chapter 33
“She’s gone,” Thomas confirmed from the top of the stairs.
Panic flared up in Quinn as his suspicion was confirmed. Rose had left the house without telling anybody.
“Shit! What is she up to?” he wondered out loud.
“She’s meeting Keegan,” Thomas continued as he rushed down.
“What? Why the f*ck didn’t she tell me?” Quinn cursed, furious now. Rose had to understand that alone she was more vulnerable. Only if they stuck together as a cohesive unit, did they have a chance at defeating Keegan.
As Thomas reached him, he held his cell phone out to him. “I just got an alert that text messages were sent between the cell I fixed up for you and Keegan’s number.”
“How? I thought it was untraceable,” Quinn said, confused.
“I mirrored the number on my phone so I would receive a duplicate whenever a message was sent or received. Just in case.” He paused for a brief second. “Who’s Wallace?”
Quinn nearly stumbled backwards at hearing the familiar name. “What does my sire have to do with Keegan?”
“It appears he has something to do with Rose.” Thomas handed him the phone. “Read this.”
Quinn’s eyes darted over the text messages, reading them twice.
“F*ck!”
His mind worked overtime, trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. If Rose knew Wallace, it could only mean one thing. He didn’t want to follow that thought to its conclusion, because if he did, it would only lead him to a place where guilt was waiting for him. Too well he remembered the night when he’d quarreled with Wallace. The night he’d left. He recalled the last words they had exchanged as if it were yesterday.
“You want to help me?” he had accused Wallace. “Then help me! Help me make her love me again. Or get out of my sight!”
“Very well,” his maker had replied.
Quinn had seen it as an answer to his last words, to get out of his sight, when in fact Wallace had agreed to his earlier words: Help me make her love me again.
How wrong he had been. And how blind not to see what had been right in front of him for so long. Wallace had turned her so she would have no reason to reject him any longer. No wonder she had never come back to him, because he alone was responsible for Rose’s turning. He had asked Wallace to help him. He had begged his sire. And his sire had listened.
Quinn didn’t waste any more time guessing what had happened to Wallace in the end. In his heart he knew the answer already. It all made sense now. He understood what had happened and why. Now all that mattered was getting to Rose and closing this chapter of their lives. It was time to bury the past for good.
“Do you know where those Lyon’s steps are?” Quinn asked Thomas, who instantly nodded.
“She’ll be long gone. The message was sent over ten minutes ago.”
“Can’t you trace the phone we gave her?”
Thomas shook his head with a sad look. “You wanted an untraceable one. Sorry. No can do. Besides, Keegan has probably already gotten rid of it.”
The thought of Rose in Keegan’s hands made his blood boil. “She should have trusted me. She shouldn’t have done this on her own.”
Thomas pointed to the phone message. “Whatever it was that she didn’t want you to know, Keegan is obviously using it against her.”
“That’s not important right now. We’ve gotta find her before it’s too late.” Quinn ran a shaky hand through his hair. “Send two people to the Lyon’s steps to see if they can pick up her trail from there.”
Thomas nodded. “Eddie,” he called out, and his mentee appeared within seconds. “You and Cain, go to the Lyon’s steps and search for any trace of Rose or Keegan. Report as soon as you’re there.”
“On my way!” Eddie replied and called out for Cain.
As the two left, Thomas turned back to Quinn. “And the rest of us?”
Quinn lifted his head and looked at his friend. “Keegan will force her to give him the data. She’ll have to lead him to where she’s hidden it. When you swept her room, you didn’t find anything, did you?”
“Not a trace.” Thomas cleared his throat. “Nothing in the rest of the house either.”
Not at all surprised that Thomas had searched the entire house for it, Quinn nodded. “Then she must have hidden it before she ever went to Gabriel to hire us.”
“But where would she consider it safe enough to hide the flash drive? She doesn’t have any friends here in San Francisco. She knows nobody here. Sure, we can search Blake’s apartment, but I doubt it’s there, and besides, Keegan has most likely already looked for it there,” Thomas wondered.
“I agree that it’s not in Blake’s apartment. However, Rose does know somebody here besides us and Blake.”
Thomas gave him a curious look. “Who?”
“She owns a brothel here.”
“There are no brothels in San Francisco as far as I know,” Thomas claimed.
“I suppose they’re called Massage Parlors here. She mentioned a fancy place near the Ritz. It’s the only place I can imagine her hiding the flash drive. She said the women are loyal to her.”
Thomas nodded and started typing on his cell phone. “Let’s see what comes up. It can’t be that hard finding a massage parlor near the Ritz.”
Bent over Thomas’s phone Quinn waited for the search results to display, hoping that his hunch was correct.