Chapter 9
“Ow!” I leapt out of my chair, wondering what the hell had just stabbed me in the leg.
“Are you all right, love?”
“I’m fine.” There it was: what looked like a broken piece of plastic. I tossed it to the floor and sat back down. “I’m just ready to get this over with.”
I’d been on edge the past week, to say the least. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, but the mystery behind Kian’s adoption was distracting me so much that I seemed to find the sharp edge of everything, from the odd piece of plastic to the edge of my keys. I was more than ready to visit Gabriel and put it behind us. James squeezed my thigh, stilling it. I hadn’t even realized it was bouncing. We sat in a waiting room in downtown Boston, on a way-too-high floor inside one of the city’s many skyscrapers. It had taken several days to get an appointment with Gabriel, and now that we were here, we were being made to wait. See? The man was evil. He owned the whole floor, working as an investigator to cover up what he did outside of wor k hours—which, I guess, explained his appearance on the day of the fire.
James had been checking in on me all morning, and every time he asked, I believed myself a little less. “Are you sure? Because we can?—”
“I’m sure,” I lied again through the nerves in my stomach. In an effort to convince him, I brought his hand to my mouth and kissed his fingertips. That move never failed to make him melt. I stood, and his hand slipped from mine. Historically, heights and I didn’t mix, but I was itching to move and that led me over to the windows. If I pushed away the thoughts of exactly how high up we were, the view was incredible. It was early in the morning, early enough to where lights were slowly being flipped off as the sun rose higher in the sky. In the distance, sunlight reflected off the glittering surface of the Charles River. Even if the guy gave me the creeps, I could appreciate Gabriel’s taste. And that was precisely when the door opened and he stepped inside.
I shoved my hands in my pockets, training my eyes on the view as I used my peripheral vision to pay attention. Gabriel rounded the table and smacked a folder down onto it. Only then did I return to my seat.
Yep, Gabriel was exactly how I remembered him. His platinum-blond hair had grown a little, curling at the ends, and I assumed the glare he gave the lock that fell into his face meant he didn’t care for its new length. The dark collared sweatshirt he wore only made his pale skin and hair stand out even more. When he looked up from the table, I fought the urge to shrink away. Barely. The blood red in his eyes battled with the sunlight for control of the space.
“Thanks for meeting me so early.” He paused, and before I could get a word out, he opened his mouth. “Were you two not offered drinks? I swear, I’m firing that useless?— ”
“We’re fine,” James interjected. “No need to fire anyone.”
Gabriel relaxed in his seat, eyes sliding to me. I fought the urge to shrink back in my seat. In fact, I fought the urge to do anything that would give away how uncomfortable I was—especially when Gabriel’s mouth curled into a grin. “Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes? It’s good to see you again, Ryder.”
I swallowed, regretting our decision to decline the drinks he offered. “You too.”
Thankfully, James broke the tension by indicating the folder he’d brought with him. “What’d you find?”
Gabriel didn’t respond right away, instead holding my gaze for several long moments. “Quite a bit actually,” he finally said, turning his attention to James—and I did not sag in relief. “It was exciting to look into something other than infidelity or insurance claims for once.”
“We’re happy to be of service,” James said dryly.
Gabriel singled out a page. “The documents you provided got me pretty far. Not much came up in Massachusetts, but then I started looking out of state.”
He slid the page across to me. It was a birth certificate.
“California?” I muttered, worrying my bottom lip. “That’s a big move for a kid to make. Wouldn’t Kian remember it?”
“There’s more.” Gabriel slid the entire folder over. It was a news article: one about a suspicious fire that killed two people and injured three more.
I was baffled. What did this have to do with Kian? “I don’t understand.”
“It’s the strangest thing.” Gabriel pointed to a highlighted section on the page. “The victims’ five-year-old boy was never found. This article is the only thing to survive the fire. There were no arson reports, no witness statements, and no other new reports to be found. Every first responder who was there that day has mysteriously vanished.”
I rolled my shoulders to combat the chill creeping down my spine. Everything in that article felt eerily familiar: a suspicious fire, people dead—and more missing.
“What aren’t you saying, Gabriel?” James asked. I looked up, surprised to find that Gabriel was still staring at me. Those red eyes burned through me. James was onto something—Gabriel definitely knew more than he let on, and James had figured that out before I had. “You think this was related to the supernatural.”
“I do.”
I held up the papers in my hands. “Did you clean this up?”
A thin-lipped smile. “Alas, my presence was required elsewhere. But my sister, Abigail, was the one to head that mission.”
“Can we talk to her?” If she could confirm that the victims of that fire didn’t have any children, then there was a chance we could be wrong about this entire thing.
“Ryder, are you sure you want to keep digging into this? You might uncover some things you never wanted to.”
“Kian needs answers, James.” I took a deep breath. “Please.”
Gabriel took his phone out, sent a text, and relaxed in his seat. “Abigail will be up soon.”
Though I desperately wanted to connect these pieces, my sense of unease grew as the minutes passed. For a vampire, Abigail moved painstakingly slow. Itching for something to fill the charged silence, I asked, “Do all of you have Biblical names?”
The two vampires shared a look and laughed. “They’re very common names,” James said.
“I know, but I’ve never met such a cluster of them before.”
“They’re timeless,” Gabriel explained. “If we all walked around with names like Vladimir or Jezebel—especially in small towns—we’d draw more attention than we care to.”
“Jezebel is Biblical,” I pointed out.
Gabriel flashed me a grin, and a flicker of amusement in his eyes had me shifting closer to James. “You have your hands full with this one.” It was a statement. Not a question.
“You have no idea,” James said.
The door opened again, and Abigail stepped into the room. Her eyes found mine and she smiled, and it chilled me to the bone. I’d seen her once before. She’d traded her white evening gown for a business-casual dress, accentuated by a navy jacket. Her platinum hair was tied back, but she carried the same intensity I’d seen a year ago. “Good to see you two again,” she chirped, attempting to sit on the edge of Gabriel’s chair. “It’s been a while.”
Rolling his eyes, Gabriel gave her a shove. “Get your own seat, Abby.”
As she did so, Gabriel filled her in on everything we’d discussed. “What do you know about the boy?”
“What boy?”
“The couple’s five-year-old was never accounted for.”
She shrugged. “We assumed he died in the fire.”
Now it was Gabriel’s turn to be surprised. “What do you mean, ‘assumed?’ Didn’t you make sure everyone associated with that fire was taken care of?”
I had to admit that I was the slightest bit amused when she bristled under her brother’s glare. “There wasn’t a body to recover. Every picture in the house burned. He wasn’t at school, and there was no other family for him to be with. He was never seen again.”
Until now.
Bile rose in my throat.
“Why are we talking about a fire from fifteen years ago?” Abigail asked, attempting to read the room.
The other two vampires looked at each other. I looked down at my lap.
“Because that boy didn’t die in the fire, and he didn’t vanish into thin air.” Gabriel’s tone was stern, assertive—and it had me wanting to bolt.
Gabriel pinched the bridge of his nose. “What were you told when you were called there?”
Abigail squared her shoulders. “Hunters were involved. A rookie made a mistake, mixed up some numbers and they targeted the wrong house. No humans were supposed to be there.”
James’s hand found mine again. “A rookie hunter who made a mistake,” he repeated. “Does that sound like someone you know?”
I squeezed, finding solace in his fingers entwined with mine. “Sure does,” I said. I was through with this conversation. I’d gotten the answers I came for, and I needed to get out of here. With another tight grip on James’s hand, I let go and shot to my feet. “Can we go?”
“Of course,” he responded cautiously, as if I were a bomb ready to blow. And, frankly, that was exactly how I felt. I paced in front of the door while I waited for him to join me. Gabriel and Abigail were not-so-quietly bickering.
James softly thanked Gabriel for his help, promised to call if there was anything else, and followed me out of the building. “Do you want me to drive home?”
I pulled out my phone and checked the time. “I don’t want to go home.” I didn’t stop moving until my hand was on the door handle, and only when I recognized how bad it was shaking did I turn around and hand my keys to James. “But I will let you drive.”
The momentary confusion on his face gave way to understanding as he finally connected my thoughts. I made a move to walk around the car, but he stopped me with a hand on my waist .
With a sigh, I dropped my head to his shoulder. “I’m fine,” I whispered.
“If you can look me in the eyes and say that, I’ll believe you.”
I steeled myself, waiting for my heart to stop pounding before raising my head and looking at him. “I’m fine,” I repeated.
I thought he would read right through the lie, but to my surprise he leaned in, pressing a soft, sweet kiss to my lips. “Okay. ”