Page 21 of The Vampire and the Case of the Malevolent Mermaid

She bit her lip uncertainly. ‘My husband has called in his own team,’ she blurted out. ‘But I don’t see what harm it will do.’ Shestood and pointedly walked me to the door. The interview was over.

I let Fluffy out of the SUV. When we walked back into the property, Faye was making herself a gin and tonic and she ignored us as we went slowly from room to room. Fluffy never pointed once to indicate he’d sniffed anything worthwhile. Dammit.

As we let ourselves out I murmured, ‘So it was a no-go on the house?’ Fluffy gave a distinct shake of his head. ‘Okay. Let’s see if you catch the same trail here that you found at Essie’s.’

He barked once and his tail wagged fiercely: he was ready to go. Together we walked the perimeter of the house, Fluffy’s nose to the ground. I could tell he was taking his time – we really needed a lead and he knew it. We were thirty hours down on Hamish MacKenzie’s forty-eight-hour deadline.

Fluffy slowed even more as we approached the area beneath Kate’s window, sweeping methodically back and forth as if he were determined to smell every single blade of grass. As he sniffed, I eyeballed the distance to the window. Both girls were supernat and could have jumped to the ground without a problem, but how had the kidnapper gotten them out?

I checked around the foot of the building again but there were no indentations from a ladder. Had a magic userfloatedthem out?

Fluffy barked. ‘You found the trail?’ I asked excitedly. His tail wagged. ‘Can you follow it?’

In answer he put his head to the ground again and led us through the manicured gardens to the woods behind the property. As far as I could tell there was no trail to follow, though I bet Thomas couldhave read a half-bent blade of grass and told me in which direction the kidnappers had taken the girls. That made my heart hurt: we needed someone with his own skillset to find Thomas.

I kept scanning for tracks as we moved further into the wood. Fluffy’s nose was still to the ground when he stopped abruptly and barked excitedly. I looked down and saw that he’d found footprints in an area of soft mud: one set was large and deep, the other smaller and lighter.

I photographed them both, then carefully held my foot in the air above each track to judge its size. The first one had to be that of a large man, but the second was smaller than mine. Maybe one of the girls’?

They were next to the deep tread of a quad bike. I looked at Fluffy. ‘We need to get some wheels.’ The Nomo’s SUV couldn’t follow a quad bike in this terrain. I needed a like-for-like vehicle – and I knew that Kamluck kept an off-roading option for scouting out new logging sites.

I rang Connor; it was handy having a mate who ran a local company. He answered after two rings. ‘Any news?’ he asked instantly and I felt his desperation.

‘I have a lead. Can I borrow a quad bike?’

Silence. ‘A four-wheeler?’ he asked as he mentally translated my English-ism. ‘Umm, sure. Have you ever driven one?’

I hadn’t, but how hard could it be? ‘Nope.’

He grunted. ‘You need someone to show you, and it can’t be me no matter how much I wish I could come to you right now.’ The yearning in his voice melted my heart.

I tried to reassure him. ‘It’s fine. I have Fluffy with me.’

A sigh. ‘Fluffy has never driven a four-wheeler either.’

‘He might have done!’ I looked down at my dog, ‘Have you driven a quad bike? As Reggie, I mean?’ Fluffy cocked his head before giving it a shake. Damn. ‘Okay, he hasn’t driven one – but Reggie was a biker. How different is a quad bike to a motorbike?’

‘It’s different,’ Connor said drily. ‘He can’t teach you if he hasn’t ridden one. Okay, I have an idea, a two-birds-one-stone thing. I’ll send Parker. He knows what to do, plus he needs to spend some time with you. He’s struggling.’

I bit my lip. I had accidentally created a blood slave when I’d tried to save a young vampire's life after the Chrome mine exploded. I hadn’tmeantto do it, but the end result was the same: Parker would do whatever I ordered. Instantly, no matter if it went against his own wishes or his own morality.

Even worse, Parker had once been a pain in Connor’s butt but now he wanted to achieve nothing more in life than to please me and, by extension, my mate. The worshipful adoration when he looked at me made me feel downright uncomfortable. Connor and I had kept the whole thing secret because a vampire in thrall to me was a dead giveaway that I was a hybrid. And if that came out? I was toast.

‘Isn’t it best for him to stay away from me? Maybe it’ll fade away with some distance?’ I asked hopefully.

Connor sighed. ‘I wish it would but it doesn’t work that way. Come to Kamluck. I’ll have Parker and two four-wheelers ready for you.’

‘All right, I’m on my way,’ I said grumpily.

‘I’ll load them on a Kamluck trailer so you can hitch it to your SUV.’

‘Great, thank you!’

‘Be careful, Bunny.’

‘I always am.’

Silence.

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