Appassionato (24 page)

“You’re bonded? Who are you bonded to?” the officer asked, surprised.

“Jake and Emma,” Duncan said, gesturing to his two lovers.

The officer flushed. She looked from Emma to Jake, then flipped a page in her notebook, looking down and biting on her lip. “So, Eric didn’t like the fact that you’d bonded?”

“I think he was more upset about finding Jake and me kissing than he was about the bonding,” Duncan explained, wryly. “He’s never been comfortable with two guys making out.”

“Why did you keep him on tour then?”

Duncan looked at the cop, confused. “We had a contract. The tour is my business, not just a hobby. I can’t very well fire the people I don’t like just on a whim.”

Emma rolled her eyes as the cop nodded in understanding. The woman obviously had all sorts of lame preconceptions. “Do you have any idea what he might have ingested that made him so unstable? Did he have a history of drug use while he worked for you?”

“No, he didn’t do drugs while he was my keyboard player, at least that I knew about. Well, except for some pot now and then.” Duncan smiled charmingly at the woman. Emma wanted to hit him. “I have no idea what he could’ve taken to cause this kind of behavior, though.”

The cop frowned and glanced at the body where technicians were working. “Obviously, we haven’t run any tests yet on him so I’m not sure about this, but there is a new drug in the city that just popped up and we’ve been finding a lot of people dead from it.” She sighed and closed her notebook. “It’s been brutal. The victims seem perfectly normal, amiable even, and then over the course of a few hours, they start to act crazy. Erratic. We haven’t been about to track its origins, though we know it’s a liquid and the kids on the street are calling it ‘Path.’”

“Path? That’s weird.” Emma thought about the missing bonded couples and the ability of those who were bonded to link mentally. She felt ill. “Have you had a lot of missing person reports lately?”

The officer looked at her, surprised. “Yeah, how did you know?”

Jake coughed and Emma prevaricated. “Oh, I’m not sure. I think I saw a news report about it or something?”

“Well, if you think of anything new, give us a call.” She pulled out a card and handed it to Duncan. “I love your music, by the way.”

Emma stared at her and the officer blushed, then walked away. Jake laughed out loud. “Emma, I think you scared her.”

“Oh, please,” Emma muttered, flushing. “She was all over Duncan and you know it.”

“You’re going to have to get used to people fawning on him.”

Emma snorted, then stood up. “I have a bad feeling about this new drug she was talking about.”

“You think it has something to do with the missing bonded couples?” Jake slung his arm around her shoulders as the three of them walked to the exit.

Emma nodded as Duncan grimaced. “Yeah. What was it Eric was babbling about? That he’d be able to ‘read’ anyone he wanted? And she said it was called ‘Path.’ That’s too close to ‘telepath’ to be a coincidence.”

Duncan sighed as he held open the ballroom door for her. “I agree.”

Emma opened her mouth to continue her speculations but then her phone rang.
Who could be calling now?
She fished it out of her small purse and looked at the unfamiliar number before sliding her finger across the screen. “Hello?”

“Ms. Bell? Is that you?”

Emma frowned as she heard a girl’s voice. “Yes, who is this?”

“Ms. Bell! Oh my God, you have to help us! They kidnapped us, and I can’t call my parents because they threw me out and—” The voice broke off as Emma heard a loud crack over the phone.

“Samantha? Is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me, Ms. Bell, please,” Samantha whispered over the phone, her voice frantic.

Emma strained to hear. “Samantha, where are you? What’s happened?” She pressed the phone closer to her ear in an effort to hear. There was some crackling and she hoped she wasn’t about to lose the signal. Jake tugged her to the windows on the opposite side of the hallway.

“They grabbed us right after my dad kicked me out. Jonathan was with me and we were going to go to his house when this car pulled up. They had guns! They hit me and I woke up alone in this room. I don’t know where Jonathan is, but they have other girls here.”

“Samantha, are there windows? Can you tell where you are?” Emma prayed the girl had more information as Duncan rubbed her back soothingly.

“We’re high up and we’re in a city. I think it’s Philly, and everyone here has bonding tattoos. Ms. Bell it hurts! They separated all of us and they keep taking blood samples. And Ms. Bell, Ms. Brown is with them! She’s the one who takes our blood.” Samantha sounded desperate.

Emma felt her blood run cold. “Ms. Brown? The vice principal? Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m positive,” the girl cried. “Please, you have to help us!”

Emma shoved her shock down. She couldn’t afford to get hysterical now. “Okay, it’s okay. I’m going to help you. How did you get access to a phone?”

“It was in another girl’s jacket. The guards didn’t search her because she collapsed as soon as they brought her in. Some guy was yelling in the hall. That was, like, ten minutes ago. You were the only one I could think of to call.”

“Okay, I’m going to get help. Don’t worry.” Emma wondered why the girl didn’t call 911. She glanced out the window, then gasped as she realized she could see a few auras flaring here and there in the city outside. She frowned, wondering,
Could I find Samantha
? “Samantha, I want you to describe everything you see, inside and out, to me, okay? Can you do that?”

“Yes, okay,” Samantha answered in a shaky voice. “We’re in a warehouse somewhere, locked in an office or something. The windows are dirty, and I know we’re on the second or third floor because we can hear people beneath us.”

Emma concentrated on the girl’s voice, sending her senses out into the city. She leaned against Duncan, unconsciously drawing on his energy and on Jake’s solid sense of where he was in relation to everyone else. She could see the auras of a few people in the city below her. As she looked east, toward the river, she felt a shock in her mind and an aura flared brighter than all the others, a quick flash of scarlet that pulsed and then was gone. She narrowed her eyes.
That’s where Samantha is
, she thought.

“Ms. Bell, I have to go. I think someone’s coming,” Samantha hissed in her ear.

“All right, Samantha. I’ll find you, I promise.”

“Okay, just—please, hurry. Two of the girls are in a coma or something. I don’t know why, but I think it’s because they were kept from their bond-mates.”

“I understand,” Emma said grimly. “I promise I’ll find you.” She sighed as the phone went dead. She hoped Samantha would be okay. She looked up at Jake and Duncan. “I think I know where to find the missing people.”

Chapter 12

Duncan rubbed his face, scratching his fingers through the stubble on his chin. He couldn’t believe that the vice principal of the school where Emma worked was part of the kidnapping. He supposed it made sense. She had access to newly bonded kids and a massive problem with alternative lifestyles. Of course, the idea of bonding would send the woman over the edge. Emma explained how, when Ms. Brown had interviewed her for the librarian’s position a few years ago, she expressed relief at the knowledge that Emma was single. She even questioned Emma’s beliefs about marriage and religion, despite the illegality of asking about such things in an interview. And she had a background in chemistry. Apparently the woman worked as a scientist for a pharmaceutical company for a while before she quit due to some sort of interpersonal conflict and turned to teaching. Emma didn’t know the details, but it wasn’t too far of a stretch for Duncan to believe that she would force others to conform to her extremely limited ideas about right and wrong. It made him feel sick to know that someone in charge of educating children could be so evil.

He slumped further down into the seat. He was so tired. He knew Jake and Emma felt the same, though in her case he sensed her pushing past the exhaustion into mania. She blamed herself for not seeing through Ms. Brown before the kidnapping. She sat on the seat next to him, leaning forward to give directions to Dave who was driving the car. She was practically vibrating as she cast her senses out, reading colors on the darkness. Duncan couldn’t see them, but he could sense them through her. When he let himself slip into her mind he could almost see the faint dots of color here and there in the city. Impatience stole through his exhaustion. He wanted to go home with his lovers and sleep, but they were the only ones who could find the missing bonded couples. They’d talked to the cop who questioned them in the ballroom before they left the hotel, but just as Emma had predicted, the woman didn’t believe them when they explained what happened. She didn’t even believe a girl that young could
be
bonded. Her supervisor took one look at the rock star and his “groupies” and dismissed all three of them. So here they were, in his car, off to play rescuer.

“There!” Emma exclaimed, pointing. “You see that warehouse? Pull over, so no one sees us. Here, turn down the alley.”

Duncan looked at Jake, wondering where Emma’s instinct for this came from. The other man shrugged as she turned to look at them.

“I watch movies, you know,” she said, smiling.

Jake rolled his eyes. “This isn’t a movie.”

Her face sobered. “I know. Believe me, I know.”

Duncan sighed, then closed his eyes, pulling energy up from inside until it was close to the surface. He could create sparks or scrub organic matter off a body. He had no idea how any of this was possible. He opened his eyes and called a spark to his fingers, dancing it from one to the other playfully. He felt eyes on his hands and looked up to find Emma watching him.

“That’s so cool.”

Duncan smiled at her then closed his palms over the sparks. “I don’t know how I’m even doing it.”

“I don’t know how I can see auras, but I can. It’s easy,” she said, grabbing onto the front seat as the car lurched to a stop. Her head flew up. She looked predatory, focused. Duncan loved her ability to change from a sweet, gentle woman into a hunter. He grinned fondly, but she didn’t see.

“We’re here.” She scrambled back, sitting next to Duncan and Jake for a moment. She looked down at her sparkling shoes ruefully. “I wish we had time to change before we go in. My poor shoes.”

Jake leaned over and grabbed her hand, squeezing it comfortingly. “It’ll be okay. We’ll buy you ten new pairs of sparkly shoes if these get ruined.”

Emma laughed. “Okay, you know I’m going to hold you to that promise.” Then she sighed, the smile dropping from her face. “I know I pushed us hard to get here. I just have a feeling that we need to get in there and help as soon as possible. I should’ve known that woman was involved somehow.”

Duncan smiled at her, tugging a strand of her hair off her cheek. She turned her face into his palm. “You couldn’t have known, Emma. Stop beating yourself up. Jake and I will do everything we can to keep this from happening to anyone else. The only thing we can do now is move forward.”

Emma nodded and took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

They got out of the car, the three of them followed by Dave and Charlie. Dave kept muttering about how Lisa was going to kill him, but Duncan knew he was just trying to blow off some tension. He looked around, trying to spot any security cameras as they inched down the alley. The ducked down another side street and then yet another alley until they found the one that ran along the back of the warehouse. He didn’t see anything unusual. There was nothing there except stray garbage and graffiti.

“Jake, can you sense anyone around?” Duncan asked.

Jake shook his head. “The only people I can sense are actually in the building. I thought they’d post guards or something.”

Emma shook her head too “I don’t see any auras except the ones in the building, not that it helps. There are a lot of unbonded people in the world.”

“I guess we’ll just have to wing it.” Duncan looked for a door but there was no entrance on this side, then he spotted an open window on the second floor. “There.” He pointed.

“How are we going to get up there?” Charlie whispered nervously.

“I’m the tallest. I can boost everyone up. Then Jake can help pull me up,” Duncan answered. Emma nodded.

“I’ll go first since I’ll be able to sense if anyone’s inside.” Jake cracked his fingers and stepped forward.