Vampires Are Foreve(51)

He’d wake up, she reassured herself. But now she had to go out and check the latest coordinates to see if she could find Marguerite. She didn’t want Thomas’s friend Herb calling back and wondering why they hadn’t checked them out. Besides it was what they were there for. She started to stand and then knelt again as she recalled his phone. There was a good possibility Bastien might call to check on their progress and she thought it best if she had the phone if he did.

Gritting her teeth, Inez snaked her hand under Thomas’s body, feeling around for his pocket. The knife was no longer in his back, but she still didn’t want to jostle him too much and possibly worsen his injury. Finding his pocket, she slid her hand inside, caught the phone in her fingers with some difficulty and eased it out, her breath exhaling on a gust of relief when she had it free.

Inez dropped it in her purse, and then slid the map out of his back pocket and put that in her purse as well as she got to her feet. She hesitated then, feeling awful about leaving Thomas lying there. After a moment, she dropped to her knees again and slid one of the folded towels under his head as a pillow, then stood and headed for the door.

Eight





It didn’t take Inez long to find the new location on the map. The next spot was a lot closer to the hotel than the others had been. It was only a few minutes walk away. Inez set out at a quick clip, eager to get this over with. She ended up on Rembrandtplein, directly in front of a huge night club with a ridiculously large queue of people in front of it. Judging by the number of people waiting outside, there must be a colossal number of people inside. It would be loud, dark, crowded, and impossible to find Marguerite.

Closing her eyes briefly, Inez prayed for strength, or at least a little energy, and then stiffened as a phone rang. Digging quickly in her purse she found her phone, pulled it out, and opened it.

“Thomas?” Herb asked.

“No, it’s Inez,” she answered, having to speak loudly to be heard over the noise around her. Before he could ask where Thomas was, she quickly said, “The last coordinates are outside a large club called Escape. There’s a huge queue out front waiting to get in and we’re checking it out now.”

Her eyes slid over the people in line, looking for the tall brunette as she continued, “But if she isn’t in the line up, which she probably isn’t since she could control the doorman’s mind and make him let her go in, then we’ll have to move the search inside. But this place is really big. I’m guessing it holds well over a thousand people, and it will be dark and noisy and crowded inside and she’ll be impossible to find. Please tell me the new coordinates are somewhere else and she was just passing by here.”

“They are,” Herb answered.#p#分页标题#e#

Inez let her breath out on a sigh of relief and scrambled to find her pen and notepad to write down the coordinates as he rattled them off.

“Tell Thomas I’m going to check her coordinates again while you two head over that way. If she’s still at the new location, fine. But if she’s moved on again, I think it might be smarter to leave it until morning. Once the sun rises she’ll stay in one place.”

“All right,” Inez murmured with relief. She was tired and didn’t relish the idea of running all over Amsterdam tonight in search of a woman who was proving to be a ghost.

Inez said goodbye and hit the off button and then glanced down at her purse as the sound of ringing came from its depths.

Thomas’s phone, she realized and knew it would be Bastien checking on what was happening. Sighing, she grabbed Thomas’s phone, dropped her own in the purse, and opened Thomas’s.

“Hello?”

“Inez?” Bastien sounded startled that she was answering Thomas’s phone and Inez grimaced, knowing she was going to have to lie. She hated lying.

“Thomas is in the bathroom,” she said abruptly. “We’ve been running all over Amsterdam following Marguerite’s phone and are about to check one more spot. If she isn’t at this new stop, we’re going to call it a night and wait until morning to try again. Hopefully, she’ll settle in one spot then and we’ll be able to catch up to her.”

“Oh,” Bastien said, sounding somewhat startled.

Inez grimaced, knowing it was her terse tone that had set him aback, but she couldn’t help it. She was a rotten liar. She hated doing it and didn’t do it well.

“All right then. I guess that makes sense,” Bastien murmured finally. “Tell Thomas to keep me informed.”

“I will. Good night,” Inez murmured and quickly pressed the button to end the call before he could say anything else. Muttering under her breath then, she slipped the phone in her purse and then opened the map to figure out where she had to go to get to the next location. It appeared Marguerite was heading farther away from the town center and into quieter residential streets. Curious about that, she headed out to the next spot.