The Epilogues: Part I: Badge of Honor (The Potentate of Atlanta Book 6) Read online

  Not enough. Not enough. Not enough.

  Pressing mute on that familiar nagging mantra, I diverted my attention to forming a plan of action.

  Beat Sue.

  Simple.

  Effective.

  I liked it.

  “I can’t believe she waited so long to announce her candidacy.”

  “Her goal is to throw you off your stride,” Bishop warned. “You can’t let her get in your head.”

  “Too late.” I thumped my skull on the wall. “She booked an extended stay in the paranoia suite.”

  We hit the lobby, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to go for a run or find a nice closet to scream in.

  “This is the last thing I need right now.” I hated the whine in my voice. “The wedding is in six months.”

  “The wedding, no offense, isn’t life or death.” He hit a button to shut the doors. “This final test can be.”

  “She’s going to target me.” This painted a bull’s-eye between my shoulders. “I bet she’s got good aim.”

  “The gauntlet is no holds barred, but she touches a hair on your head outside it, and she’s disqualified.” He sounded happy about that. “She’ll also be banned for life from applying to the position in any city. Same goes for you. That’s plenty of deterrent to keep you both honest.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Not that I worry about you minding your manners.”

  “I’ve worked too hard for this to let someone steal it out from under me on a technicality. I would let her eat my liver, if she asked. I would even hand her a knife and fork. Maybe salt and pepper.”

  “You spend too much time with gwyllgi.” He eyed me oddly. “Necromancers don’t eat one another’s livers.”

  Hmm.

  He might have a point about the gwyllgi, but I dared him to judge me after eating his way through one of their famous cookouts. Who in their right mind wouldn’t hang with them for all-you-can-eat brisket?

  A buzz in my pocket alerted me to a call, and I answered, figuring it was Midas checking in. “Hey.”

  “Hadley…”

  “I’m sorry.” I put the call on speaker and caught Bishop’s eye. Fae ears were sharp. “I can’t hear you.”

  “This is…Cruz…Torres.”

  A lump formed in my throat, and I had to swallow before I could talk through it.

  “Mr. Torres.” I kept my tone calm while I shook inside at his thready voice. “Are you okay?”

  “They took him.” His breath hissed from between his teeth. “Neely.”

  “Who took your husband?” I waited but only heard his labored breathing. “Mr. Torres?”

  “Vampires,” he panted. “They were…”

  The uptick in my pulse summoned Ambrose, but after he saw no immediate threat, he retreated back into the shadows.

  “Where are you?” I smacked the button for the top floor with my palm. “Can you tell me your location?”

  The line remained open, sirens and traffic blaring in the background, but he didn’t answer.

  “Hold on, Cruz.” I did my best to comfort him. “Help is coming. For both of you.”

  Bishop already had his phone in hand, waiting for my orders. We had to move fast, and he knew it.

  “Call Grier.” I kept my cell to my ear. “Find out if she can track the Torres’s cell phones.”

  The OPA embedded software into the phones issued to its members to make tracking easier in the event of an emergency. Since Linus had implemented the idea in Atlanta, I could only hope he had encouraged Grier to do the same in her city, with her people. But it was a recent safety measure, one we hadn’t fully embraced on personal-use cells yet.

  Storming across the hall as soon as the elevator released me, I bulled into the apartment and filled in Midas.

  “Phone, please.” I waited for him to hand his over then dialed Reece. “Get me eyes on Cruz Torres.”

  Between the cameras mounted by the OPA and the feeds we mooched from the city, we had eyes in the sky across Atlanta. The coordinates from Cruz’s phone would tell Reece where to look, when we got them, but he was also playing with facial recognition software that might hurry things along.

  “Will do.” He clicked keys in the background. “The more info you can get me, the faster I can work.”

  Bishop was on the phone with Grier at my elbow, and he shot me a thumbs-up to say it was a go.

  “I’m on it.” I ended the call and returned my attention to my phone. “Mr. Torres?”

  The line was dead. The call had ended while I rushed to get help. Not a good sign.

  Grier might be my former best friend, but she was the Potentate of Savannah and Dame Woolworth. Neely and Cruz were both in her employ, not to mention her close friends, and they were visiting Atlanta under my auspices. Now Neely was missing, and Cruz’s condition was unknown.

  “Frak.” I braced my palms on the kitchen counter. “This is bad.”

  And it was about to get worse.

  Two

  One miserably long hour later, I had dented the wall leading into HQ’s kitchen by banging my head against it. Okay, fine. The wall was reinforced. All I had done was smudge it with sweat. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was mocking me. I, however, had earned a beauty of a headache to act as the cherry on top of my frustration sundae.

  “I’ve got a visual,” Reece announced from behind his shadowy screen at HQ. “Incoming.”

  Shoving away from the wall, I invaded Bishop’s personal space at his command center.

  “Where is he?” I kept watch on the lower screens while Reece patched through a live feed. “Goddess.”

  The white room with its muted gray tile floors was chockful of beeping, flashing medical equipment.

  “It could be worse.” Bishop shooed me. “A human hospital isn’t the most terrible place for a human.”

  Hand on his chair, I drummed my fingers until he swatted at me. “How do we have this?”

  “We tracked Cruz’s phone to Gershwin Memorial,” Reece mumbled. “We have paid informants at all the hospitals, so I contacted an RN on the payroll. He recorded this footage on his phone then texted it to me for verification.”

  The reason it had taken an eternity to locate Cruz was the area where Neely vanished. They had been on their way to an upscale restaurant to meet with Cruz’s client when a ubiquitous black SUV screeched up to the curb at Marx’s on the Corner.

  Two men hopped out. One aimed straight for Cruz, knocking him unconscious. The other went straight for Neely, scooping him over his shoulder as if he were light as a feather and ducking back in the SUV with his prize.

  From the video Reece sourced, there was no doubt that Neely had been the target. None whatsoever. The question was…why? His ties to Grier? His much thinner ties to me? Or, least likely, given Neely was universally loved by all who knew him, a personal vendetta?

  The good news/bad news was the abduction happened in full view of many well-off patrons. That meant the police got called on the spot. But, since Cruz was a human, the Low Society sentinels embedded within the Atlanta Police Department didn’t think to notify us. Which meant the EMTs loaded Cruz into an ambulance and carted him off to the nearest hospital rather than returning him to the Faraday where Abbott could treat him while under gwyllgi guard.

  Concussed witness, missing spouse, trampled evidence.

  This whole situation was FUBAR.

  Frakked Up Beyond All Reason.

  At least we had a smidgen of good news to share with Grier.

  Hating to nag, I forced myself to bug Reece again. “Any luck with Neely’s cell?”

  “Still no signal.” He grunted as more keys clicked on his screen. “Odds are good they destroyed it.”

  Older vampires were often ignorant of modern technology, but new ones tended to be more tech savvy.

  Just our luck, these had known enough to smash our quickest means of tracking Neely.

  Hoping Midas had good news for me, I dialed him before updating Grier. “Hi, handsome.”

&nb
sp; “Aww,” Ford replied. “You say the sweetest things.”

  “Um.” I double-checked the number. “Where’s Midas?”

  “Bathroom.”

  “Oookay.” I gave him a second, but he chose not to enlighten me. “Why do you have his phone?”

  “Midas had to handle some business.” He pitched his voice low. “In the bathroom.”

  There were lines that Midas and I didn’t cross, and two of them involved toilet paper.

  “We’re not married yet.” I mentally backed away from this conversation. “He can call me back later.”

  “Hang on.” He grunted and then a vehicle door shut. “Midas is interrogating a witness.”

  “In the bathroom?” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I don’t follow.”

  “We’re at Marx’s.” The radio station playing country music in the background pegged him as being in his truck. “We got a tip from a gwyllgi EMT that a teenager filmed the whole thing. He was talking over the recording, like he was giving a live report. He even tried to interview witnesses.”

  “Public exposure is the last thing we need right now.”

  The footage wouldn’t be damning in and of itself. Humans wouldn’t watch it, point a trembling finger at the screen, and shout, “Vampires are real.” But word of Neely’s affiliations would get around to the para community, and that was what promised to cause a stir.

  “Sorry, darlin’.” Ford turned down the music. “I wish I had better news.”

  “Goddess, that sounded selfish.” I crushed my eyes shut for a count of five. “Neely is missing, and I—”

  “—am stressed to the breaking point,” he soothed. “Don’t beat yourself up over a knee-jerk response.”

  No chance of that, but his support helped me think clearer. “This could be a good thing.”

  “We might have footage of the vampires responsible,” Ford agreed. “Assuming Mr. Torres was correct.”

  “He’s had enough experience with the supernatural to make an educated guess.”

  Superhuman strength, a flash of fang, hissing, snarling, snapping, could all point toward vampires.

  Humans, being prey animals, had a sixth sense about them not so different from necromancers.

  “Any news on that front?”

  “That’s why I was calling.” I was happy to change topics. “We’ve located Mr. Torres. He’s at Gershwin Memorial Hospital. I’m not comfortable leaving him there, so we’re transferring him into Abbott’s care.”

  The Faraday was now owned by the Atlanta gwyllgi pack, and the OPA had contracted out the use of one of its offices for me to host meetings with the heads of various factions within the city, since HQ was off-limits to non-OPA staff. We also brought on Abbott, who up to that point had been patching us up for free, like a sucker, and whom I trusted more than I ever thought possible, given he was a doctor and therefore suspect.

  Highly suspect.

  Even if he did stock my favorite lollipops for the rare occasions when I was a good little patient.

  “Midas ought to finish up soon.” Ford slurped on a drink. “I’ll pass your message when he gets out.”

  “Yeah.” I was still iffy on why the interrogation required a toilet. “Thanks.”

  With that call behind me, I texted Abbott a heads-up that we were coming in hot then booked a Swyft.

  A mixture of relief and dread swept through me while I dialed Grier as Bishop and I exited HQ.

  “Have you found Cruz?”

  Her words smushed together so tight, I had to separate them in my head before forming an answer. “Yes.”

  “Thank the goddess,” she breathed. “How is he?”

  “Stable,” Bishop said, loud enough for her to hear. “That’s all we know at this point.”

  “We’re transferring him from Gershwin to the Faraday, into Abbott’s care.”

  “Good.” Her voice wobbled. “That’s good.”

  Bishop flagged down our driver, and we climbed in his car. A nice one. With passenger snacks and water bottles. Sadly, I was too jittery to partake. That didn’t stop me from admiring a bag of mini-Oreo cookies from afar.

  With a few swipes from my modified pen, I drew a sigil on my hand, ensuring my conversation with Grier remained private. It meant excluding Bishop, but we couldn’t risk the information we discussed leaking to the public.

  “We’ve got a possible lead on the persons responsible for kidnapping Neely.”

  Fingers crossed the video didn’t prove me a liar after we watched it.

  “Thank the goddess some more and again.”

  “I’ll touch base as soon as we have anything.”

  “Thanks.” Her exhale was shaky in my ear. “It’s hard sitting on my hands.”

  “You’re not coming?” I heard the shock in my voice. “I thought…”

  “I trust you to handle this.” Her surety shone through. “You’re days from your swearing in. It’s a critical time for you. You need to be seen as having this under control. I can’t upset your apple cart.”

  Relief transformed my knees to jelly, and I was grateful to be sitting when they started wobbling.

  “I won’t make you look weak,” she said, determination in every syllable. “You’ve worked too hard.”

  Her arrival in my city would do exactly that. It would shout my incompetence.

  “Thank you.” I took a breath and unintended words rushed out. “I’m doing everything I can.”

  “He’s your friend too.” She forgot to use the past tense. “You’ll find him. For both of us. For all of us.”

  Neely truly was a treasure. More than his husband and friends would miss him if…

  There was no room for ifs. I was going to find him, and he would be okay. That was that.

  “I won’t rest until I do,” I promised. “He’s my top priority.”

  “Will you bring in the Atlanta Alliance?”

  The Atlanta Alliance was my brainchild, but giving birth to it was threatening to rip me a new one.

  The original idea had been for each faction to elect a representative to give them a voice, but that hope quickly flew out the window after every pack, clan, pride, etc., decided they required their own seat at the table. Meaning the AA was now more than twice its intended size and growing. Painfully.

  I had been too idealistic. I saw now that it had been overly optimistic of me to expect wargs, vampires, gwyllgi, and everyone else to unify under one representative with no guarantees of their impartiality.

  Lesson learned. No more brainchildren for me. I was brainchildbirthed out for the foreseeable future.

  “They’re not ready. Nowhere near it. They still think they’ll get cooties sitting next to one another.”

  “Hadley,” she said softly. “You got this.”

  Staring out the window, I cringed from my pinched reflection. “How can you comfort me right now?”

  “Linus isn’t the only one around here rooting for you.” Her heart was in her voice. “We’re friends too.”

  “Yeah.” I smiled to hear her say so, given all we had been through. “We are.”

  No longer two girls whose bond was forged in a time of innocence and youth, we were women who shared similar goals and outlooks, who had each seen enough of the ugly side of life to appreciate an honest friendship for what it was worth.

  “We’re here.” Bishop rolled his hand. “Wrap it up.”

  He couldn’t hear me, but I heard him fine. Grier must have too.

  “I’ll let you go.” She paused. “Just keep me in the loop.”

  “Will do.”

  Delegate, delegate, delegate.

  That was the lesson Linus and Bishop kept hammering into my head.

  With that in mind, I got out of the car and wiped the sigil off on my thigh as I texted Anca.

  >Can you forward all information, past and future, to Grier on my behalf, please?

  >>Consider it done.

  >Don’t tell the others, but you’re my favorite blank screen. />
  >>Milo will be crushed.

  >By his ego? Yeah. Probably. One day.

  A call interrupted our roasting of Milo, a pity, but I got twitchy at the caller ID. “Hello?”

  “You don’t sound happy to hear from me.” A frown deepened Midas’s voice. “Everything okay?”

  Phew.

  “I was scared it was Ford,” I admitted. “He made it sound like you were in gastrointestinal distress.”

  Though I couldn’t say I had ever heard of a gwyllgi suffering worse than mild indigestion from overeating. Their metabolisms were too fast for much to phase them.

  “I’m never trusting him with my phone again,” Midas decided, “or letting him talk to you.”

  While I hung back to talk, Bishop hit the receptionists’ desk and worked his mojo on a flustered woman.

  Deadly he might be, but he was also handsome beyond the scope of mortal men. I tended to forget that. He didn’t. As most fae did, he wielded his beauty as a weapon to get what he wanted with a smile.

  “I’ve got a better idea.” An evil idea, perfect for revenge. “Let me bake Ford Ex-Lax brownies.”

  “That’s cruel and unusual punishment.” A chuckle slipped free of him. “Do it.”

  With gwyllgi metabolism, I would be lucky to give him gas. But I was willing to put in the effort.

  “Care to enlighten me on your bathroom shenanigans then?”

  “The police corralled everyone until they finished taking statements. For once, that worked in our favor. I was able to find the teenager. I roped a sentinel in an APD uniform into informing the boy the footage had to be confiscated due to the ongoing investigation.” He sighed heavily. “The boy ran. His parents got involved. Patrons panicked, thinking the assailants had circled back, and people scattered like ants.”

  A quick check on Bishop revealed a doctor striding toward him. “How does the bathroom factor in?”

  “I don’t have authority humans would recognize, so the sentinel claimed I was an APD consultant. The restaurant was packed with witnesses, so once the teen was caught, I escorted him to the men’s room for a private conversation. It was as far as his parents were willing to let him go without them, or a badge.” He sounded both annoyed by and approving of their caution. “I paid him five hundred dollars for the story and another thousand for the phone.”