5. Chapter 5
Raz woke the next morning to the impression of something caressing his cheek. He jerked fully awake. Someone had drawn back the curtain, allowing the sun to peek through. No one else was in the hotel room. He sat up and took a sharp breath.
Orris and sugar cookies.
Alert, he touched his face where a tingling sensation remained. His gaze stopped on a note stuck to the TV screen.
“Fucking hell.” He threw the covers off and raced over. A satin pink lip print stared back at him with writing below.
Catch me if you can.
He growled and ripped the note from the screen, stretching the Bubblegum behind it until it snapped free. How the hell did she leave the prison and get in here?
With a curse he headed for the exit where her scent lingered.
A keycard slipped to the floor when he opened the door. Adrenaline quivering in his fingertips, he strode into the hallway. The scent permeated the air. She’s close. Following the trail, he landed himself at the elevator that dinged open.
The older woman in a cleaning service outfit raised a hand to her mouth.
“Oh, my,” she muttered, looking him up and down.
Raz gave her a tight grin, feeling, for the first time, the chilly air on his half-naked body.
“Good morning,” he gritted out.
Wide-eyed, she nodded a few times, stepping from the elevator and scurrying away. Biting his lip, he stepped into the mechanical box.
No scent present.
Running his fingers through his hair, he exited the elevator and held the note up to his face. She had never left a message before, so why leave one now?
He marched to his room and slammed the door. A piano melody blared into the space. Raz fished his phone from his crumpled jeans on the floor.
“Special Agent Raz Malone,” he answered.
“We’re going to need you back at the field office pronto,” Regan said.
Sweat gathered on his palm where he held onto the piece of paper. “What happened?”
“Kate escaped along with all her belongings and someone stole the lingerie from evidence. This will be a shit show when the press catches wind.” Her voice vibrated with strain, igniting his protective instincts.
Regan may not have been a dragon, but he considered her a friend—someone to protect. Ever since he’d joined the bureau, she had his back, and he hated to disappoint her.
“I’ll be there in ten.” After packing his belongings, checking out of the hotel, and using his siren to get through traffic, he was there in five minutes.
The press was waiting at the front door, wanting to snap a picture of the woman they still believed was inside. Raz entered through the rear entrance. The field office was a clusterfuck.
Kate’s escape had led to the arrest and interrogation of one police officer, Jeff Cross, whom they’d found locked inside her cell.
All Jeff could recall was doing his rounds, which included walking in front of the Bandit’s cell.
A lump on the back of the officer’s head showed someone had knocked him unconscious.
What didn’t corroborate his story was the surveillance of that same officer strolling around the field office, collecting Kate’s belongings and stealing the lingerie.
“You’re positive you didn’t bargain with her?” Isak’s voice came through Raz’s headset as he listened to the interrogation and watched the surveillance from the previous night.
“No, I didn’t,” Jeff said. “I did my rounds and passed out. I don’t remember doing anything you’re accusing me of.”
Raz paused the surveillance video. Jack’s lack of extra details told Raz, who had sat through many interrogations, that Jeff wasn’t lying.
But Jeff had a bad reputation at the force for a reason.
Lying was his game, and he was also aware of their tactics, so he knew to keep his mouth shut.
His nonverbal cues—leaning forward, conviction in his voice—were hard to fake, though.
Fallen, from his understanding, couldn’t possess people any more than the evil version of them, Archfiends, could. Mind manipulation was a possibility but that took time.
He reached for his phone again. Daxton, the only dragon knowledgeable about Fallen, hadn’t called back after five attempts, so he dropped his hand and looked back at the surveillance.
Rewinding the tape, he stopped at a glitch on the screen.
Something bright waved across the camera for a few seconds at the exact moment Jeff Cross walked by her cell.
From behind the bars, Kate was in the far-left corner of her cell, sitting up but unmoving.
Did they speak to each other in that short time?
After that, the police officer headed to the evidence locker to gather the lingerie. His behavior didn’t seem off. He was conscious, speaking to those who had greeted him. Everyone said he’d seemed fine, in a good mood.
Jeff had signed the lingerie out to deliver it to their forensics lab. When he left the men’s restroom afterward, he wasn’t carrying any of the items. At around fourteen hundred, someone turned off the feeds and didn’t turn them back on until after they found Jeff in the Bandit’s cell.
Even after hours of intense interrogation, as far as Jeff knew, he’d been unconscious.
Raz took a sip of bitter coffee. He’d been woken around sixteen hundred, giving Kate plenty of time to leave the field office around fourteen hundred and travel to his hotel. How did she find me?
If the guard really was telling the truth, Raz was at a loss. And even worse—he’d lost Kate.
“This better be good news,” Raz muttered over the phone to Michael, his contact at a local forensic laboratory.
Two long days had passed with Raz chasing leads on Kate to locate her and trying to contact Daxton while the press frenzy kept him confined to the field office.
The call Kate made at the precinct was untraceable, and he’d been unable to listen to the person on the other end because of the static that old phones created.
“I’ve run across something interesting,” Michael whispered, as if he didn’t want others to hear.
“I’m listening.” Raz sat up in his office chair.
“The fingerprints we pulled off the employee’s locker at Refiller Co. came back locked.”
Raz had sought the company, Refiller Co.
, that had stocked the vending machines on the heist day and took out all the outdated food.
The drugged snacks and vending machines were clean of fingerprints.
But Raz had jumped at the opportunity to dust the locker of the specific employee who’d stocked the precinct’s machines.
The disgruntled manager had been more than happy to help since that female employee vanished without notice.
Since she’d used a fake identity to score the job, he hoped their fingerprints would offer better insight.
“What do you mean the fingerprints are locked?” Raz asked.
“As in, you need high security clearance to access anything.”
Raz’s hand stilled on the phone, his mouth drying. “Send me the information.”
After hanging up, Raz forwarded the message from Michael to his only known contact with such a clearance. He leaned back in his chair with a sigh and closed his strained eyes, relieving the sting.
Give me thirty, came the texted reply from Caige, another Dragon SEAL. Knowing how time-strapped Caige was, Raz was in his parked car within twenty minutes. When he received a call from an unknown number, he answered.
“What do you have?” Raz asked.
“Bonnie Sinclair,” Caige answered, getting straight to the point. “Not much on her except that she’s a previous informant. Is this about your case? Lewis filled me in.”
“She’s the only lead I have. The trail’s gone cold.” Raz sighed, leaning against his car door as he watched the paparazzi at the front of the field office.
Church bells chimed over the line. Where was Caige at this time? The dragon was always at a new location each time Raz called, fulfilling some kind of mission for the CIA.
“I did some digging,” Caige said. “Scrounged up some of Bonnie’s recent purchases.”
He sat up. “Anything valuable?”
“I have an address for a place she’s renting.”
“What is it?”
As Caige answered, Raz typed it into his car’s GPS. It was a few hours away. Coincidence? He didn’t think so.
As Raz turned his car on with the push start, he waited for music to fill his speakers. Why was Caige still on the line? His lack of hanging up spoke volumes.
“Something bothering you?” Raz asked.
“Midnight struck again,” he said.
Raz froze midturn as he went to back up from his parking spot. Damn you, Matsuda.
“What did they steal this time?” Raz asked, though he knew Caige would fill the Dragon SEALs in at their next meeting.
“A large quantity of a rare earth metal called terbium.” His voice came out solemn.
“Shit. Do you think they know the chemical makeup of Lucifer’s Bell?”
“Yes, and from my research, they are finishing the long-range acoustic device replica.”
If they made a long-range—or LRAD—version of the Bell, the same riot-control device used to deter people with high-frequency sound and rang the demonic frequency, summoning demons into humans, chaos would reign.
A memory of carnage filled Raz’s gaze. A spasming dragon foamed at the mouth, helpless to a devilish intonation. A familiar man, not even in his dragon form, walked to one dragon and stabbed her in the throat. Blood ran down gold scales, spraying and puddling.
Raz swallowed the bile in his throat and rubbed his eyes to rid the image.
“How long did you keep your thief in custody?” Caige asked, making Raz’s stomach twist further into knots.
While the Bubblegum Bandit had a moral code and didn’t leave casualties, Midnight was another story—taking out anyone who got in her way, including his friend. He didn’t want to think they were the same person but he couldn’t write off the possibility.
“Not long enough,” he said. Forty-six hours had passed since the bureau had her in custody, giving her time to steal the terbium.
His hands clenched on the steering wheel.
Caige said, “If the Bubblegum Bandit is familiar with CIA informants like Bonnie…”