Snared (Elemental Assassin #16)(28)

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.