Carte Blanche [Special Enforcers Series ] Read online

  "Laura?” she called out. “Are you home, baby? Pick up the phone if you are."

  There was no answer. She flipped the phone shut and stared at it for a minute. If Laura was in her room, she might not have heard the phone ring.

  "I need to go home."

  "Of course,” Hugo replied at once. “I'm sure she's fine. Give me a call when you find her."

  Between the heavy rain, her anxiety, and the way she kept her eyes on the sidewalk as she drove, looking for a familiar purple raincoat, it was a wonder Grace didn't run off the road on her way home. She had never climbed the three flights of steps faster.

  "Laura?” she called out as soon as she unlocked the door. “Are you here?"

  She only noticed the oversized envelope that had been slipped beneath her door after she stepped on it, leaving a wet shoe print on it. She picked it up and opened it while she walked over to Laura's room. She stopped in the middle of the hallway and stared at the two sheets she had pulled out of the envelope, certain now that her daughter wasn't here.

  One piece of paper, the largest, was a portrait of Laura; the other, a short handwritten note.

  I think I may have found what you're looking for. Give me a call tomorrow.

  The note and drawing were both signed Ray.

  Chapter 17

  Grace's hands shook so hard that she dropped her cell phone while taking it out of her jacket. Cursing, she knelt down and picked it up. She held her breath while flipping it open, and sighed in relief when the screen lit up. She thumbed the too small buttons frenetically, looking through her calling history for Ray's number. She pressed redial and brought the phone to her ear. She thought her heart would stop when the call went straight to voicemail. Too angry to say anything coherent, she hung up and got back to her feet. She was out of the apartment before she even knew where she was going. By the time she reached the car, her shaking had calmed down enough that she could drive.

  It had finally stopped raining, although Grace barely noticed. She saw nothing, heard nothing, her driving entirely on automatic. For the few minutes it took her to get to Ray's apartment, the same questions ran through her mind in a loop, more infuriating and scary each time because she didn't have answers.

  Where was Laura? Was she all right? How had Ray found her school? For that matter, how had he found their apartment? Why had he taken her? How had he taken her? Had he hurt her? Had he killed her? What would Grace do if he had hurt her—what would she do after she had staked him, that was?

  Before she knew it, she was in front of his apartment and pounding on the door with both fists. There was no answer, and not a sound inside, although the neighbor across the hall did open his door and peer at her. She flashed her badge at him and waited until he had closed the door again. Two kicks and three hard pushes later, the door was yielding in front of her. A stake in hand, she entered the apartment. Everything was dark. She found the switch by the door and turned the lights on. There was nothing in the living room. She barely glanced at the kitchenette before moving on to the hallway, turning the lights on as she went. The first door, which had never been open when she had been there, led to a small bedroom. It didn't look like it had been used in quite some tome. The bathroom was empty—and so was the master bedroom.

  Ice slid into Grace's bones. She froze. The stake clattered to the floor, but she barely heard the sound. Blood was thumping in her ears, fast drums that urged her to run, search, hunt down Ray, find Laura. She didn't move. She didn't know where to start. The emptiness of the room was pressing in on her, the walls closing in. She forced herself to breathe, slow and deep, and take a step further inside the room. She looked around, desperately trying to remember any clue Ray might have given her about where he could be.

  On the desk to her left, his notepad was open, displaying an unfinished drawing of her wearing a dress and seated on a high stool. It was the way he had first seen her at the club, she realized, and the barely defined shape at her feet had to be Ray. Without thinking, she flipped the page over, revealing another drawing. This one also showed the two of them at the club, after they had played. She was seated on a sofa, Ray kneeling at her feet. This drawing wasn't finished either, but one part seemed more complete than the rest, with refined lines and light and shadows carefully rendered; her hand playing with his hair.

  She knew, before she turned to the next page, that the next drawing would be of them together as well. And the next. There were seven total, each a visual memory of their games save for the last one. Judging by the clothes she wore on that one, it was supposed to depict the night she had come to him only to find Owens there. Owens wasn't in the picture, however, and rather than kneeling at his feet, Ray was kneeling at hers.

  "You can't rewrite the past,” she said aloud, addressing Ray's outlined shape on the page.

  Forcing herself to move away from the desk, she gave the room one last glance. In spite of herself, she remembered the last time she had been here. If she had known then that Ray would become so obsessed with her, to the point of taking her daughter ... How could she not have known? How could she have taken such stupid risks?

  A pang of guilt echoed through her mind. She refused to listen to it. Ray was the guilty party here, not her, and when she found him—

  The answer came in a blinding flash. Frantic, she hurried to the dresser, opened it at random and pulled out the first shirt she found. Twenty minutes later, she was back at the agency and throwing the shirt on her desk before turning to the magic spell supplies. She wished Hugo had still been there; it had been a long time since she had performed a location spell, and she wasn't sure she remembered how. She faltered for the first time since leaving Ray's apartment. She couldn't afford to make a mistake now. Every minute that he had Laura was a minute too long, and she had wasted enough time already.

  Getting a grip on herself, she looked through Hugo's desk, certain she had seen him put a spell book in there, and almost sighed in relief when she found it. She paged through it, finding the right page and quickly reading it to refresh her memory.

  "I can do that,” she muttered, the words sounding louder in the silence of the agency. “I have to calm down, but I can do it."

  She breathed in deeply as she spread out a map of the town and its surroundings on her desk and forced her heart to slow down. Mixing some herbs and oil came first. Then she recited the incantation. Her voice sounded uneven, but her pronunciation had always been good. She cut a small piece of fabric from Ray's shirt and, holding it with the scissors, she set fire to it above the map. A pink flame rose, too bright, too large to be entirely natural. In just a second, the fabric was gone and ashes were falling onto the map, concentrating on a single spot and locating Ray at the corner of a residential neighborhood. Grace held her breath as she leaned closer to read the names of the streets. It wasn't very far from the agency.

  Folding the map again, she shoved it and the ingredients she needed into her purse, along with a strip of fabric she ripped from Ray's shirt. If he moved before she got there, she wanted to be ready to redo the spell. When she had everything, she grabbed the crossbow off her desk and strode out of the agency, barely aware of the phone ringing on Hugo's desk.

  Five minutes later, she reached the address the spell had given her, and her artificial calm shattered. An ambulance was at the corner of the street. As though observing from far away, she saw herself parking next to the ambulance and rushing out, her badge in one hand and the crossbow in the other. She heard herself ask if it was a vampire attack, and saw herself start to shake when she was told it had been. She slammed back into her body when she was told the victim—a town councilman—had survived the attack.

  "I need to talk to him,” she said at once, and tried to move forward to where she could see a gurney being wheeled toward the ambulance.

  The paramedic stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Then you'll need to follow us to the hospital. He lost consciousness just before we arrived."

  She blinked a
nd looked at him, frowning. “How do you know when he passed out?"

  "The guy who called 911 told us. He's...” He looked around, then shrugged. “Gone."

  He went to help his colleagues hoist the gurney inside the ambulance. Grace followed.

  "What did he look like?” she asked, tugging on his sleeve when he didn't answer. “Did he give you a name? What else did he say?"

  He shook her off as he made his way to the front of the ambulance and climbed in. “A bit taller than you. Blonde. Just said the guy had lost blood."

  Before she could say anything else, he was driving off, the sirens blaring through the quiet neighborhood. Grace didn't know what game Ray was playing now, and why he would attack someone only to call for help before finishing the kill. It didn't make sense, not any more than him kidnapping Laura did. The only explanation she could come up with was that he had lost his mind. It didn't matter, though. Sane or not, he was a dead vampire. How painful his death would be only depended on how long it would take him to tell her where Laura was. She wished she could have done a tracing spell on her daughter, but only the most gifted magic practitioners could locate humans through this spell, and while she had the talent, she wasn't that good. Vampires were, thankfully, easier to locate.

  A second localization spell, done on the hood of her car by the light of the nearest streetlamp, revealed that Ray was back in his apartment. This time, when she strode up the staircase, she had a crossbow in hand, and she was ready to use it.

  * * * *

  As soon as Ray pushed open the broken door of his apartment, he knew who had been there. Grace's scent, in each room, made it obvious. What he couldn't figure out was why she would break into his place while he wasn't there. He knew he had taken a risk by bringing that drawing to her apartment, but he hadn't expected her to react this badly. It only made him glad that he had gone when he was as certain as he could be that she wouldn't be home.

  He went straight to the bathroom and ran his hands beneath warm water. They were covered in dried blood. Time had seemed to stretch forever while he had waited for that ambulance, pressing his hands to the man's neck to stop the bleeding and talking to him to try and keep him conscious. He'd asked stupid questions, anything that had gone through his head, from whether the man was happy with his car, just a few feet away from them, to what he did for a living, to whether he knew the person who had attacked him. Only when the man had passed out had Ray realized why he was so scared to see him die practically in his arms. Twenty-three years as a human, eight as a vampire, and the only death he had ever witnessed was his own. He would be perfectly content to keep it that way as long as possible.

  Once his hands were clean and dry, he took off his jacket and shirt, both of which were bloodstained. The cabbie who had brought him home had been sure the blood was his and had argued about bringing him to the hospital. Then he had noticed Ray's lack of reflection in the rearview mirror, and he had kept quiet for the rest of the ride.

  Bare-chested, Ray walked out of the bathroom—and almost impaled himself on the crossbow Grace was pointing in his direction.

  "What the—"

  "Where is she?"

  Standing in the hallway, she looked murderous. He had never seen her look so cold, even when they were playing and he had broken her rules, even when she had found Keller in the apartment. He raised his hands in a peaceful gesture, glad suddenly that he had washed the blood off them, and took a careful step sideways into the hallway and toward the bedroom. She didn't let him put any distance between them, however, following him step for step.

  "Where is who?” he asked as calmly as he could.

  Her eyes hardened further if that was even possible. “My daughter."

  He froze for a second, confused. “How would I know?"

  Clearly agitated as well as angry, if he was to believe her scent, she thrust the crossbow in his direction. He stumbled back farther into the bedroom until his legs butted against the mattress.

  "No more games,” she spat. “I found the drawing. And the note. How did you find her school?"

  Feeling more and more confused, Ray sat down on the edge of the bed. He hoped he'd look less of a threat that way, and then maybe she'd lower that crossbow. He didn't like how tense her finger seemed against the trigger at all.

  "Whose school? Your daughter's?” Things finally started making sense. His eyes widened in shock. “Did something happen to—"

  "Don't even try to pretend you don't know.” She was shaking now, her aim unsteady. “Don't pretend you're innocent of anything. I know you almost committed a murder tonight. I don't know why you didn't finish him, but it doesn't matter. The only reason why you're not dust yet is that you have my—"

  Ray had heard enough. He braced himself on the bed and kicked up at the crossbow. The attack took her off guard, and she hit the trigger, but with the weapon aiming upward, the stake embedded itself in the ceiling rather than come anywhere near Ray. She dropped the weapon at once and pulled out a stake from her pocket. Before she could raise it toward him, Ray tackled her to the floor. The fall knocked the wind out of her. He managed to grab both her hands and secure them above her head. Under other circumstances, having her shaking beneath him and in his control might have felt strange. At that moment, however, the only thing going through his mind was that she wasn't thinking straight and he needed to make her listen before she killed him.

  "I didn't bite that guy,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “And I didn't take your daughter. You've got to believe me."

  She struggled to free herself from his hold, but he didn't let go.

  "Grace, listen to me—"

  "I saw your drawings,” she said, her voice wavering between anger and despair. “I know you're obsessed with me. But kidnapping—"

  "I didn't take your child!” he repeated, exasperated. He slid his hand to hers to take the stake from her, and when he had it he stood abruptly, leaving her on the floor. “I can't believe you'd think I'd do that. I'm a vampire, and yeah, I miss you, but I'm not stupid! How would taking her help me get you back?"

  He realized he was gesturing at her with the stake. Maybe that wasn't the best thing to do when he was trying to convince her he hadn't done anything wrong. He threw it behind him and away from her. She was now staring at him with wide, confused eyes.

  "Your note said you had what I was looking for,” she said as she stood, making the statement sound like a question. “And it was with a drawing of Laura."

  "The drawing was an apology present,” he explained, as gently as he could. “And the note ... I figured out why you were asking about the L.E.V. group. And I remembered where I had heard of it."

  She blinked and gave a small nod. Certain that he had her attention, Ray continued.

  "I heard about it from a guy who plays the scene as a sub and who complains about anti-vamp laws any chance he gets. I thought he might know something, and that's what I would have told you when you called tomorrow. I followed him tonight, just to see what he was up to, and I walked in on him before he was done killing that guy. He ran away; I stayed with his victim and called for help. I called your agency, too, left a message to tell you about it."

  If anything, her confusion only seemed to increase. “It doesn't make any sense—"

  "Ask the guy whose life I saved when he wakes up."

  She turned away from him for a moment and passed a hand through her hair. Ray kept quiet and waited. Clearly, she needed time to wrap her mind around everything.

  "Who is it?” she asked at last, slowly facing him again. “Who's the killer?"

  Ray almost sighed in relief that she believed him. “He has a blood bar downtown."

  "A blood bar...” She frowned for a second, then her eyes grew wide in surprise. “You mean Fangs? The killer is the bartender from Fangs? I was supposed to talk to him tonight!"

  "No, not the bartender. Lucas wouldn't hurt a fly. The killer is the owner."

  "But he's human,” she protested.
<
br />   He raised an eyebrow at her. “And humans don't kill?"

  "They don't bite and drain other humans."

  "No, but they apparently can invent tools that pierce a neck and draw blood convincingly enough to fool Special Enforcers and coroners."

  She looked completely speechless. The anger was completely gone from her scent, leaving only the sourness of despair behind. In a small, broken voice, she asked, “You really didn't take her?"

  Ray's annoyance that she would even think he was capable of such a thing disappeared in front of her obvious distress. He hurt with her, and wanted to reassure her, but he didn't think words would be enough anymore. Unsure whether she would welcome the gesture but needing to try anyway, he crossed the three feet that separated them and took her in his arms. She clung to him as though to her last hope. He only wished he had known how to help her.

  Chapter 18

  Ray's arms wrapped around her, unexpected and gentle. Grace didn't even think of refusing his embrace. Instead, she closed her eyes and held him. She had been sure that finding him would mean finding Laura. It had been the only thing pushing her forward when fear threatened to paralyze her. Now there was nothing holding the fear at bay—nothing but Ray's arms, and his lips against her temple, cool and tender.

  The idea seemed ridiculous even as it came to her mind, but despite everything, despite Laura being missing and Ray being a vampire, for a short moment, she felt safe and at peace. It had been a long time since she had felt like this. Only in the early days of her marriage—

  Her eyes opened abruptly, and she pulled away from Ray, the anger back in a flash.

  "Fuck!"

  He looked at her, startled.

  "Her father,” she said, gritting her teeth, before he could ask. “Her father took her. I bet he did."

  She pulled out her cell phone and started pacing as she dialed his phone number. Ray observed her for a moment, then went to the dresser and pulled out a shirt. She watched him put it on and start to button it while the phone rang, but turned away as soon as the tones stopped. He was just too distracting.