“Evie is gone. Bentley was taking her around to houses and was in an accident. I don’t…I’m not sure what happened yet, but Bentley was taken to the hospital and he is worried to death about Evie.” Nick’s phone rang again. “That’s Addie. She was headed to the hospital with Kari, and I told her to call me when she got there.”
Steele was afraid now. He had no idea if the accident had anything to do with what they were doing here, but he had a gut feeling that it didn’t. He looked at Perrier and told her what was going on.
“I just heard. I’m sending out my best men now.” Steele thanked her. “Do you think that the woman in there…you think she had anything to do with the accident and disappearance?”
“No. I don’t know why, but I don’t.” She nodded, and her mike at her shoulder screamed some information at her. Steele let her walk away to deal with it and looked for Hugh. After telling him what had happened, Hugh said he’d go.
“I’ll take Carlton with me, and Billy. Unless you think they can help you with this?” They couldn’t, so Steele told him to take them. “I’ll keep in touch. Just let me know what I can do if you need me.”
By the time Hugh was gone, Nick seemed to calm. The man had been so different lately that he wondered if he knew why. Steele knew. It was love. It had the same affect—a thought occurred to him.
“Nick, where is Addie?” He told him she was on her way to the hospital. “Tell her to come here. I think…I have a feeling that I know what the book was telling us. And tell her to bring Kari. We’re going to beat these odds right now.”
It took them twenty minutes to get there. The more he thought about it, the more Steele thought it would work. Nick had two of his own friends go to the hospital to keep an eye on Bentley as the rest of them decided on a course of action. It was then that Aster came out of the house with an infant in her arms.
“They need help.” Steele nodded and watched her return to the house only to come back with two more. They were tiny, much smaller than a newborn, and he knew they were the children that Summer had told them about. The third time she came back, Aster looked like she’d been crying. He asked her what it was. “She’s found them. I’m not sure if one of Glass’s men found them or she did. Ellen can see the others, so she might be able to see these little souls as well.”
There were nine in all. Most of them were no bigger than the palm of his hand, but all of them had been hurt. Steele had never worked with someone so young before, and wasn’t even sure how to proceed. But Aster came back to him with the last child, and he knew that he had to do something. This baby had been used up, was all he could think had happened to her. He picked up the first one and held it to his chest.
He saw it then…what had happened to it. The little boy had been the result of an abortion. The house, it seemed, had been used for illegal acts such as the one preformed on these children for months before someone had come in and killed the doctor. Steele looked at Ray when he came to stand beside him.
“Can you feel it?” Steele told him that he could. “That monster is trying to suck their energy out of them even from here. We have to send them on. Know how?”
“No. Do you?” Ray took the small child from him and held it up. Steele watched as he prayed, something he’d ever seen the man do before. Then when his wife, Betty Hancock, showed up, Steele realized it wasn’t a prayer so much as a plea for help.
“Hello, darling.” Steele watched them together. Ray and Betty had always been such a loving couple. Steele wished that he’d known her before she had died. He was sure she was even nicer back then. “I’ve come to help you. All of you. But the babies will need to be taken too.”
“You can help them?” Betty looked at Steele and smiled. “Thank you, my lady. You have no idea what this means to me.”
“You have been a very good boy, young Steele. We’re all very proud of you.” She turned and handed the child she’d taken from Ray to a woman behind her. “As soon as they’re free of this place, we’ll help you.”
Once the babies were gone, all of them cradled in the arms of elderly women who were talking to them as they disappeared, Steele saw his own wife coming toward him. Kari was talking a mile a minute to Addie, but stopped and looked at him when he softly said her name, as if she might have heard him. When she leapt into his arms, Steele held her to him. This was his world.
“I was just telling Addie that her grandmother is fine. If she wasn’t you’d know it.” He looked at the other woman who was being held by Nick. “You haven’t heard from her, have you? I mean, she’s still with us, right?”
“I’ve not heard from her.” Kari nodded and put her head on his shoulder. “We have to finish this, and you and Addie are going to help us. I have a plan.”
“I’m sure you do.” Her giggle told him that she was joking with him, but he also knew that she trusted him. He told her and Addie what the plan was and they both nodded. He just hoped this worked.