Authors: Dean Murray
Actually, I was
starting to get a little worried about Tristan. He was showing an
unhealthy willingness to go along with things that could get him
killed. He'd at least had an excuse the night that Jackson had come
after me. Back then he hadn't known how dangerous my life was
getting.
He didn't have
that kind of excuse this time around, but he was still willing to do
whatever it took to help me get my family back. Given that he still
didn't seem quite over his feelings for me, part of me was worried
that I was taking advantage of him, but I just told myself that he
was a big boy and that I'd made my position where he was concerned
perfectly clear. It helped, but only a little.
Making the
arrangements for the actual kidnapping took longer than I thought it
would, but eventually we got everything squared away to Isaac and
Taggart's satisfaction. It was a good thing I had them on my side;
planning something like this was completely beyond my current
capabilities. It should have made me uneasy that I was about to break
more than a dozen laws, but mostly I was just glad that the next time
around I would have a better idea of what I was doing. I tried not to
examine that thought too closely.
We'd only been
driving for a total of about five hours when we got the call from
Isaac confirming that all of the pieces were in place. At precisely
four-thirty Tristan called Detective Belarose and told her that he
was ready to come clean about what had happened to me, but that he
would only talk to her, and only if she came to the school at
nine-thirty that evening.
At nine pm
Tristan got Brad to drive him over to my high school, where Isaac and
three of his people had jimmied the door open a few minutes
previously. Once Tristan was inside the school with Isaac and the
others, the two of them called me to tell me that everything was a
go, and then I spent the next half hour imagining what was happening
next.
The police
officer would drive up to the school, park her car, and then walk
inside, where Isaac and the others would grab her. Restraining
someone who actually knew what they were doing in a fight was pretty
tough, but by then the school would be empty enough that the plan was
for Isaac and Heath to use their hybrid forms to do it.
When you threw
in that kind of massive size and strength advantage and combined it
with the fact that Heath's ability meant that the detective would
literally never see what hit her, it wasn't too much of a stretch to
believe that our people would be able to disarm her and grab her
without having to hurt her at all.
Once they had
her restrained, Heath would keep everyone invisible for long enough
to get everyone out to the plain, unmarked van that another of
Isaac's people would drive up to the school.
If our guys
could manage to keep her quiet on the way out to the van, then from
there it was an easy, quick trip out to the hole-in-the-wall motel
that Isaac had rented for our base of operations while we were in
town.
Taggart once
again demonstrated that he had nerves of steel by stopping at a
drive-through burger joint three minutes after Detective Belarose was
supposed to arrive at the school. The last thing I really wanted at
that point was to order food, but I knew I was going to need to pack
in more calories if I was going to be able to last through the
assassination attempt.
I ordered a
couple of cheeseburgers and didn't argue with Taggart when he ordered
me a strawberry milkshake to go along with his huckleberry shake. It
seemed crazy to me to do something so mundane while our friends were
in the middle of something that could backfire so horribly, but I
knew that Taggart didn't think like that. Isaac and the others would
either be successful or they wouldn't, but either way they wouldn't
be calling us for at least another fifteen or twenty minutes.
We'd actually
been back on the road for exactly sixteen minutes before Isaac called
my phone. We'd stopped a couple of hours earlier and picked up a new
sim card for me, which meant that my phone was once again safe to
use.
"Isaac,
did everything go okay?"
"Yeah,
she's back at the motel with us. Your friend insisted on coming along
though."
I wanted to
bang my head into the dash. The plan had called for Tristan to be at
the school so that there was one less thing out of place that might
be picked up by Detective Belarose's psychic abilities, but he was
supposed to set himself up as another victim in the kidnapping. Once
Isaac and the others had ahold of the policewoman then Tristan had
agreed he would come rolling out in his wheelchair to 'save' her and
then be promptly clubbed unconscious so that once we released her she
wouldn't have any proof that he was involved in the kidnapping.
"Seriously?
Is he trying to ruin his life completely?"
"I can
hear you, Adri. I may not have superhero hearing like the rest of
your friends, but when you yell like that even I can hear you from
across the room."
I took a big
sigh as I heard the floor creak and Tristan's voice got closer. "I'm
sorry I yelled."
"Apology
accepted. I figured that you would eventually come around, I just
didn't think it would happen so quickly."
Tristan's voice
was just as confident and in control as I remembered from my time on
the cheerleading squad. That wasn't a surprise, but it didn't stop it
from still being frustrating.
"I wasn't
talking to you, Tristan. Let me try again. Isaac, I would like to
apologize for yelling in your ear like that. Also for involving
Tristan in the first place. I mistakenly thought that nearly being
beaten to death by a vampire would knock some sense into him."
A bed creaked
on the other end of the line and I could only assume that meant Isaac
had crossed over to wherever Tristan was sitting.
"Apology
accepted. What do you want me to do about Tristan now that he's
here?"
"I don't
suppose any of you are hungry?"
"Sorry, we
ate a family of four a couple of hours ago."
Taggart took
his eyes off of the road for just long enough to shake his head at
me, but all that did was make me smile even harder. I could hear the
laughter dancing around the edge of Isaac's tone, but that was only
because I knew him so well. For virtually anyone else he would have
sounded completely serious.
"Very
funny, you two. You do realize that this is a really bad joke to play
on me when there's a terrified police officer in the room with us,
right?"
Tristan's voice
was still remarkably composed and confident, but I could tell that he
was more than a little nervous at the direction that the conversation
had taken. To be honest, I couldn't blame him there. He'd seen
Jackson killed by Taggart in his hybrid form and if the plan had gone
as discussed then there was a very good chance that he'd seen at
least Isaac and Heath in their hybrid forms at the school.
"Fine,
you're right, Isaac and the rest don't actually eat people, but you
and I are going to have a very uncomfortable talk when I get there.
For now, stay out of everybody's way and don't make them reconsider
several thousand years of dietary tradition. Isaac, I'm turning on
the video function right now, can you do the same on your end?"
"Sure, one
second."
It was a good
thing we were somewhere with a strong enough connection to do a video
call—I had a sneaking suspicion that Ms. Belarose was going to
be hard to convince even with the video working. As the video feed
started working I found myself looking at a very striking redhead who
was currently tied to a chair and gagged with what looked like
somebody's tube sock. Based on the way she was glaring at Isaac's
phone she wasn't particularly amused by the cannibal jokes.
Sparing a
moment to hope that they'd used a clean sock, I cleared my throat.
"Detective, my name is Adriana Paige. Do you by chance recognize
me?"
I got a
cautious nod in response, but the glare didn't lessen at all. Oh,
well, there wasn't much I could do now but attempt to convince her
that we weren't actually the bad guys.
"I would
like to be able to carry on a real discussion with you, but in order
to do that I need you to promise to hear me out before you start
yelling for help. Can you agree to that?"
She considered
my question for several seconds before giving me a single curt nod.
"Isaac,
what do you think, was she telling the truth? Can you even tell given
all of the shocks to her system?"
"Yeah. I
mean it's harder given the fact that she's only nodding instead of
talking, but she actually seems to be a lot less shocked than I would
have expected. Heath, can you please ungag her?"
Once the gag
was out she turned to the side and wiped the side of her face against
her shoulder. "Okay, Paige. Say your piece."
"Don't you
have any questions?"
"Yeah, the
first one is why you had Tristan and the rest of these goons kidnap
me. Presumably you'll get to that at some point during your speech
though, so let's get chopping."
"You're
not curious about the fact that Isaac and Heath turned into
giant…well, monsters for lack of a better word?"
"Sure, you
can answer that too if you want."
Her nonchalant
attitude was throwing me further off of my stride than I would have
expected it to, but I nodded and just launched into the best
explanation I'd been able to come up with.
"I'm sorry
that you spent so much time looking for me, but I actually left home
of my own free will. I've been with…friends this entire time
and I'm not being held under duress or anything. I could leave at any
time."
"Given
that I've just been kidnapped by something that is a match for
whatever killed your friend Jackson, you're going to have to excuse
me if I'm having a hard time believing that."
"How do
you know that a hybrid killed Jackson?"
"Tracked
down what was left of his body. It wasn't easy, and there wasn't a
lot there to go off of once I finally found it, but he was definitely
killed by something with claws like your buddies were sporting when
they grabbed me. Again, why should I believe that you're the one
running the show here? It makes a hell of a lot more sense that one
of these monsters is in charge and just using you to throw me off the
scent."
"Fair
enough, that's a reasonable theory, but you're wrong. Here, let me
show you."
I turned the
camera so she could see the car and slowly panned it around until
she'd had a chance to see every inch of the interior. Taggart didn't
look particularly happy about adding yet another person to the list
of individuals who know what he looked like, but he didn't protest.
"See, it's
just the two of us, I'm not tied up and I'm even armed."
"Interesting.
There isn't anything in your background indicating that you knew how
to use a gun when you left home."
"I didn't.
I said I'm not being held against my will, that doesn't mean that
I've been off vacationing in Disneyland."
I hadn't meant
to be quite so snippy, but that actually brought a smile to her face,
so I decided to continue going with a more confrontational approach.
"Let's cut
the crap, Detective. You know that I'm not a captive. In fact, you
knew it before I even turned the camera around and showed you the
inside of the car. You knew it almost from the first moment that you
heard my voice."
"Really?
And how would I have known that?"
"The same
way that you knew you weren't in danger from my friends despite all
indications to the otherwise. You knew that I was safe the same way
that you knew how to find Jackson's body. Your biggest problem right
now isn't believing me, it's believing yourself."
"I don't
know what you're talking about."
She was good.
For a split second I almost believed her, but there was something in
the back of her eyes that said otherwise.
"When did
you start getting those feelings, Detective? It's obvious that you're
not prepared to acknowledge them for what they really are, but you
have to have noticed that you're too good, too lucky for your success
to be solely because of hard work and gut feelings."
She wanted to
lie again, but even more than that she wanted to find out what I
knew.
"Fine, I
get…glimmers about things sometimes. What can you tell me?"
"You've
seen what my friends can do. By now you're ready to believe that the
world we live isn't much like everyone believes it is. Werewolves,
vampires, shape shifters, they are all real, but they aren't the only
thing out there that science can't explain yet. Some humans like you
and me have…abilities. I can visit people in their dreams and
you are what most people would call a psychic."
"And you
just lost me right there."
"I'm not
talking about spirits and the other side, Detective, I'm talking
about something else. An ability to sense things that other people
can't sense. I don't know how your particular ability works, but I do
know that it's very real, and that you can get better at doing
whatever it is you do if you'll just get out of your own way and
believe that what I'm describing is really possible."
I could see
that she wasn't convinced, so I played my last card. "Developing
your ability would make a big difference in how good of a cop you
are. That's a lot of criminals you could bring to justice, a lot of
innocent people you could save."
I had her. She
would have made a good poker player, but there was an unmistakable
air of longing in her eyes. She didn't care about bringing criminals
to justice. It was a nice benefit of her job, but she was in it
because she wanted to save the innocents that otherwise would just
fall along the wayside. Everything I knew about her pointed to that
fact, but even if it hadn't I still would have known in that instant
exactly what made her tick.