Snared

  The bar had been updated a bit since the last time I’d been here, with the shapes of martini glasses, cherries, and other drink paraphernalia carved into the pale, glittering surface. Behind the bar, a guy mixed drink after drink, his eyes glowing a bright blue as he steadily fed his magic into the thick sheet of Ice to keep it frozen, solid, and in one piece amid the heat from all the bodies gathered around it and grooving out on the dance floor.

  The music pulsed with a low, thumping beat, and Finn started shaking his ass in time to it as we pushed through the throngs of people and headed deeper into the club. A hand rose in the air, waving, and I spotted Owen standing at the far end of the bar. I waved back, put my hands against Finn’s shoulders, and steered him in that direction.

  Unlike Finn, who’d dressed up, Owen had dressed down in a pair of black corduroy pants and a dark gray sweater that outlined his broad shoulders. His black hair gleamed under the flashing strobe lights, which also made his violet eyes shimmer. I wasn’t the only one who noticed him. Several women gave Owen appreciative, come-hither looks, but his gaze met mine and stayed there. I went over, wound my arms around his neck, and gave him a long, lingering kiss, marking my territory. The women in question all pouted into their drinks and drifted off in search of easier prey.

  Owen looked at me, an amused smile playing across his lips. “What was that for?”

  “No reason, really. Maybe because it’s Wednesday?”

  “Wednesday, huh?” He leaned down and murmured in my ear. “Then you’ll have to come over later tonight, and we’ll really make it memorable. Why, Wednesday might even become my new favorite day of the week.”

  His low, husky voice sent shivers down my spine, and I kissed him again. “Deal.”

  Owen winked back at me, and then we both turned to the woman standing beside him.

  With her short black hair, toffee eyes and skin, and perfect features, she was quite simply one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. Supermodels would be jealous of her lush, curvy figure. Even when she was just standing at the bar and sipping a drink, she was the sort of woman who drew everyone’s eye—and envy.

  Roslyn Phillips gave me a warm, welcoming smile. “Hey, Gin.”

  “Roslyn.” I stepped forward and hugged her. “It’s good to see you. I just wish it was under better circumstances.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, Finn called and told me about Jade’s sister being missing. I’ve got the security footage all queued up for you in the back, but I don’t know how much help it’s going to be. I’ve already asked the staff, but no one remembers any kind of disturbance, fight, or major trouble last night.”

  I nodded back at her, then turned to Finn and Owen. “You guys stay out here. Show Elissa’s picture to the bartender and other workers, and see if anyone remembers seeing her.”

  Finn grinned at a passing redhead. “With pleasure.”

  Despite the fact that he was in love with Bria, my foster brother still liked to flirt with anything that moved. I was happy to see him getting his groove back after all the horrible things that had happened with Deirdre Shaw, but I still defended Bria’s honor, the way I always did.

  I elbowed him in the side. “Try to keep the partying to a minimum, okay?”

  Owen clapped his hand on Finn’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep him in line.”

  “You’re no fun, Grayson.” Finn pouted for a few seconds before his face brightened. “But you know what? That makes you the perfect wingman. C’mon. This is going to be good.”

  Owen blinked and opened his mouth to protest, but Finn slung his arm around Owen’s shoulder and steered them both out onto the crowded dance floor. Owen looked back at me, a panicked expression on his face, but I just waggled my fingers at him.

  “You boys have fun!” I called out over the pulsing music.

  Roslyn laughed and finished off her martini. “C’mon. I’ve got everything ready for you.”

  She led me toward the back of the club. It was slow going, not only because of the dancers and the drinkers but also because of the workers who stopped to get Roslyn’s advice or orders about this or that. Finally, we made it to a door in the back wall, and Roslyn opened it and ushered me through to the other side.

  She shut the door behind us, cutting off some of the noise and commotion from the main part of the club, and I followed her down a series of hallways. Several waiters moved past us, returning to work after their breaks, and a few giant bouncers were stationed back here too, keeping an eye on things in the VIP rooms through various spy holes cut into the walls.

  Roslyn led me into her office and gestured for me to sit in her desk chair. When I was settled, she leaned over me and logged into her computer.

  “I’ve got the security footage ready to roll,” she said. “Each camera is on a different tab so you can toggle back and forth between all of them.”

  “Thanks. I really appreciate this.”

  Roslyn nodded. “Anytime. And please tell Jade that I’m sorry and that I hope Elissa turns up soon.”

  “Do you know Elissa?”

  “Not personally, but she’s a college kid. Sometimes I think that they live here at the club.” Roslyn smiled, but her expression quickly turned serious again. “I can’t imagine what Jade’s going through right now. If anything happened to Lisa or Catherine . . .”

  Her voice trailed off at the thought of her sister and young niece. Roslyn shook her head. “Anyway, just holler if you need anything.”

  “I will. Thanks, Roslyn.”

  “Good luck.” She smiled at me again, left the office, and closed the door behind her.

  I pulled the keyboard a little closer, grabbed hold of the mouse, and started going through the footage.

  Roslyn’s state-of-the-art security cameras had a much higher resolution than the grainy ones from the country club, and she had a lot more of them showing both the inside and outside of Northern Aggression, plus some of the surrounding parking lots. Roslyn had fast-forwarded yesterday’s footage to about ten minutes before the cab had dropped off Elissa, so I watched the ebb and flow of people in, out, and around the club, looking for anything suspicious, unusual, or out of place.

  Northern Aggression attracted all ages, from those barely old enough to drink to folks who’d spent a lifetime partying hard. Young, old, and every age in between moved through the footage, along with humans, elementals, vampires, giants, dwarves, and every combination thereof. The club also catered to a wide range of incomes, everyone from poor college students looking to have a few cheap beers to wealthy businessmen who only imbibed the most expensive liquors. The nightclub truly was Ashland’s melting pot.

  The footage unspooled, and time passed, until at last a yellow cab cruised up to the club entrance. Elissa got out, paid the driver, and waited her turn in line to get inside. A few folks, men and women alike, tried to chat her up, but Elissa kept her eyes glued to her phone. Other than that, nothing out of the ordinary happened, and no one suspicious approached her.

  Once Elissa actually got inside the club at around eight thirty, I switched to the interior footage so I could track her movements. Instead of heading out onto the dance floor or over to the bar, she hugged the wall, keeping to the fringes of the crowd, her head moving back and forth. She was obviously searching for someone. But who? Maybe Silvio was wrong, and she had a guy on the sly, someone other than her official boyfriend.

  I followed her through the footage. Elissa glanced down at her phone, then back out into the crowd. She started to move closer to the dance floor, but something caught her attention, and she turned toward the elemental Ice bar instead. She stopped short, her entire body stiff with shock, her mouth wide open in a silent O of surprise. She stayed like that for several seconds before a passing waiter bumped into her, jostling her out of her daze. Her face crumpled, her shoulders sagged, and she whirled around and started pushing her w
ay back out of the club.

  I stopped the footage and called up another angle, trying to see what had upset her. It took me a few minutes, but I realized that Elissa was staring at a guy and a girl at the end of the bar. On the footage, the two clinked their beers together before downing their drinks. Then the guy pulled the girl over onto his lap, and the two of them started doing things that were better left unseen. I zoomed in on the amorous couple, took a photo of their faces with my phone, and texted it to Silvio: Who are these people?

  My trusty assistant texted me back less than a minute later. Guy is definitely Anthony Fenton, Elissa’s boyfriend. Girl looks like Rose Sears, one of Elissa’s friends.

  And just like that, everything made sense. Maybe Elissa had suspected that Anthony was cheating on her. Maybe another friend had seen Anthony and Rose at the club and had tipped her off. Maybe she’d even put a tracking app on his phone, like Silvio had on mine. Either way, Elissa had found out that Anthony was at Northern Aggression last night, and she’d come here to see what he was up to—which was basically screwing another girl in plain sight.

  And just to twist the knife in a little deeper, it hadn’t been some random girl but one of Elissa’s friends, someone who knew exactly how much Elissa liked Anthony. No wonder Elissa had rushed outside. I wouldn’t have wanted to stick around for that kind of betrayal either.

  I put my phone aside and went back to the security footage. Elissa hurried out of the club, stumbled into the closest parking lot, and leaned up against the side of the first car she came to. Given the way her head was bowed and her shoulders were shaking, I could tell that she was crying her eyes out, something that she did for a good ten minutes. Lots of people walked by her, heading to and from the club, but a crying girl wasn’t an uncommon sight at Northern Aggression, and no one stopped to ask her what was wrong or offer any kind of help.

  Finally, Elissa straightened up, wiped off her face, and made a call, probably for another cab. Then she started pacing back and forth in the parking lot, blowing her nose and wiping away a few more tears while she waited. Eventually, though, something caught her attention, something that made her stop pacing. She looked over to her right and stood there for several seconds, frowning.

  And then Elissa slowly started walking in that direction. A minute later, she disappeared around the far corner of the club, as though she was going around to the back of the building.

  And she never returned.

  I watched the rest of the security footage, both inside and outside the club, but the minutes turned into an hour, then two, then three, and Elissa never reappeared. So I went back and called up some different angles, but the cameras only covered so much space, and I couldn’t see what might have caught her eye.

  I double-checked all the footage and angles, with the same result. Elissa had just vanished into thin air, and no one had seen her since.

  Not good. Not good at all.

  I leaned back in the chair, drumming my fingers on Roslyn’s desk. Three things could have happened to Elissa.

  One: a cab could have shown up and taken her somewhere else.

  Two: she could have found someone willing to give her a ride to her next destination, wherever that might have been.

  Three: she could have been kidnapped right here at Northern Aggression, conveniently out of view of any of the security cameras.

  Since Elissa hadn’t come home and hadn’t responded to any of her sister’s frantic texts or calls, I was betting on option number three. And if that was the case, then I had no idea how I was going to find her. Hundreds of people, cars, and cabs came and went every single night at Northern Aggression. Sure, some people might dimly remember seeing Elissa crying in the parking lot, but once folks’ money ran out and their party was over, they were focused on getting to their cars and going home—not what anyone else around them was doing.

  Either way, Elissa was still gone and most likely in serious, serious trouble.

  If she wasn’t already dead.

  I hated jumping to that scenario again, but I was an assassin, and I’d seen plenty of the worst of human nature up close and personal—including my own.

  But I’d promised Jade that I would do everything I could, so I rewound all the security footage and watched it for a third time, focusing on everyone close to Elissa. So many people were crammed into the club that it was hard to keep track of everyone, much less pick out anyone who might have wanted to hurt her. No one paid her any special attention, and no one followed her outside. The most obvious suspect was Anthony, the sleazeball cheating boyfriend, but he’d been so busy macking on Rose that he’d never even realized that Elissa was here and watching the two of them break her heart.

  I drummed my fingers on the desk again, thinking about the surrounding area. Parking lots flanked Northern Aggression, and the nearest businesses were several hundred yards away. Those businesses’ security cameras would be aimed at their own properties, not farther down the street at the club. It was probably a dead end, but I grabbed my phone and texted Silvio anyway. He texted back a few minutes later, saying that he would look into getting all the security footage from the surrounding businesses. I thanked him and emailed copies of the Northern Aggression footage to myself, Silvio, Finn, and Bria, just in case they might see something that I’d missed.

  Once I’d finished, I left Roslyn’s office, strode down the hallways, and slipped out the club’s rear exit. There was one more thing I wanted to check.

  The back door opened into another paved lot, although no one parked back here, not even the staff, since the asphalt was so cracked and pitted with potholes. Dumpsters and trash cans overflowing with cigarette butts, used cocktail napkins, and empty liquor bottles ringed the area, forming a haphazard maze of rusted metal and rotten garbage. Shards of glass glinted like diamonds against the broken blacktop, and the stench of sour spilled beer permeated the air. A few lights glowed at the corners of the building, but they did little to drive back the darkness. Even the loud, continually pulsing music faded to a faint hush back here, and the relative quiet was somewhat shocking after the constant noise inside the club.

  All put together, it was the perfect place to kidnap a girl—or kill her.

  I looked up at the security camera above the back door. It was pointed out at the parking lot, just like it should have been, but the plastic case was busted open on one side, revealing several frayed, disconnected, dangling wires. Well, that explained why there was no footage from back here. I wondered how long the camera had been out of commission and if it had been broken by some drunk asshole chucking beer bottles at it or by someone with far more sinister motives.

  My phone beeped, and I pulled it out and read the message from Owen: No one remembers seeing Elissa last night. Trying to herd Finn toward the front door.

  I smiled, knowing that he wouldn’t have any luck with that, and texted him back, saying that I would meet them at the front of the club in ten minutes. That would give me enough time to search the parking lot. Oh, I didn’t expect to find anything, but I had to make the effort for Jade’s sake and my own conscience. I wasn’t leaving here without doing every single thing possible to find her sister.

  I had just put my phone away when I realized that the stones all around me were muttering—dark, dark mutterings that whispered of blood, violence, pain, and death.

  Now, that was nothing new, since I’d actually killed more than a few people myself in this very parking lot. But these mutterings were high and sharp, meaning that they were fresh and that someone had been up to no good here very recently.

  Maybe even last night, when Elissa had wandered back here.

  I reached out with my magic, listening to the stones, and realized that it wasn’t the walls of the club muttering so much as it was the broken pavement under my feet. So I palmed a knife and walked forward, scanning the shadows and slowly following the violent mutterings
to their source, as though they were musical notes dancing on the breeze in front of me. The mutterings led straight into the maze of Dumpsters and trash cans. Naturally. I wrinkled my nose, trying to ignore the stench of rotting garbage, and kept going. The farther I walked and the closer I got to the origin of the violence, the darker and harsher the sounds became.

  Something very, very bad had happened here.

  I skirted around a pile of empty cardboard boxes and found myself staring at a cluster of old, dented Dumpsters. Unlike the others, these Dumpsters had been emptied recently and pushed together like the three sides of a triangle, although wide gaps still remained at the corners. The formation created a hollow space in the center, one that was largely blocked from sight until you stepped up to the space where the corners didn’t quite meet. The mutterings intensified, growing harsher and louder, as though the musical notes I’d been following were building to a final, roaring crescendo.

  My stomach twisted. I knew exactly what those sounds meant.

  I eased forward. I took one step, then another, then another . . . until I could finally look through one of the gaps in between the Dumpsters.

  The first thing that came into view was her long blond hair, shining like dull gold against the cracked, dirty asphalt.

  My heart dropped, and my stomach twisted again, but I kept moving forward, even though I knew exactly what I would find.

  Her arm was next, flung out behind her, the torn sleeve of her red dress fluttering like a feather in the winter wind. Then the curve of her back. Her long, lean, bare legs. And finally, scuffed red stilettos that barely clung to her feet.

  I blinked and blinked, as if that would change the horrible image in front of me. But of course it didn’t. It never did.