Kitty Steals the Show (Kitty Norville 10)

I pulled out my phone and called Caleb again. “You find anything yet?”

He sounded growly even over the phone. “Of course I haven’t, London’s a big city. Have you even got an idea of where to start?”

“No. They apparently drove him somewhere.”

“Then he could be anywhere. We’re hunting, but there are a lot of strange werewolves in town just now.”

“Okay. I know you’re trying. Thanks.”

“Kitty. If he really was snatched, they’ve got him stashed someplace we won’t be able to smell him. You understand?”

He was giving up before even starting. No—he was warning me. Being realistic. “I know. Thanks,” I said, and we hung up.

We had to be able to do something. I wasn’t going to just let him go.

I called Dr. Shumacher for an update. The police hadn’t told her anything yet, but she’d called the American embassy to report Tyler’s disappearance, and the authorities there promised to put their considerable resources into the search. We called Nick Parker again, and he did have some news. Ben and I both listened, heads together, the phone between us.

“I’m with a friend who works in CCTV evidence, which means I’m probably looking at this footage before the DI on the case, but don’t tell anyone. A camera on the street behind the hotel shows a gray SUV with tinted windows parked by the service door you indicated, four hours ago. The car stays there for ten minutes while three men offloaded a bundle from an industrial laundry hamper. The bundle could hold a large person.”

“Can you ID the car? The people? Can they track it?”

“That’s just it,” he said. “We can reasonably confirm that your friend was taken from the hotel. But the men are wearing scarves over their faces, and the car’s registration plate has been covered with tape. They could very easily have driven to the next block, pulled the tape off, and blended into traffic. The make and color of the car are common enough it’ll be difficult to spot them. We’re looking at CCTV footage from surrounding areas, but it’ll take time. I’ll let you know if we find anything more.”

He was going through a lot of trouble for us, which was kind and a little heartbreaking. “Thank you.”

With such slim clues to follow, I tried to reconstruct what had happened. They’d caught Tyler by surprise in his room. They must have said something reasonable to convince him to open the door—there hadn’t been any sign of a break-in. Once inside, though, they must have revealed themselves, and he’d struggled, but they had some way of quickly overpowering him. Tranquilizer darts, probably—I’d seen them work on werewolves before. They’d loaded him into one of those hotel laundry bins, taken him down a service elevator with no one the wiser. And it had all happened four hours ago. What were we doing four hours ago?

The riot. Luis and I had been struggling to the front of the crowd, and the attack on Esperanza had come right around then.

“Was it a setup?” I said out loud, wonderingly.

“Was what a setup?” Ben asked. “What are you thinking?”

“Crazy conspiracy theory,” I said. “The same time Tyler was being loaded into the car, the riot was breaking out in front of the hotel.”

“A distraction?” Ben said. “It would sound crazy if it didn’t actually make sense.”

“What are we dealing with here?” I continued, thinking aloud. “Whoever took Tyler also has the wherewithal to instigate riots?”

“It would have just taken the guy with the bucket of blood to tip that crowd over the edge,” Cormac said.

I called Nick again, told him about the correlation with the riot, and suggested looking for the guy with the bucket of blood. He might be a thread back to whoever had Tyler. Nick said he’d pass the information along to the police.

We walked back to the front of the hotel, but I didn’t know where to go from there. The police were working on it. We’d followed the leads we knew to follow. Caleb was searching—without a lot of chance of success, but still searching.

It wasn’t enough.

I stopped, and Ben and Cormac stopped with me, turning to look.

“Cormac,” I said. “We have a fairy wish to use.”

Ben chuckled. “You think that’s for real?”

Cormac ignored him. “You sure you want to use it on this? We might be able to find Tyler without it.”

“Alive?” I said, and Cormac didn’t answer. “Yes. I can’t think of anything better to use it on.”

“You’re both talking like this is actually going to work,” Ben said. “There’s magic and then there’s…” He paused, a sour taste puckering his mouth.