Nikolas (11 page)

Sophia averted her eyes, praying to the gods they didn’t recognize her. When the doors opened, only the woman got off the elevator.
Shit.
She couldn’t get off on the tenth floor and go to her room, or they would know where she was staying. She pressed the button for nine, hoping the man wouldn’t follow her. When the doors opened again, Sophia stepped into the hallway and turned left toward the stairs. When she felt a presence behind her, she had a split second to decide – phase and hope like hell the man wasn’t a Gargoyle, or scream for help. She opted for the latter. When she reached the end of the hall, she pulled the fire alarm and screamed at the top of her lungs. Her follower was so stunned she was able to shove him down on his ass and take off running. Instead of running up to her room, she went down. Sophia allowed herself to get lost in the throngs of hotel guests using the stairs to get to safety.

When she reached the bottom floor, she ran out the side door and flagged down a taxi.
Dammit!
She needed to get back to her room and wait on Nikolas. Now she would have to go back to the inn to wait. Hopefully he would figure out where she was. Why hadn’t she bothered to get his phone number? She didn’t even know what hotel he was staying in. If she could get to her computer, she could figure it out. When she got to the bed and breakfast, she prayed she could get to her room without anyone seeing her. The last thing she needed was another confrontation with Yvonne.

Her followers either knew she was both Sophia and Beatrice, or they only knew Beatrice had the disk and they wanted it back. Either way, she was screwed. The only option she could see was to become Clara and change hotels. At this point she had little faith in getting back into the Nile Grand and retrieving her things. Earlier, Nik said he was chasing her neighbor. It was probably the same man she’d heard talking on the phone. If he was working with the blonde and her accomplice, then she wouldn’t risk going back for her stuff. At least she had an extra computer and clothing at the inn.

As soon as she got to her room, she opened her laptop to search where Nik might be staying. While she was waiting on it to boot up, Sophia stripped out of her disguise. This afternoon was not going the way she thought it would after running into Nikolas. She was pulling a t-shirt over her head when she heard a commotion outside. Sophia looked out her window to see the blonde and her partner arguing with a couple of men on the sidewalk. Shit! They’d found her. She closed her laptop, and shoved it into her backpack along with everything else she could fit. Next, she grabbed her Clara disguise, her toiletries, and as many clothes as she could fit in her large bag.

Sophia couldn’t go out the front door, and she wouldn’t chance going through the kitchen. She kept out of sight while she waited to see if they were coming inside the inn. After a few minutes and some heated discussion, the couple headed toward the entrance while the two men split up. If she was lucky, the inn owners would turn the couple away and she could stay in her room. If her luck was continuing as it had been, Yvonne would be the first to tell them where she was. Sophia wasn’t going to put any faith in hiding out in her room.

The front window with the balcony looked out over the street. That was out. The side window faced the garden area. Garden it was. Sophia opened the window and tossed her bag to the ground amidst the bushes. She strapped her backpack on and climbed over the window ledge. Two stories was higher than she’d ever jumped, but she was a shifter. She called her Goyle half forward and dropped the twenty something feet to the ground. She landed on her feet then fell back onto her butt. Not very graceful, but she’d take it. She stood and wiped the dirt off her jeans, grabbed her bag, and took off behind the building.

Sophia needed to figure out where Nikolas was registered. Since she hadn’t been able to search on her laptop, the next best thing was to call all the hotels and pray to the gods he wasn’t using an alias. Sophia ducked into the first coffee shop she came to. Instead of sitting at a booth, she headed for the restroom. Once she was secluded in a stall, she pulled up the area hotels on her phone and began calling each one. When she tried the Sitela West, she hit the motherlode. He didn’t answer, but at least she knew at which hotel he was staying. She left a message on his room phone leaving her phone number for him. That way if they kept missing each other, at least he could call her.

Her safest bet was to hop a train to Alexandria and hide out with Xenia for a while, but she didn’t want to chance being followed and putting her aunt in danger. Xenia had enough on her plate without Sophia adding to it. She would have to take her chances on her own. She pulled up the search engine on her phone and typed in public library. It wasn’t too far away, but she wouldn’t take a chance on walking. She made her way back to the front of the café and stepped out onto the sidewalk to flag down a taxi.

As she was getting into the automobile, a man yelled, “There she is. Get her!”

Sophia didn’t look behind her. She climbed into the taxi and yelled, “Go, go!” Only when they had pulled out into traffic did she dare turn to see who was following her. She recognized the big man from the airport. He and his partner were yelling and rushing to find their own taxi. Sophia felt safe for the moment. “To the library, please,” she told the driver.

Kallisto was furious at Sergei for allowing the old woman to get the jump on him. As soon as she heard the fire alarm, she’d taken off down the stairs, her gut telling her it wasn’t a fire. She saw the old woman just as she got into a taxi. Luckily, there was another right behind it. Sergei jumped in the cab right before she could close the door. Drago and one of his men, Crane, met them at the bed and breakfast where Kallisto was certain the taxi had stopped.

Crane explained, “I don’t know who he was or why he was following me. If he hadn’t stopped to talk to some old woman, he’d probably have caught me.”

“Old woman? Did she look like this?” Kallisto held up the photograph they had of the woman from the zoo. Sergei had been able to hack into the security feed and freeze frame on her face. The picture was a little grainy, but it was clear enough to show it was the same woman they were now chasing.

“Yeah, that’s her. Why would a young guy be kissing an old woman?” Crane asked, cringing.

“Might be his mother,” Drago offered.

“If you ever catch me kissing my ma with tongue, just fucking shoot me,” Crane protested.

“How do you know there was tongue involved?” Drago asked.

“Would you two shut up? I’m pretty sure she ducked into this inn. Sergei and I will check it out. You two split up. Crane cover the area. She might be old, but she’s tough and fast. Drago, you go to the hotel in case she circles back. If either of you spot her, don’t let her out of your sight. We have to get the disk back,” Kallisto instructed.

“What about the Brooks woman?” Drago asked.

“She should be looking for clues to her parents’ whereabouts, not that the note will do any good. Our first priority is retrieving the disk. Now, go. Call me if you see either one of them.”

When the two men walked off, Sergei asked, “Don’t you think it’s a big coincidence the old woman was going to the tenth floor?”

“Yes, I do. After we leave here, I plan on getting into her room and see what we can find. For now, I want to see if the old woman went in here.” Kallisto walked up the steps to the inn and went inside. It was a quaint little place, if you liked that sort of thing. She lived in a huge villa fit for a Princess. Considering who her father was, she expected nothing less.

Several people were in the foyer arguing. She interrupted them. “Excuse me. Did any of you see this woman come through here?”

“That’s Beatrice,” the older woman of the group exclaimed.

“Why do you want to know?” the younger woman stepped in front of the older one and asked.

“We only want to talk to her. There was an accident, and she might have been a witness,” Kallisto lied.

The younger woman placed her hands on her hips, but the older one stepped around her. “Yes, I will show you to her room.”

“Now, wait just a minute, Yvonne. You can’t go disrupting someone’s privacy. I won’t stand for it,” the older man grabbed the woman’s arm. She jerked her arm away and started to give him a piece of her mind, but a caretaker from the inn stopped her.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Waterford. I must insist you leave this matter to me. We take our guests’ privacy seriously, and I’m sure if you were in the same position as Mrs. Nightingale, you would feel the same way. Now, Miss…”

“Miss Verga. I do apologize for the commotion. I was only hoping Mrs. Nightingale could tell us what she saw. It is unnecessary to disturb her at this time.” Kallisto grabbed Sergei’s hand and pulled him outside. “We know she’s there. Now we’ll wait until she leaves. She can’t hole up in there forever. Let’s take a look around, make sure there’s not a back way she can escape.”

Nikolas arrived at the Nile Grand to find the building had been evacuated. He pulled out his cellphone and dialed Sophia’s room, doubting she would still be in the building. He got no answer, so he looked around the crowd for her. Firefighters were allowing guests to return to their room, so she might be on her way upstairs. Nik hovered around one of the emergency vehicles, close enough to overhear two men talking. A fire alarm had been pulled on the ninth floor, but no fire or smoke had been found. They chalked it up to a kid playing a prank. Hotel surveillance would give them more information. Even though it was the ninth floor, Nik needed to see that video feed for himself. First he needed to find his mate.

He took the stairs up to the tenth floor and used the key card to let himself into Sophia’s room. He fully expected her to be right up, even though he hadn’t seen her downstairs. While he was waiting, he called Julian to check on things back home. He didn’t tell his brother about running into Sophia. He would wait and give him the good news once they were mated. After thirty minutes had passed, he began to get worried. She should have been back by now. Another thirty minutes later and Nik wrote a note for her, telling her he was going to his hotel to run the license plate of the SUV. He remembered to write down his cell phone number for her.

The one time he wanted to run into someone in the hall, the strangers who were following Sophia were nowhere to be found. Nik made his way to his own hotel room where he plugged in the license plate number. Next, he opened one of the tiny bottles of whisky in the mini-bar. He swallowed the liquor in one gulp and opened another. These little samples were just enough to piss someone off. He checked the computer, and as he suspected, the SUV was a rental. It was assigned to someone named K. Verga. The initial K didn’t give him much to go on, and if they were smart, it was an alias.

His cell phone pinged with an incoming text. He grabbed his phone and frowned. The number was unknown, but he opened the text anyway.

In trouble, please help.

Fuck! Nik texted back…
On my way

Sophia had to be at the hotel, or she wouldn’t have known his number. She must be using a burner phone, or else she had her name blocked for security. All this back and forth was getting on his nerves. As soon as he got his hands on her, he was going to chain her to him. A lesser man would already have an ulcer. Since Nik wasn’t really a man, he would be fine. Eventually.

Guests were still milling around the lobby of the hotel, but the emergency crews had left the premises. Nik kept his shifter senses open, especially his hearing. He blocked out all sounds except for voices and then he listened for anything that would alert him to Sophia’s followers.

He stopped when he was outside the door to her room. He didn’t hear any movement inside, but he did feel a presence there. Oh, gods, what if she was hurt? Nik slid the key card in the slot and shoved open the door when it unlocked. Instead of Sophia, Nik was facing someone from housekeeping. The tall woman jumped when he burst through the door.

“Where is she?” Nik asked, grabbing the woman by the arms.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m just cleaning the room,” she begged. Nik let go and took a look around. The woman tried to run past him, but he grabbed her wrist. There were no cleaning supplies in the room. If there was a cart in the hall, Nik didn’t remember seeing it.

“What exactly were you cleaning?” Nik demanded. Instead of answering, the woman pulled something out of her pocket and sprayed it in his face. “Fuck!” His eyes were burning and tearing up. He couldn’t see. The sound of the heavy door handle turning let him know the woman was getting away. “Godsdamnit!” Nik stumbled to the bathroom, running into the bed along the way. He flushed his eyes with water until he could see again.

Back in the sleeping area, Nik looked around the room and saw his note to Sophia was gone. Fuck! Instead of doing the smart thing and finding a way to get in the room next door quietly, Nik knocked. When he didn’t hear voices inside, he used his Goyle strength to open the door. The dickheads following Sophia could explain to the hotel manager how it got busted.