ve also got motion sensors.”

“So?”

“So, why have motion sensors and infrareds on a building that supposedly houses twenty-four-hour action for human and nonhumans?”

“Given they’re apparently getting into a little blackmail action with some of their ‘special’ guests, it’s not entirely surprising they’re security conscious. They wouldn’t want the police wandering in and uncovering their covert operations, now, would they?”

“No, I guess not.” He glanced at me. “You ready?”

I nodded and opened the car door. Even though it was still early in the day, the sun held the promise of heat. Melbourne weather had apparently decided that we needed some of the warmer stuff after the series of chilly days, and the forecasters were predicting a hot one. Hence the jeans and the bright yellow tank top. I needed to get some sun on my arms.

We walked across to the front doors. The bouncer, a big man with shoulders the size of a tank, cheerfully waved us through to the payment area, then opened the main doors.

Music blasted out. Rhoan looked at me. “Techno. I hate techno.”

So did I, but I shoved a hand into his back and lightly pushed. “Stop whining and get inside.”

Bright light hit us the minute we entered, momentarily blinding me and forcing me to a halt. It rolled on quickly enough, leaving dots of red and yellow dancing before my eyes, dots that seemed to get lost in the myriad of colors so evident on the packed dance floor. The scent of sex and lust swam around us, its sweet aroma stirring my hormones to life yet again.

I touched my brother’s shoulder and pointed to an empty booth halfway along the wall to our left. He nodded, and we made our way down the stairs, my heels once again slipping on the polished white tiles. It was a wonder they didn’t do something about that, because they were leaving themselves wide open for lawsuits in the sue-happy environment of modern Melbourne.

“Fuck,” Rhoan said, once we were seated. “This place is
huge
. It’s got a good feel, though. Even with all the humans.”

I raised an eyebrow. “So you’ve changed your mind about the ‘no humans in wolf clubs’ rule?”

“Not in the least.”

I grinned and nodded toward the double doors at the end of the bar. “The private rooms are in there, but the doors are security-key coded.”

“Good thing about security-keyed doors is the fact that a loss of electricity fucks them up.” His gaze scanned the room. “What’s down near the back?”

“Bathrooms and fire exits.”

“What about an electrical switchboard?”

I shrugged. “It’s not something I tend to notice. Why?”

“Because we need to cut the power.” He rose. “When the lights go out, get through those doors. I’ll meet you there.”

“The room we want is on the right.”

He nodded and walked away. I crossed my arms and watched the dancers on the floor for a while. Desire stirred, but I ignored it. Not only because I’d made a promise to Kellen, but because it would be stupid to risk it even if I wasn’t here to work. Besides, most of those out on the dance floor this morning were human. Maybe all the nonhuamns had gone into the private area.

Of course, my reluctance to dance with humans didn’t actually stop them from coming over and asking. After the tenth such refusal, I began to hope Rhoan hurried himself up. Coping with hurt male sensibilities wasn’t high on my list this morning.

After another five minutes, I had my wish and the nightclub plunged into darkness. I switched to infrared, slipped off my heels, then rose. Given that everyone else was basically staying still—except for those caught in the middle of sex—I didn’t want the sound of my heels clicking giving me away or attracting attention. I pulled the shadows around me, just to be doubly sure I wasn’t seen, then headed for the security door.

It was unlocked, as Rhoan had said it would be. Knowing the guard would be at—or near—the door I opened it quickly, and stepped inside. He was fast, I had to give him that, one hand going for his gun while the other reached for the alarm button on the wall. He never completed either move, simply because I stormed into his mind and stopped both.

The alarm, I discovered,
wasn’t
affected by the power cut, because it was on the backup system. I shuffled through his thoughts and discovered that the downstairs area—the area we needed to get into if we wanted to sniff out more of what was going on in this place—was also connected to the backup generators.

The one good bit of news was the fact that the room behind us wasn’t being used. Though it would be tonight. Some ripe for the picking—or should that be right for the taping?—minor politician had been invited in for a drink and a game.

Which I found truly amazing. Granted, being caught in compromising positions wasn’t something new when it came to politicians of
any
caliber—but with technology getting ever smaller, and ever cleverer, you’d think they’d learn to keep their pants zipped. Or, at the very least, learn to keep themselves away from compromising situations.

The door behind me opened again, and a familiar shadow moved stealthily inside.

“How’d you cut the power?” I asked.

“Found a screwdriver behind the bar and shoved it into a couple of power sockets.”

I stared at Rhoan. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No.”

“You could have been killed doing something like that!”

“I’m not stupid. The handle was insulated.”

I shook my head, unable to believe he’d taken such a risk. “Next time you feel the urge to do something that dumb, let me know. I’ll hit you over the head and maybe knock some sense back into it.”

“Look,” he said, a touch impatiently, “it was the only way to blow the system without making them suspicious. And if they have power-surge cutoffs installed, we haven’t got a whole lot of time to waste arguing before the system is back up again.”

“I think the fact
everything
went off means they haven’t got surge cutoffs installed.”

“Riley, just shut the fuck up and concentrate on the matter at hand.”

“Forgive me for not wanting a dead brother,” I muttered, and rifled through the guard’s thoughts again. “Seems they’ve got a largish contingent of guards on standby downstairs.”

“How large is large?”

“Ten on standby, fourteen altogether.” I hesitated. “They’re all nonhumans. Weres, shifters, and vamps.”

He raised his eyebrows. “That’s a rather big force to have considering they’ve had no trouble here, isn’t it?”