Taken in Death (In Death #37.5)(6)

“Is it a game?” Gala wondered. “Papa likes games.”

“I don’t think it’s a game. Darcia . . .”

“Maybe it was pretend.” Gala’s eyes filled. “Mommy loves us. She loves Darcia. Mommy wouldn’t hurt us or Darcia.”

“It’s not Mommy.” Henry’s handsome little face screwed into fierce lines. “She’s an evil witch who cast a spell so she looks like Mommy, but she’s not.”

“Are you sure?”

“She said she’d hurt us if we didn’t drink that stuff. When she stopped the car and told us to drink that stuff, she said she’d hurt you if I didn’t drink, and hurt me if you didn’t. Mommy wouldn’t do that.”

“No, Mommy wouldn’t.”

“It made us go to sleep, like a spell, so we woke up in here.”

“I don’t want to be here. I want Mommy. I want Papa.”

“They’ll find us.” He took a deep breath. “They’ll send a good witch to fight the bad witch, and to get us out, to take us home.”

“How will the good witch find us here?”

“I don’t know, but she will.” I can’t say it out loud, he said into his sister’s mind.

The magic talk was a secret, even from their parents.

You can’t say it either, or she might hear.

I won’t.

I took the Jamboree to bed with me.

You’re not supposed to!

I know, but I did. It’s in my secret pocket, the one Darcia made for my pajamas. I’m going to send messages to the good witch to help her find us. We can’t let the bad witch know, or she’ll take it away.

But we don’t know where we are.

She’ll know! He heard the door creak. Don’t tell her!

Maj opened the door, smiled broadly. “It’s quiet in here. Just what are you two talking about?”

Gala curled her fingers into Henry’s, and promised not to tell. “We want to go home now,” she said to the witch who looked like Mommy.

“You are home. This is your home now. And look at this! You ate and ate and ate. Cookies and candies and cake. You’ll get fat, fat as little pigs. Fat enough to eat.” She laughed, and Gala no longer thought she looked like her mother.

“Fat enough to eat,” Maj said again. “Yum. Yum. Yum.”

CHAPTER THREE

With Peabody, Eve stepped back into the living area. The business of murder played out around them with the MacDermits safely tucked away in the kitchen with two uniforms. The morgue team had already taken the body, and the sweepers swarmed through the rest of the area.

“Get everything there is to get on Maj Borgstrom,” Eve ordered. “Everything. Add in EDD if you need assistance there.” She pulled out her own ’link as she spoke. “And arrange for the MacDermits to move into a safe house.”

“On that.”

Thinking fast, Eve contacted Dr. Charlotte Mira, the NYPSD’s top profiler and psychologist. “I need Mira,” she snapped to the dragon who guarded Mira’s gates. “Don’t f**k with me.”

Mira’s admin’s face bunched up like a fist. “Lieutenant Dallas—”

“I don’t care if she’s headshrinking God, do it now.”

If the clenched jaw was an indicator, Eve would have hell to pay later, but the ’link screen shifted to waiting blue. Seconds later Mira’s calmer face came on.

“Eve?”

“Maj Borgstrom. She was committed to the Borj Institute for the Criminally Insane in Stockholm as a minor, about twenty-five years ago. Murdered her father. She’s just killed her twin sister’s nanny here in New York, and abducted the sister’s twin kids—boy and girl, age seven. I need whatever you can find out from her doctors. Anything, everything. And I need it now.”

“How long has she had the children?”

“Since just after midnight.”

“Let me see what I can do.”

“Fast,” Eve added, then clicked off. She contacted the other ace up her sleeve—a man who had connections and sway everywhere she could think of in the known universe.

For the second time she drew an admin, but this one smiled at her. “Lieutenant, how can I help you?”

“I need to talk to him, right away.”

Caro’s smile faded, but she nodded briskly. “One moment.”

It took hardly more before Roarke came on. She saw mild annoyance on his truly stupendous face, just a hint of it in those intense blue eyes.

“Sorry,” she said immediately. “It’s urgent. Who do you know in Stockholm? The heavier the weight, the better.”

“Would the Prime Minister be weighty enough?”

“Sounds like it. Here’s the deal.” She ran it through for him quickly, hitting the high points, knowing her husband could and would connect the dots.

“I’ll make some calls.”

“Appreciate it.”

“That’s smart,” Peabody commented. “Pulling in the big guns, medically and politically.”

“We use what weapons we’ve got.”

“I’ve got the safe house set up,” Peabody continued. “The Belmont. It’s close to Central. I didn’t know who you wanted assigned. But with a kidnapping, the feds—”