I was almost too distressed to notice that he was shirtless, his incredible abs tanned nicely, his jeans slung low enough that the muscles under his hip bones were exposed, sloping toward his groin, a glaring invitation.
“S-Someone left this,” I said, tearing my eyes from the abs I wasn’t staring at because I could be in the midst of a life or death situation and once again, there was a sexy-as-hell, half-naked man in the middle of it.
Will crossed the hall in two swift strides and gingerly took the box from me.
“Get rid of it!” Nina screeched from her tabletop perch.
Will glanced into the box and then up at me, his hazel eyes clouded. “Are you upset because it’s a terrible gift or because you didn’t get anything?”
I frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s for Vlad.”
Will upturned the lid. There was a thin, white envelope with the name VLAD scrawled across it.
“Oh.”
“I don’t care who it’s for or who it’s from. It’s a dead. Freaking. Bird. Get rid of it! Those things carry disease! They carry the plague!”
I looked at Nina. “You’re immortal. What do you care?”
Will shook the box. “It’s just a pigeon.”
Nina gaped. “A pigeon? It’s not even a classy bird!”
Once we were able to dispose of the bird—which we soon learned was a warning from Kale, for Vlad—and lure Nina from her spot on the dining room table, Will and I sat down with two cups of tea.
“So, I take it that it wasn’t just a dead bird that woke you up in the middle of the night?” Will said, wrapping his hand around his mug.
I wagged my head. “Couldn’t sleep. I just don’t feel like we’re doing enough, Will.”
“We’re doing all we’re supposed to do.”
I pinned him with a glare. “And that’s not enough. We’re no closer to finding—” I paused, then snatched the papers Vlad had printed out for me. “I forgot.”
“What’s that then?”
“Police files.”
Will cocked an approving brow and I handed him half the stack.
“Wait a minute—didn’t the preliminary report say that they found Cathy in Marin?”
I nodded. “Yeah, Battery Townsley. Definitely over the city line.”
Will looked up. “If you’re going to drop a body anywhere around the city, that’s the place to do it.”
I nodded. “What else?”
Will scanned. “It says there was a preliminary search, but they didn’t find any additional evidence and deduced that the Battery was merely a dump site. Subject was not killed there.”
I bit my lip, thinking of Cathy, of her pink-and-cheery room with the frozen-in-time smiles and the deep, ridged lines on her mother’s face. Hearing her referred to as a “subject” that had been “dumped” made my heart clench, became a tightening knot in my chest.
“Feel like going on a field trip?”
Will looked over my head, out the front window where the sky was even blacker than normal, the lights of the city barely punctuating the all-encompassing blackness. “I have a feeling there is absolutely no chance I’ll be able to go back to sleep if I don’t go.”
I smiled and nodded. “You catch on quickly.”
I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable with San Francisco in the hours just before dawn. Normally, the city vibrates—it pulses with life, with people going about their day, with horns honking and smoke spewing and, just, life. But in these hours the entire city is still—but perilously so—as if something is slowly lurking, fingers of evil trailing through the night, claiming victims, claiming life.
I leaned forward in my seat and kicked up the heat, circling my arms around me and trying to shrug off a cold that was bone deep.
“It looks like the end of the world, doesn’t it?”
Will looked sideways at me, the light from the passing streetlights shining over him, then plunging him right back into darkness. “You mean because the streets are so empty?”
“Yes—and no.” I shivered again. “It feels like something more this time.”
Will guided Nigella toward the Marina, each mile toward the bay thickening the fog around us. “Something more?”
“You can’t feel it? It’s like . . .” I looked out the window, pressing my forehead against the freezing glass. “Unrest.”
I didn’t look at Will and he didn’t answer me. We crossed through the Marina and coasted onto the bridge in silence. The fog was cotton-ball thick now, squeezing through the night-muted cables of the Golden Gate, wafting over our windshield, leaving spitting drops of moisture. Behind us, the city faded into it, the lights struggling against the haze. I knew there was a mountain in front of us, but all I could see were the two slashes of Nigella’s headlights illuminating the fifteen feet in front of us.
“I’m thinking we probably could have done this in the morning.”
I swallowed. “Probably. But we’re running out of time, Will. And this”—I waved the sheaf of police reports Vlad printed out—“just proves that the police aren’t any closer to finding Alyssa or catching her kidnapper either. There’s something more. Girls don’t disappear into thin air.”