Raising Innocence: A Rylee Adamson Novel(28)

I reached for the kid, Tracking his threads, and sucked in a sharp breath. There was no way that was possible!
The kid was so far away I could barely feel him. Like he’d been somehow transported through space and time with the snap of a finger.
“Thanks,” I said, tucking the picture into my pocket. With a sharp tug on Alex’s leash, I snagged a small stuffed toy from Johnny’s bed, then stepped back out of the room and leaned against the wall. So far away, so quickly, how was that possible? The only person I knew who had capabilities in that range was Charlie. Could it be a brownie taking the kids? And if so, what the hell would they want with them?
Will moved up beside me and Alex crowded in close. “What are you picking up?”
“The kid is gone. Shit, whoever is taking them has some way to move them fast. Like as in some sort of . . .” I paused mid-sentence, not wanting to mention my other sudden suspicion, not yet at least. But there was another possibility. But no, no one would be that brassy. Would they?
Will’s eyes tightened around the edges, his accent deepening. “You’ve thought of something.”
“Any place to cross the Veil close by?”
He shook his head. “Not that I’m aware of. That doesn’t mean there isn’t.” He frowned. “With buildings, it’s usually in the basement or lower levels that the Veil is torn, closest to the earth.”
“Then let’s see what we’ve got below,” I said, hanging onto Johnny’s threads, feeling him slip further away with each second. Will gave a sharp nod and put his hand on my lower back, guiding me. Like I was some sort of princess. I pushed his hand off my back. “Just lead, man, no need to get touchy feely.”
I wanted this case over so bad I could taste it. Berget was—I Tracked her—somewhere to the southeast. A distance for sure, but here in Europe, nonetheless.
We made our way down the stairwell, a flood of police officers going up as we went down. The fact that Will wasn’t all that worried about the rules was good. Even I knew that we should have waited there to find out what the next step was with the local police detachment.
“Here,” Will said, motioning at a door that, by the plaque, led into the boiler room. “This is the lowest room in the hospital.”
I took the leash off Alex and let him sniff the teddy bear. “You smell Johnny down here?”
The werewolf lifted his nose to the air first, and then sniffed around our feet. With his head still down, tail straight out in line with his spine, he lifted one paw and pointed at the closed door. “Yuppy doody.”
“He’s quite the ham, isn’t he?”
“You have no idea,” I muttered. Opening the door, the three of us slipped inside. The furnace was going full tilt, the orange glow through the grills flickering light across the room.
“Spooky,” I said.
Alex gave a shiver, rubbing his arms with his paws. “Spooky shit.”
Will choked back a laugh. Score for Alex, he’d won over another person.
There was a heavy scent of mold and rot in the room, even though the boiler was running full tilt. Alex sniffed a couple of times, and then pinched his nose. “No like. Yucky.”
I agreed. It was the kind of smell that clung to you, one of old graves and dead things; unpleasant was a freaking understatement. At least the room didn’t take long to search. I Tracked the kid, and his life threads were already thinning. “He’s going to die,” I said, my heart breaking at the thought of the little one not only dying, but dying in the hands of a stranger.
A sharp spike of fear came through my connection to him, and then it faded, as he fell asleep, most likely a spell or a drug to knock him out.
“We can get to him in time,” Will said, his determination admirable.#p#分页标题#e#
But I knew what was coming.
I shook my head. “I’m not giving up, but I can feel how close he is to death. He must have been hooked up to a respirator or something that was keeping him going. At the most, the kid’s got five minutes. Maybe.”
Will stared at me. “Just like that, you sentence him to death?”
Anger whipped up through me. “Fuck you. You don’t know what I do, you can’t possibly understand! I can feel his heart giving out, feel each beat getting weaker as if my fingers were right over his pulse. I’ve done this enough times to be able to read what’s going to happen. He will die, and it won’t be in vain because we’re going to catch this son of a bitch who took him and make him pay. Got it?”
My yelling echoed through the small room. Will was visibly shaken and he took a half step back, lowering his eyes.