And he wondered: was the Sandee’s life force as contaminated as her skin or could she be a meal for a Harvester?
“Jimmy . . .” Lieutenant Montgomery stopped. He looked ill and angry. “Cyrus couldn’t take a struggling woman on public transportation. We’ve checked with the taxicab companies. None of them sent a taxi to pick up a fare near the Courtyard’s Main Street entrance. Right now we have people at the Chestnut Street station making calls to all the car rental places in the city.”
“He might have stolen a vehicle,” Burke said, looking at Vlad. “That’s what Commissioner Alvarez means by a starting point. Cyrus Montgomery can’t have used any kind of public transportation—not taxi, bus, or train. Which means he’s in some kind of private vehicle. You need papers to cross borders these days, so Cyrus can’t travel to another region. And Agent O’Sullivan already spoke with Governor Hannigan about the situation. All the official border crossings are on alert, and I just don’t see Cyrus having the skills needed to try to go off road through the wild country to reach another region.”
“He could drive north to a town and take a boat across Lake Tahki,” Alvarez said.
“Possible,” Burke agreed, “but all the villages along the Northeast side of Lake Tahki are Intuit, terra indigene, or human settlements controlled by the Others. I talked to Steve Ferryman, who is the mayor of Ferryman’s Landing. He’s sending out an e-mail alert to every Intuit village he can reach, informing them that Meg Corbyn was abducted.”
Burke leaned toward Vlad. He wagged a finger to indicate the humans at the table. “First we need to identify the car. Then we need to know what help you can give us. It’s possible that Cyrus has found a hidey-hole in the city and is lying low, thinking the search won’t stay hot that long.”
“It will stay hot forever,” Vlad whispered. “Or, when Winter hears of this, it will stay very, very cold for a long time.”
Burke paled—the only sign that he understood exactly what the threat meant. “Cyrus won’t want to stay in a city where he can’t exploit Ms. Corbyn’s abilities. Assuming he’s already beyond the city limits, he’s in the wild country. We’ll figure out how he got Meg out of the city, what kind of vehicle he’s driving. What information is most useful to the terra indigene in the wild country? A shape? A color? I’m assuming make and model of car means nothing. I’m also assuming not everyone understands human letters and numbers.”
“Colors and shapes,” Elliot said. “Most of the terra indigene who would watch the land around the right-of-ways would know a big truck from a pickup from a car.”
“And the Crowgard are very good at recognizing faces,” Vlad added.
“We have a recent photo of Cyrus,” Montgomery said, sounding like he was swallowing tiny shards of bone. “From when he was brought in for questioning about the theft of meat in the Market Square. But Ms. Corbyn . . .”
“Ah . . .” Kowalski raised a couple of fingers. “I took a few pictures recently of Meg, Merri Lee, and Ruthie. I also have a shot of Meg and Sam. Before coming to this meeting, I gave my digital camera to Lorne at the Three Ps. He’s over there now, cropping one of the photos and running off some copies.”
“Well done,” Burke said. Then to Vlad, “With your permission, we’ll e-mail the shot of Ms. Corbyn to every police station in the Northeast.”
Vlad hesitated. Most of the cassandra sangue were well hidden from the humans who would abuse them. At least, the ones who had wanted to get away from the compounds were well hidden. Meg’s picture had been on a wanted poster a few months ago when her owner was trying to find her. He wasn’t sure it was smart or safe to remind too many humans that she was out here. After all, what she was learning about herself and how to cope in the outside world was the reason so many other blood prophets were managing to survive without benevolent ownership.
“No,” Elliot said. “Simon would never agree to telling humans that Meg was vulnerable. Someone else might kill Cyrus in order to take her. Then we would never find her.”
“We understand.” Mayor Chen looked at the other men around the table. “Perhaps the photo of Cyrus Montgomery and a description of Ms. Corbyn would be enough?”
Vlad nodded.
Kowalski’s mobile phone rang. He excused himself and walked away from the table. He rejoined them a minute later. “Ms. Lee remembered that students sometimes rent their cars to other students for a day or two. Some stores near the university have bulletin boards where notices are posted. Might be places like that around the tech college too. While it’s unlikely that a student would rent his or her car to a stranger who clearly was not a fellow student, it would be another place to look if the rental car companies don’t pan out.”
Burke pushed away from the table. “If there’s nothing else, we’ll get to it.”
“There’s nothing else,” Vlad said. He waited until the humans left the building before turning to Elliot. “The meeting with the mayor, the reason you weren’t in the consulate, where you might have seen or heard a struggle.”
“It wasn’t an excuse or part of a plot, if that’s what you’re asking.” Elliot gave him a long look. “Katherine Debany had a dentist appointment—routine checkup. She made the appointment months ago and told me about it last week. Even wrote it in the day planner in my office in case I forgot she wouldn’t be in. And I gave Miss Twyla the morning off because the women had caught up on all the work.”
Ruthie’s mental health day didn’t matter. School in the summer ended at lunchtime. The children would have been outside playing regardless.
“We fell for the distraction when that Cyrus started a fight with Montgomery to give that Jack Fillmore an opportunity to find Theral.”
“And that gave us an opportunity to end that threat.” Elliot sat back. “Would so many of you have been focused on this fight if it hadn’t involved the children?”
Vlad thought about that and shook his head. The terra indigene protected their young. “It all happened in the time it took a stoplight to change. Simon believed Meg was safe in the daylight. We all did. And so many things could have gone wrong with that Cyrus’s plan—Nathan could have stayed until O’Sullivan returned with the food; cars could have jammed up, blocking that Cyrus’s escape from the delivery area or even delaying the time when he was able to pull into the delivery area; Meg could have insisted that Skippy wait to pee until O’Sullivan returned. If she had, the door would have been locked and she would have had time to call for help.” That was the only bit of information they had gotten out of Skippy—that Meg had opened the door and he had gone out just before the car leaped at him and bit his leg.
If Simon had run to the Liaison’s Office instead of preventing Merri Lee from getting crunched between two cars, he would have reached Meg in time to stop that Cyrus from taking her. But he’d protected the pack member who was in immediate danger—a truth that might make it difficult for him to be around Merri Lee in the future, depending on the outcome of this hunt.
Elliot looked uneasy. “I’m his sire, but I think you know Simon better, understand him better. If we don’t find Meg, do you think he’ll survive?”
“No.” The certainty of his answer made Vlad feel cold. “If we lose her, we’ll lose him too.”
In human form, Henry Beargard was a large man. As a Grizzly, he was massive. But when he walked in his true earth native form as spirit bear, he was much larger than the Grizzly—and still smaller than the two Elders who were visiting the Courtyard. That didn’t matter, because he was swelled with rage.