“Let’s search the rest of the building, then check the hangar.”
David nodded. “I’ll take the basement.”
“I’ll head upstairs.”
Whatever had filled the rooms upstairs had been removed. Only dust bunnies remained.
Seth heard David curse.
You’d better come down here, the other said.
David met Seth at the bottom of the stairs. The basement was as large as the other floors. Death floated on the stale air down here, too.
David motioned to the first open doorway.
Seth looked inside and felt as though he had stepped back in time to the day he had rescued Ami. A first glance revealed an operating room. A second uncovered the manacles and leather strap that would immobilize anyone unwillingly placed on the steel table’s surface. Whatever tools of torture the butchers had utilized had been removed, leaving only discarded scrubs, a few soiled towels, and a half-empty bottle of rubbing alcohol turned on its side.
“There are three more like this one,” David said and led Seth from the room.
Offices robbed of everything save battered desks and crappy chairs followed the torture chambers. Past those . . .
Seth stared at the bodies, shot execution style like the ones above, in the first cell. “These are civilians.”
“Yes. There are more.”
The dead in the basement included women and children. Some of the women still clutched their daughters or sons, their bodies curled around the little ones in an eternal gesture of protection.
“Let’s check the hangar.”
Aside from the disabled Humvee, the hangar boasted only oil stains and discarded lug nuts.
Seth took out his cell phone. “How are you doing with the daylight?”
David shrugged. “I can take another couple hours or so, more if I stay in the shade as much as possible.”
Seth nodded and dialed.
“Reordon,” a sleepy voice answered.
“I need to show you something.”
“Give me a second to throw on some clothes.”
Seth returned his phone to his back pocket.
“Think his men will be able to lift any prints?” David asked.
“They should. It looks like the mercenaries cleared out in a hurry. Hell, they didn’t even lock the front door.”
“While you go get Chris, I think I’ll search the place for trip wires or explosives. It seems odd that they would leave these bodies here for anyone to find.”
“Think they’re bait?”
“Could be. I’d hate for any of the network employees to lose a life or a limb when they arrive.”
“I’ll join you when we return. We can sweep the entire compound. If anything is here, you and I will find it.”
Chris was pulling on a peacoat when Seth teleported to his living room.
Seth glanced around. Chris’s home was the antithesis of David’s. While David’s was pristinely neat, Chris’s was all chaos, greasy pizza boxes, discarded clothes, and dirty dishes. Since Chris always kept his office neat, Seth wondered if the man wasn’t simply too damned busy to do housework.
“So . . .”
Chris moved some crap around on the coffee table and dug out a pile of small, brand-new spiral notebooks. “Yeah?”
“You ever consider having someone from the network’s cleaning crew come out here to tidy things up a bit?”
Chris grinned. “The clutter aggravating your OCD?”
Seth nodded. “It’s making me feel guilty as hell, too. Is it that you’re too busy to clean or too tired when you finally make it home?”
“A little of both.”
“You’re welcome to put it on the network’s dime.”
Chris shook his head. “This place may look like shit, but at least I know where everything is. If someone comes in and starts cleaning, I’ll have to waste time looking for things.”
“Just tell whoever does it to only worry about the dishes, the trash, and the clothes. Because . . . damn.”
Chris laughed. “If you think this is bad, don’t look in the kitchen.”
“I don’t have to. I can smell the fungus and the dried-up, crusted food from here.”
Still grinning, Chris stuck the pads in his coat pocket and added a couple of short, stubby pencils.
“At least think about it,” Seth requested.
“I will. Okay, let’s book.”
Seth teleported them both to the entrance of the compound’s main building.
David’s blurred form raced toward them from the vicinity of the hangar. “Nothing so far.”
While Chris and David exchanged greetings, Seth opened one of the front doors and motioned for them to enter.
They showed him the dead soldiers first. Out came the first notepad and pencil. Chris didn’t enter the room. He merely studied it, taking in every detail and scribbling down notes.
“Which ones do you recognize, David?”
David pointed out the ones he had seen at the network.
“Okay. What’s next?”
They showed him the rooms Seth believed had temporarily housed the vampires.
“You think they still have both of them?”
“Joe may have been destroyed by the blood loss.”
“I don’t think so. They probably wouldn’t have bothered to pick up his clothes if he had expired and there aren’t any lying around.”
Good point.
Chris exhibited no emotion until they showed him the first pair of the civilian bodies downstairs.
Seth cast David a questioning glance when Chris’s face lost all color.
“Do you know them?” David asked.
Chris swallowed. “The man is one of my contacts. I think . . . I think the woman is his wife.”
Or what was left of her. Emrys and his men must have tortured her to extract information from her husband.
Chris left the room, walked to the next and halted in the doorway. “Shit!” He strode to the next room. And the next. And the next. Spun around. “They’re my contacts!” He turned and continued on to the next. “They’re my fucking contacts. All of them!” Judging by the moan of regret that hummed in his throat, he had caught sight of the children in that one. “And their families! Why the fuck did they kill their families? Their children?”
“Leverage,” Seth stated.
David sighed. “What better way to make a man talk than by threatening to harm those he loves the most?”
Chris paced furiously for a moment.
Seth didn’t have to read his friend’s mind to know guilt was eating him up inside.
Pausing, Chris closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as if he were trying very hard to erase those images from his mind. “Why leave them here like this?”
“Only two reasons come to mind,” Seth said. “A message, warning you not to use such resources again to search for the mercenaries in the future.”
“Or bait,” David added. “Seth and I are going to scour the place for explosives or other booby traps that may have been set to take us out while we were distracted by the bodies so we can be sure no harm will come to the cleaners when they arrive.”
Chris nodded.
“This wasn’t your fault, Chris,” Seth told him.
“I recruited them,” he said, unconsoled.
“At my instruction.”
“You aren’t going to make me feel better about this.”
Seth nodded. He could relate.
“So how are we going to locate Emrys and the remainder of his men now? This was our biggest lead to date.”
Seth met David’s gaze, knowing they had both come to the same conclusion.
“I don’t see that we have any choice,” David said.
Seth sighed. “We’ll have to let Ami lead us to them.”
Chris stared. “Is there no other way?” He had read the files. He may not have seen what Emrys and his butchers had done to Ami, but he knew all of the details.
“I think the one thing we can bank on is Emrys being wherever the vampires are. Since Ami was in close proximity to the vampires on numerous occasions during the attack on the network, she should be able to lead us to them.”