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“Come in,” Viper said, leading the two agents into the clubhouse. It was well past five a.m. now, and I was sure we’d woken the agents, but they looked put together as usual.
He led them to the breakroom, and Viper, Phoenix, and I sat with them at the table.
“This AMBER alert, do you know anything about it?” I asked, showing them the notification on my phone.
“We’ve been briefed, yes,” Agent Bishop replied.
I pulled up the text and showed him the photo. “We received that a couple of hours ago.”
Agent Shields took the phone from me and enlarged the photo. “We received the same photo. That’s why the local police issued the alert instead of waiting the customary twenty-four hours for missing persons cases.”
“Makes sense,” I said and then read them what the tipster had said.
“This texter say anything else?” Bishop asked, scribbling in his notepad.
“No. But know, this text line is completely anonymous. We can’t reply to or trace the texts that come in,” Viper added, pointing to my phone.
“I bet if you offered up a reward for any witnesses, someone might come forward,” Phoenix said.
“I mentioned that to the boss after we got the photo,” Agent Shields replied.
“We did talk to a couple of dock workers, one said he saw the boat. He didn’t give us any information that wasn’t in the photo except he confirmed the stripe is red, and also said the boat’s name is The Trickster.”
Bishop raised an eyebrow. “Oh really? You got a name for this witness?”
Phoenix looked at me questioningly. “Not sure I should say. He’s a vamp who claimed to have a photographic memory. We gave him the text line in case he remembers anything else.”
Bishop jotted notes into his notepad. “Forward us anything he sends you.”
I nodded in acknowledgment. “Who are those girls, anyway?” I asked, just because I was curious. “I mean, we know their names, but how were they taken? The AMBER alert didn’t say.”
“Their parents say one was at a sleepover with the other, but there were no signs of forced entry, so they assumed the girls must have snuck out sometime during the night. No idea who took them or where they were last seen, though.”
“So, whoever took that photo knows about not only us, but the BSI as well,” Phoenix pointed out. “And he or she somehow knows or assumes the kidnappers are vamps.”
“We need to find this person,” Shields said, seeming frustrated.
“Your computer guys get a trace or anything on the sender?” I asked.
Bishop shook his head. “No, it was sent to the FBI’s Crimestoppers anonymous text line, but from a burner phone which is no longer active.”
I chuckled. “So, it’s not actually anonymous then if they can trace it.”
“No, but the reason it’s called that is because they’re not required to give their name, but if people want to assume the messages aren’t traced, that’s on them.” Bishop shrugged.
“Well, it seems you guys are on top of it, so we’ll back off for now,” Viper said. “I hope you find the girls.”
“There are rumors of human traffickers coming to the city, so we suspect this may be the start to it, unfortunately.” Shields sighed.
I knew that but didn’t say anything. However, I was under the impression that the traffickers were humans. I never thought they’d be vamps.
“That’s terrible,” Bloome said, coming into the breakroom with Shadow trailing behind her. Though, I knew she’d been eavesdropping outside the room since I could smell her pheromone perfume the whole time. “I’m happy to help with a locator spell if you bring me something personal of theirs. But I’ll need an item from both girls, not just one.”
“We’ll take that under advisement,” Shields said, looking skeptically at the witch.
“You’d be a fool to turn it down,” Shadow said from behind her.
The agents stood. “Understandable. Obviously, contact us if you find out anything else,” Bishop said.
Shadow and Phoenix walked the agents out.
I looked at Viper. “Still want me to see what I can dig up?”
He stood. “Of course.”
“On it,” I replied, getting up to head to my apartment. “But after I get some shut-eye.”
My eyes widened as I hopped off the bus and looked around. The streets of Los Angeles were bustling with beautiful people, and the sun behind tall buildings cast shadows over the sidewalks. Homeless begged for money, and street buskers played instruments in hopes of getting tips thrown into their coffee cans and upside-down hats. Adjusting my backpack on my shoulder, I looked again at the address on my phone and put on the walking directions. Seemed I had six blocks to go to reach the pay-by-the-week motel where I’d made a reservation.
“Hey, good lookin’,” an older woman said as I passed. She had huge tits spilling out of her tight purple top, and her red lipstick was smeared a little. She looked drunk, or high, or both. “Need a date, sweetie?” she slurred with a lazy smile.
“No thanks,” I mumbled before picking up the pace and walking faster.
I couldn’t believe how crowded this place was. I had done a near-obsessive amount of research on this city, pulling up every Google Maps photo I could find to see what I was getting myself into.
Finally reaching the motel, I stopped in front of it and frowned. “This dump is ninety bucks a night?” I asked myself. With a sigh, I wandered inside and checked in. I paid for two weeks in advance before taking the card key from the clerk and heading toward my room.
I breathed a sigh of relief to see it was clean. One double bed, a dresser, and a small but functional bathroom. After unpacking my oversized backpack, I shoved it into the closet underneath the dress shirts I’d hung up. The jeans and pants I folded nicely on the rack above the shirts, and everything else went into the dresser drawers. The toiletries I stacked neatly on the bathroom counter.
Time on my phone told me I had an hour to get to the audition I had scheduled. “Shit.”
I took a quick shower and put on a dress shirt and jeans, hoping the wrinkles weren’t too noticeable. I pulled up a car service on my phone and ordered a ride to my destination while I perfected my hair. The phone alerted me my ride was here as I sprayed on some cologne. After snatching the folder containing my portfolio of photos, I raced out the door to my appointment.
The clock showed I had five minutes to be there, but the map app showed I still had almost three miles to go. The traffic was moving at a snail’s pace, and I began to panic. I knew I wouldn’t be there in time.
Should I call and say I’m gonna be late?
“Ma’am. Excuse me, but is there an alternate route or something you can take?” I asked the driver.
She pulled the gum out of her mouth and set it on a cup in the cupholder before looking at me in the rearview mirror. “Nope, sorry, cutie. This is the fastest route. LA traffic is a bitch.”
I never ran into traffic problems like this in Texas. Lesson learned.
I arrived six minutes late, racing into the lobby and giving the receptionist my name.
“Sorry I’m late, traffic.”
“Shocking,” she muttered before handing me a piece of paper with the number thirteen printed on it. “Have a seat.”
“Thanks,” I said, finding an empty chair in a waiting room full of men. Men... who all looked just like me.
Well, crap.
I blinked my eyes open and scrubbed a hand down my face with a groan. Why was I dreaming about events from five years ago? These dreams had been coming to me a lot lately, and I didn’t like it. I picked up my phone from the nightstand and saw it was close to four p.m. I slogged out of bed and headed toward the shower.
After I was cleaned up, I took the stairs down into the clubhouse and saw Venom in his wolf form. He sat on his haunches on the concrete floor, looking at the television we had mounted near his cage. I went over and patted him on the head.
“Last night of the full moon at least, huh? You excited about being a papa soon?” I asked him.
He stared up at me and woofed softly. I didn’t need him to use his yes/no squares to answer the question, I knew he was, it was all he talked about. They had decided to let the sex of the baby be a surprise, so nobody knew what to get the kid. The hens of the house were especially annoyed by this. It made me laugh.
I headed toward my office, a little sad that I’d never be a dad. I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted kids, but it definitely wasn’t happening now. I thought about my family back in Texas, my mom, dad, and sister. I could still see and talk to them, but Viper had told me I would to have to fake my own death or something in about ten years. With a sigh, I sat down and booted up the machine until all the monitors flickered to life. After putting in my password, I frowned when the antivirus software alerted me to a problem.
“Dammit, what now?”
I clicked on the notification and saw another piece of malware had come through. I was getting sick of this crap. I isolated the malware and used what I’d seen Rocky do to remove it for good. After a few checks, I saw the computer was clean, but realized I had to do something. Thoughts of completely tearing down the system and rebuilding it from scratch filtered through my mind. But the idea of having to do that made me want to stab myself in the eye instead, since it had taken me months to build it when I first got here. Hours and hours of sleepless days. However, it was a real possibility if I couldn’t stop this shit.
“What’s up, buttercup?”
I looked up to see Jemini standing in my doorway holding a coffee mug that read Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?
How many damn smartass coffee mugs did we have in this joint?
“More malware,” I murmured. “Got rid of it.”
Her eyes widened over the rim of her bloody beverage. “Are you serious? What the hell. How does this trash keep getting in?”
I shook my head. “I wish I knew, but I’m this close to cloning the drives and then wiping it all clean. Start over with a new server.”
“That sounds like a lot of work,” she commented.
“It is, and if you help me, it means a lot of sleepless days to get it back up and running. I’m not ready to do that yet, though.”
She sat in the chair. “Hey, didn’t Rocky say she put something on the system so the malware couldn’t get back in?”
“I thought so,” I muttered, annoyed. “Obviously didn’t work.”
Jemini asked, “What can I do?”
“Well, let’s teach you how to hack into NOPD’s computer system. See what they got on the kidnapping of those girls.”
She turned her head to the side. “I thought BSI was handling that.”
“They are,” I said. “But Viper told me to keep on top of it. No harm in being in step, or hell, even one step ahead of the cops.”
Her green eyes sparkled with mischief as she set the mug down and pulled up a chair next to me. “Let’s do it.”