Catch Me When I Fall (32 page)

Until her father entered the room, followed by two Nightmares.

He backhanded her so hard she jerked sideways. Kayla shrieked.

“How dare you disobey me!” Richard yelled. “I have done nothing but treat you with kindness, and this is how you repay me?”

“Treat me with kindness? Are you crazy? You tortured my friend right in front of me!”

“That was the price you paid for saying no to me. Her pain is on you.”

Kayla scowled at him. Hatred filled her heart, and behind her back, her hands balled into fists.

“Now, because I am the loving father, I will give you one chance.” Richard held up a finger. “Who helped you escape?”

“Go to hell.”

Richard frowned, then snapped his fingers. The Nightmares pounced.

“Goddamnit!” I screamed as I yanked my hand out of Tabbi’s. I’d tried to evaporate to Kayla as soon as she left the building, but nothing happened. Again.

I kicked the wall so hard a shock wave of pain ran into my hip. Then I punched the wall and kicked it again. My chest constricted and my eyes burned. Raising my fist to punch the wall again, Tabbi walked into my arms. She wrapped hers around my waist.

Tabbi said no words. She just hugged me like a little sister would. Embracing her back, I forced down the tears that wanted to explode. Crying wouldn’t help Kayla. Only finding her would.

“I’m going to kill him, Tabbi.”

“You better.”

didn’t sleep when we returned to the room, no matter how exhausted my body felt. Kayla needed to be found now, before any more harm could come to her. I stole a laptop from a nearby store and, after setting it up, grabbed Giovanni’s day-planner off Seth’s nightstand. He must’ve spent an hour or so pouring through the details before falling asleep, considering he’d highlighted every time the same letter appeared in the book. Giovanni had visited Richard at least twenty times in the last two months.

I typed the latitude and longitude into a search engine and waited for the results. A map appeared with a pinpoint in Amarillo, Texas. After jotting down the address on a piece of paper, I zoomed in on the picture and froze. This place looked familiar.

Popping in the USB drive and remembering which keys Irene had pressed to decrypt the folders, I searched through the files until I found the image of Giovanni and Richard shaking hands.

The picture wasn’t of a storage unit. It was a garage.

I jumped out of my chair and flipped on the overhead light. “Everybody up.”

Samantha growled, Lian and Tabbi covered their eyes with their hands and Seth covered his face with his pillow. Ivan, having fallen asleep on our floor, swore at me.

“I’m serious. Get up. I have a lead.”

They perked up. Samantha jumped out of bed and sat in front of the computer, fluffing her blonde hair. “A house in Texas? Are you sure?”

“Positive. When Seth and I looked at that image earlier, we’d thought it was a warehouse or a storage unit. But if you look at that image of the house in Amarillo, you can see a detached garage. Look.” I zoomed in next to the garage door. “And they both share the same number—1031. It’s the same building.”

“Holy shit, man,” Seth said. “You think he’s holding them there?”

“No, Kayla’s in some sort of office building. But this is the first lead we’ve had. Maybe we can find something there that’ll tell us where he’s holding her. We’ll leave in an hour.”

We picked a spot down the road to evaporate to. The last thing we needed was to appear too close to the house and give ourselves away. Richard was powerful and, as I’d learned at the coven in Kansas, would definitely be able to feel us, even if we were invisible. We needed to enter the house slowly to avoid detection as long as possible.

After we loaded our weapons onto our belts, the six of us evaporated to our destination, making sure to stay invisible. Then, without a word, I led my team down the street.

The house was a brick, two-story, colonial-style home, a style completely different from the white, detached garage at the side of the house. The front door and shutters were painted white, and the front lawn looked recently mowed.

I approached the house cautiously and peeked inside the windows. Expensive furniture and the latest gadgets filled each room, but there was no sign of anyone. Someone needed to get inside.

“Stay here.” I evaporated into the entryway. The house was dark, but smelled of lemons, like it’d been freshly cleaned. When there was no sign of life, I opened the front door to let the others in.

“There’s definitely no one here,” Tabbi said. “I don’t hear a single thought.”

“Good,” I said. “Let’s look around. Seth, Lian, go upstairs and see what you can find. Sam, Ivan and I will search down here. Tabbi, stay near the door and let us know if anyone’s coming.”

I split off from the group and wandered until I found the study and walked slowly around the room, scrutinizing. If I were Richard, this is where I would hide my secrets. In one corner was a coat rack, and along that wall was a large bookshelf with cabinets underneath. I opened each cabinet and looked inside, but nothing appeared important. Then I peeked inside the wardrobe, moving coats around and pulling out boxes of old files for some sort of clue.

Frantically, I searched through every drawer of his desk and between every book on every shelf, but I couldn’t find anything that might lead me to Kayla. With a roar, I threw books across the room.

Then I noticed a large globe in the back corner. From a distance, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. But when I stood at just the right angle, sunlight bounced off a pinhead. I walked over to it and examined closer. The pin was pressed into Paris, France.

I turned the globe around until the U.S. faced up. Pins of all colors were pressed into spots all over the country. There had to be at least fifty of them. He was definitely using the globe to track something, which meant he frequented the house.

Again, I ran around the room, trying to find some clue to Kayla’s location. I tore the wardrobe to shreds, then looked through the cupboards under the bookshelves again, ripping everything out and feeling around for something out of the ordinary. When I was about to give up, I felt a small groove in the wood where there shouldn’t have been one. Grabbing a dagger out of my belt, I forced it into the opening.

“Please,” I muttered under my breath. My blade pried the wood until a piece popped out, then I stuck my hand in the hole. The secret compartment went back further than expected, but my fingertips touched plastic. “Yes.”

Pulling the object out, I jumped for joy when I saw what had been hidden. A hard drive. I ran out of the room.

“Guys, I got something,” I shouted, knowing we were alone.

From different directions came Samantha, Ivan, Seth, Lian and Tabbi.

“Daniel, this place is definitely lived in,” Seth said. “And I don’t think just by Richard.”

“That doesn’t matter.” I held up the hard drive. “I found this, hidden in one of Richard’s bookshelves. Whatever’s on here has to be important.”

I was about to tell them it was time to leave when Tabbi’s eyes widened. “Guys, we have company. It’s him. And he knows we’re here. Daniel, you triggered some alarm when you opened the front door.”

Blast.
In my haste, I hadn’t considered what types of protection might be in place. We all immediately went invisible.

“Okay. Everyone get out of here now.” With the laptop tucked securely under my arm, I tried to evaporate. But nothing happened.

“Um, Daniel— “ Samantha said.

“I know. I’m not going anywhere either.”

“Are Magus always this powerful?” Ivan asked.

The front door burst open. Richard walked into the house, followed by four others.

“Feel that?” Richard said to his groupies. “Those Protectors always give off such a strong vibe.”

Richard and the others walked through the house, their eyes searching for some clue to where we stood. They felt our energy, but our exact location was still hidden from them.

I prayed they didn’t have any of that revealing powder with them and handed Tabbi the hard drive. It would stay invisible as long as she held it. “Do not let this out of your sight and stay far away from the warlocks. As soon as you can, evaporate back to the hotel. Got it?”

Tabbi nodded, grabbed the hard drive and stepped behind me.

I ran through the options in my head. Richard was mere feet away. If I could get a jump on him, I could kill him. But then we might die at the hands of the other Magus before we could find Kayla. Still, if I didn’t take my shot now, the next time I faced him, we could be more severely outnumbered.

Before I could make my decision, Richard spoke again. “I know you’re here, Daniel. Don’t make me return without you. It wouldn’t bode well for Kayla.”

Samantha grabbed my arm before I could assault him. “Daniel, going up against him is suicide. We need to sneak out while we have the chance.”

My pulse raced, and my fists were so tight that my knuckles hurt, but I nodded. She was right. We needed an attack plan before taking him on.

The six of us ran toward the back of the house, but instead of going through the wall like we were supposed to, we ran
into
it. We bounced off the wall and into each other like balls in a pinball machine.

“What the hell?” Ivan yelled.

“We can’t get through,” Seth replied.

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“All right, that’s enough,” I said. They quieted and let me think. We had no other choice. We couldn’t evaporate, we couldn’t walk through walls, we couldn’t break a window unless we wanted to give away our location. Other than being able to stay invisible, we were essentially human. Richard had robbed us of the powers that made us spirit-like. There was only one way out of here now. We had to fight.