“The lab and the midrise,” Zaira said and Tamar threw up records on both properties. “Because why risk applying for a permit anyway? It has to do with something they couldn’t hide or that might attract unwanted attention from the authorities. Plumbing, electrical work, digging for new vents or pipes.”
Aden’s features were grim as he went through all the data they had. “The others are also in difficult locations—too many security cameras, too much foot traffic.”
Pulling back her hair, Zaira secured it with a hair tie she’d had around her wrist. “I’m taking a team and checking out the top possibilities now—I’m going to call in two teleport-capable Tks to transport us.” Speed was of the essence. Persephone’s captors might not kill her, but tonight, Miane had shared something else with Zaira, a secret so big it was tightly, tightly guarded.
When young, she told Aden, having informed Miane he’d have to know, water-based changelings have been known to die after extended periods of not being permitted to shift, and Olivia has no memory of water during her captivity.
Though the Halcyon damage means her memory is suspect, she does remember vividly that it hurt to shift once she was in Venice—and Miane says that only happens after a prolonged period of forced abstinence from shifting.
Every muscle in Aden’s body went rigid. The child has likely not been given the chance to shift since her abduction eight months earlier.
Zaira swallowed the rage in her throat. Miane says children who’ve died previously—after being caught inland in drought zones in past centuries, their parents unable to get them to other suitable water sources in time—lasted seven months at most. Persephone’s living on borrowed time. Her heart will simply give out soon.
“Go,” Aden said, after hauling her close for a hard kiss. “I’ll work with Tamar, coordinate other teams to check out the secondary possibilities.”
“Make sure they don’t betray their presence,” Zaira said, though she knew her squadmates were all trained to be shadows. “And ask Krychek to assist.” She didn’t trust the cardinal, but she’d noticed one thing during the times he was in the valley—Kaleb wasn’t cruel to children.
The fact that he’d grown up under the aegis of a serial killer—a truth Zaira only knew because Aden had obtained certain highly restricted files—could’ve pointed in either direction as to his own inclinations if not for his relationship with Sahara. Ivy and the other Es loved Krychek’s mate; thus, Zaira surmised that the woman wasn’t tainted by evil. Which meant Krychek, deadly though he was, wasn’t a murderous psychopath.
Aden touched his hand to one side of her face. “I’ll call in every resource.”
Chest tight, Zaira hugged him fiercely before walking out on her way to the midrise that struck her as the most likely location. It was isolated, it had a large basement area, and the ownership records were murky at best. Arriving with her team while the area was yet cloaked in the heavy gray of predawn, she spent precious time on reconnaissance. The sheer number of hidden security cameras told her they were on to something.
“Blind the cameras,” she told Mica.
“I can give you five minutes,” he said, already hooked into the system to feed it a loop. “Three, two, one, go.”
Zaira and her team infiltrated the building on silent feet, ghosts in the gray. One half went up, the other down. Zaira was in the latter group, and when she ghosted down the steps into the basement, a single glance was enough to tell her they were too late.
The building had been in use until recently. Food wrappers lay in the small trash bins in two corners, while the layer of dust on everything was fine. When she pushed open the only door down there, it was to discover a room with the utilitarian and commonplace gray walls she’d seen in the first image of Persephone.
Below the bed with its dirty brown blanket lay a red-haired rag doll.
* * *
“NONE of the other locations show any signs of involvement in the conspiracy,” Aden told Zaira when she returned to the valley after confirming the lab was exactly what it seemed. “They must’ve cleared the midrise when we brought in Smith and the others.”
The timeline fit with the debris they’d found, the amount of dust on the floor and the shelves. “Damn it!” Infuriated, she went to throw something . . . and realized she was holding the little girl’s doll.
Hand trembling, she placed it gently on the table beside her and Aden’s bed. And though the rage threatened to push her to angry blindness, she took a minute to breathe, just breathe, as Ivy was teaching her, and when she opened her eyes, it was to see Aden’s beautiful face in her sight. “What do we do now?”