“That was Herb. It’s still here,” he announced, slipping the phone back into his pocket.
Inez was silent, her eyes scanning the sea of faces, but she had no idea who she was looking for. “You’re going to have to call and see who answers the phone.”
“No,” Thomas said at once. “He threatened to kill Aunt Marguerite if we keep calling.”
“He can’t kill her if she isn’t here with him,” Inez pointed out reasonably. “And after you call and figure out who he is, you can read his mind to see where she is and we can go get her.”
“Not if he’s an immortal,” Thomas pointed out unhappily. “If he’s older than me, I won’t be able to read him.”
“But an immortal isn’t likely to be out here,” she argued.
“Not likely, no,” he agreed. “But not impossible. I’m here.”
“Yes, but—Never mind,” she interrupted herself. “We’ll call him and if he’s mortal, you read him and find out where she is. If he’s immortal and you can’t read him, we keep our distance and follow him back to wherever he’s staying.”#p#分页标题#e#
“What if he’s inside one of the restaurants instead of outside?” Thomas asked, his eyebrows threaded with worry.
Inez hesitated and then sighed. “We’ll have to take the chance.”
Thomas turned on her sharply, eyes flashing with anger.
“Surely if he was inside, the coordinates would have been on the next street over where the restaurant fronts are,” she pointed out quietly. “This is behind the buildings. And to safeguard things, I can call. My number won’t be on her phone. He won’t know it’s a family member. He might not blame her for it.” She let him think about that and then added, “It’s either that or we follow the phone around all day again and hope he goes somewhere where he’d be completely alone and we can figure out who he is, but I don’t think the chances of that are very good in a crowded city like Amsterdam.”
Thomas blew a weary breath out and then nodded once, grimly. “Make the call. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll think it’s a wrong number.”
Inez nodded solemnly and quickly punched in the number he rattled off, but didn’t press the button to start the call, instead she glanced at Thomas and said, “I think you should take one half of the restaurant tables and I should take the other half. If we positioned ourselves halfway along our portion of the restaurant seats, it would give us a better chance of hearing where the ring comes from when I call.”
Thomas nodded and abruptly turned away, only to immediately swing back. He gave her a quick, hard kiss and then growled, “Be careful.”
Inez smiled faintly as she watched him walk to the other end of the groupings of tables until he was at about the three-quarter point. She then moved herself to the quarter point and glanced down at her phone. The air was full of the sound of people talking and the clink of dishes, but there were no phones ringing at that moment. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the button to dial Marguerite’s number and then glanced up. A bare second later a phone began to ring, playing some sort of jazzy digital sound.
Eyes sharpening, Inez glanced quickly over the tables and was just skipping her gaze over one of the nearer tables when one of the young men seated there pulled something from his pocket. A cell phone. He peered at the caller ID, cursed and then muttered with disgust, “Stupid phone! It’s always ringing.”
“Why don’t you toss it or change the chip or something?” one of his buddies suggested.
The fellow with the phone shrugged. “Because until they shut it down it’s free calls for me, isn’t it?”
Inez snapped her phone closed and the ringing immediately stopped. She watched grimly as the young man slid the phone back in his pocket.
“He’s mortal,” Thomas growled as he joined her.
Inez nodded, but remained silent as he concentrated his gaze on the young man. Knowing he was reading him, she waited patiently, but bit her lip worriedly when she saw his expression turn down with displeasure. He didn’t like whatever he was learning. That couldn’t be good for Marguerite.
She glanced toward the table of men, eyes widening when she saw the one with the phone suddenly stand and murmur something to his friends and then head away from the table and toward them. Inez felt her alarm increase with every step he took toward them. It wasn’t the fact he approached so much as the fact that his face was oddly expressionless as he did. She suspected Thomas was controlling him.