Warrior (Relentless #4)(185)
“I agree,” Chris and I said together.
Chris, Raoul, and I left Hamid and Ammon talking to Anders, and headed back to the control room. I looked for Sara, and I found her and Jordan sitting on a couch that had been pushed against the fireplace. Her eyes met mine, and I smiled at the happiness on her face.
Raoul called me over to discuss the job he and Raj were doing tomorrow. Ever since Sara told me about Adele’s friendship with Madeline, we’d been trying to plant surveillance equipment at her house and club. But Adele was no fool, and she used warlock spells to render our devices useless. Raj was working on a way around it, and he and Raoul were going to do a field test.
A burst of feminine laughter filled the room, and I looked over at Sara and Jordan who were clinging to each other and laughing so hard they had tears in their eyes. I raised an eyebrow at Sara, and that just made her laugh more. I shook my head and smiled as I went back to work.
*
I walked into the control room, two weeks later, and as usual, my eyes immediately searched for Sara. Since the night of our date, she’d come here almost every evening. Sometimes she read or used her laptop, and other times she got the warriors to teach her about the equipment and share stories about their adventures. I wasn’t the only one who liked having her here. It wasn’t hard to see the smiles every time she walked in the door.
I didn’t see her, which meant she was probably in the kitchen fixing a snack. She never left on her own, always waiting for me to walk her back to the house.
I’d been worried about her walking between the two houses until Eldeorin offered to place a glamour over our rented house and the short strip of road to protect her and Jordan.
“Nikolas, have you heard?” Chris called. He was standing with Raoul and Brock by one of the tracking stations, and the three of them wore puzzled expressions.
I walked over to stand with them. “Heard what?”
“Someone bagged that vampire in Seattle.”
“Hamid?”
Since the Egyptian warrior and his brother went to Seattle, two more teenagers had gone missing and Hamid had been like a man obsessed. But this vampire had proven to be adept at hiding their tracks, which meant he or she was older and experienced. Hamid was one of our best hunters, however, and every day I’d expected to hear he had finally caught the vampire.
A week ago, two of the missing teenagers had shown up at Northwest with no memory of where they’d been or who had brought them to the hospital. No vampire would release his victims, so we figured we’d been wrong in thinking they’d been taken by the one who had killed the first girl.
Chris shook his head. “No, it wasn’t one of ours. Hamid just found the house the vampire was holed up in. He said someone really did a job on the vampire, and his chest was half burnt, probably from a flamethrower. He also found the body of the girl who went missing two weeks ago.”
“Did Hamid have any ideas about who killed the vampire?”
Chris shook his head. “He’s still looking around. I didn’t want to push him because he was not happy he didn’t find the vampire sooner. And you know what he’s like when he’s not happy.”
The four of us laughed as Sara entered the room, carrying a soda. She smiled at us and walked over to sit in her usual spot on the couch. She set the soda down and picked up her laptop, looking engrossed in whatever was on the screen.
I joined her once we finished our discussion about Seattle. “Ready to head home?”
She closed the laptop and smiled up at me. “Sure.”
We walked the short distance to Eldeorin’s in companionable silence. Jordan was in the living room on her laptop when we got there, and she gleefully informed us she was about to kick Roland’s ass in World of Warcraft. Sara rolled her eyes. She didn’t share her friends’ love of games.
Sara motioned for me to followed her into the kitchen where Heb was cleaning the stove. She greeted the dwarf and went to pull a bottle of water from the fridge. She took a long drink and turned to me.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something. Do you have time?”
I smiled and led her over to the small breakfast table. “I always have time for you. What’s on your mind.”
“Remember when I told you I had some friends helping me look for Madeline?”
I frowned. “You mean the ones you refused to tell me anything about?”
I’d tried several times to get her to reveal the names of the people who had not only helped her look for Madeline, but had also blocked us from tracing her when she called. But if there was one thing about Sara, it was her loyalty to those she considered her friends.
She smiled. “Yeah, them. We’ve been talking, and we’re going to start looking for Madeline again.”
“You’re what?” I didn’t know if I was more shocked she was still in contact with those people, or that she thought I’d be okay with her going out there and endangering herself like that again.
She shook her head. “Okay, that came out wrong. Before you blow a gasket, listen to what I have to say.”
“Go ahead.”
She tapped her fingers on the table. “First off, I’m not talking about me chasing after Madeline like I did before, so you can stop scowling at me like that.”
I unfolded my arms and rested them on the table. “You can’t blame me for thinking that after what happened in December.”