I wanted to get back to that life, and only one thing stood in my way. Madigan. My jaw tightened. Thanks to him, I wasn’t done hunting and killing yet.
We left the RV in a wooded area and rented an average-looking sedan for our reconnaissance. Then we waited until after dark to circle Garrett Street, driving past the former plumbing supply factory as slowly as we could without looking suspicious. As Don had predicted, the building appeared to be deserted. No cars in the parking lot, no lights inside, and the security cameras weren’t operating. That, or someone should be fired since the lenses on two of them were cracked to the point of being useless for surveillance.
“Looks like no one’s used this place for years,” Ian stated.
Just as Don had said. Disappointment filled me. Now what?
“We don’t have time to wait until Madigan eventually leaves your old compound,” Bones said. “Much as I’d enjoy grabbing him and torturing the truth out of him, we’re on a deadline, and it might be weeks before he leaves the safety of that facility.”
“Even if we got lucky and he left it tomorrow, it would be obvious who kidnapped him if Madigan ‘disappeared’ shortly after we came to see him,” I added.
We also couldn’t storm my old compound to capture him for that same reason. If we did, we’d be tipping our hand to whomever else Madigan was involved with, thus giving that person a chance to switch their base of operations. Or to increase its security. No, the element of surprise was our only advantage. Thank God Madigan didn’t know that Don had turned into a ghost. As far as Madigan was concerned, there was no way we could find out about his species-merging agenda, giving him no reason to be any more paranoid about protecting it than he already was.
Until the day I showed up to kill him, that’s how we intended to keep it.
“We can try some of the other bases Don and I used as safe houses,” I began, only to have Bones’s sudden “Shh!” silence me.
I glanced around, gripping a silver knife. Nothing rushed toward us, and my senses hadn’t picked up any supernatural energy, so what was it?
Ian also glanced around before shrugging as if to say, Beats me.
I looked back at Bones. A frown stitched his brows, and his head was cocked to the side.
“You hear that?” he asked softly.
I sent my senses outward. Noise from nearby traffic competed with sounds from the restaurants and other businesses across the street, but none of it sounded threatening.
“I hear nothing out of the ordinary,” Ian murmured.
“Not you,” Bones said with a hint of apology. “You, Kitten.”
Me? What could I hear that Ian couldn’t . . . oh, right. I pushed back the audible sounds to concentrate on the lower hum of thoughts beneath. After a moment, snatches of sentences crept into my mind. Most came from the populated areas across the street, but a few seemed to be transmitting from somewhere else.
Underneath the derelict building we’d been scouting.
Bones began to smile.
“They didn’t close Madigan’s old facility. They moved it lower.”
Eight
My friend Vlad once told me that soundproof didn’t mean mindproof because telepathy travels through even the thickest walls. Case in point: Whatever government official that had secretly backed Madigan after Don fired him had been careful. Even with a vampire’s supernaturally sharp senses, nothing visible or audible gave a hint that the former laboratory was still in operation, albeit four stories beneath its original location. Only my and Bones’s ability to read minds clued us in; though if not for him, I might have missed it anyway.
We followed the thoughts of an employee to the entrance of the facility, concealed inside the elevator of a parking garage two blocks away. Push one of the four buttons available, and you got the parking level indicated, but hold the first and third buttons down at the same time, then enter a code, and you went several stories below to a secret tunnel connecting the two locations.
Someone who’d put that much effort into concealment wouldn’t skimp on surveillance, so we didn’t attempt to apprehend the employee there. Instead, Bones waited across the street before following the blond, bespectacled young man after he climbed into his vehicle and drove off. Ian and I were on foot, stationed at opposite ends of the street. No matter which way the man turned, he’d pass one of us.
I got the lucky drive-by and made the most of it by breaking my heel and pretending to stumble into the street. The young man’s car screeched to a stop only inches from where I crouched.
“What the hell, lady?” he snapped, rolling down his window.
I kept my head lowered so that my hair concealed my face. Who knew if Madigan had circulated my picture to his employees?
“My ankle,” I said in a shaking voice. “I-I think it’s broken.”
A car horn blared behind him, and he made an exasperated noise.
“Broken or not, you gotta get out of the street.”
I rose, still keeping my hair in my face, and then crumpled with a fake cry when I put weight on my ankle.