Under Attack

I gulped. “Tie her to the train tracks? You don’t really think she’d do that, do you?”

“Not unless she has a cartoon hat and a handlebar mustache.”

“This is not a time to joke!”

Alex stretched his arm along the backrest, his hand gently massaging my neck. I squirmed away.

“I know. But going into hysterics isn’t going to help Nina, either.”

I glowered in cross-armed silence until we made it to the police station—which we did in record time. Alex was shrugging out of his jacket when I pressed him down in his desk chair and handed him Nina’s cell phone. He stared at the phone in his palm as though he had never seen a pink Swarovski Crystal–bedazzled Motorola.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Trace the call!” I screamed. “Dust it for fingerprints. There was obviously a struggle. Nina would never leave her phone under the couch—”

“And she wouldn’t leave it behind,” Alex said, taking the phone.

“Yeah. So go all CSI on that phone’s ass.”

Alex clicked the phone shut and turned on his computer. “Okay, first of all, this is SFPD, not CSI. Tracing takes a little longer than a commercial break.”

I slumped into the red pleather guest chair, defeated. The reality of Nina’s disappearance—and the realization that she was with Ophelia—finally began to sink in. I sniffed, then started to cry. “We’re never going to find her, are we?”

“Okay, got it,” Alex said, clicking shut his laptop and grinning.

“Got what?”

“Come on, Lawson, get moving.” He stood up, shook me out of the chair. “The call came from an address up north.”

I abruptly stopped crying and sprang up. “You were able to trace it? Did you triangulate the cell phone towers to pinpoint their location?”

Alex snatched his coat from the back of his chair. “No. I Googled the phone number.”

Alex peeled out of the police department parking lot with sirens blaring. The few cars on the city roads eased to the side to let us pass, and Alex kept the gas pedal flush with the floor of the car the second we hit the freeway on-ramp. He gestured to the flashing lights and sirens above us as we overtook a Yellow Cab, slow with wide-eyed tourists and their world of luggage.

“These things are so convenient.”

“Let me guess—another perk they didn’t have when you were here last?”

“Something like that.”

We sped down the freeway in silence; Alex hadn’t mentioned the exact address from which Ophelia’s call originated—he didn’t have to. We both knew it had come from my father’s house in Marin County. My heart started to thunder in my throat as we took the Sir Francis Drake exit and wound through the quaint city of Marin, most of its residents barely roused, despite the sunny morning.

“She’d better not hurt her,” I muttered, gritting my teeth until my temples hurt.

“It’s you that Ophelia wants,” Alex said, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “She’s just using Nina to get to you.”

“Does that mean she won’t hurt her?” I asked hopefully.

“No.”

We turned down the tree-lined street to my father’s house. Alex parked skewed in the driveway and leaned over me in the front seat.

“What are you—”

He popped open the glove box and pulled out a handgun, slipping it into his waistband. He slipped a short- handled knife with a fat blade into a leather sheaf wrapped around his ankle. Then he looked at me.

“Do you still have the stun gun?”

I shook my head miserably. “No. I lost it in the fire.”

He sucked in a breath and then ducked between my legs. I had heard that life-and-death situations made people randy, but personally, I really wasn’t in the mood. “Alex! Now?”

But Alex came up with a small black gun in his hand.

“I always keep a spare,” he said, checking the magazine. He handed the gun to me and pushed the black metal gun box back under my seat.

“Remind me not to use the vanity mirror,” I said as we crept out of the car. “What does it do—launch a hand grenade?”

“No, cyanide powder.”

I wasn’t sure if he was joking, but I made a mental note not to check.

I tried to tuck my small loaner gun in my waistband like Alex had done, but one too many donuts prevented that. Besides, I had the kind of luck that meant I would be shooting off my privates halfway through our daring rescue. Instead, I slipped the gun into my sweatshirt pocket. The butt of the gun was already damp from my sweating palms.

“What are we going to do?” I whispered to Alex as he steered me flat against the garage. “Do we knock?”

Alex’s brows rose. “Really? You ask me if I triangulated a cell phone call to pinpoint Ophelia’s location, and then you ask if we knock?”

“Right. We barrel roll through the front window.”

“No more cop shows for you. I go check it out, you stay right here.” Alex put both hands on my shoulders, pushed me down about four inches so I was mostly ducked into a pittosporum bush, and then repeated himself. “Stay right here. Got it?”

I nodded, though I had no intention of hanging back. Nina was my best friend, and her afterlife was in my hands. She would have happily been sucking on a blood bag and reading an InStyle magazine if I hadn’t come along. I sniffed, feeling the tears start again.

Alex looked at me and softened. “Just stay here. We’re going to get Nina.”

He tiptoed out across the driveway, hugging as close to the shadows cast from the house as possible. He disappeared around a clutch of flowering bushes and I assumed he had gotten onto the front porch, but there was no sound.

I counted to twenty-five and then tiptoed from my pittosporum hiding place, picking my way along the shadows of the driveway, following in Alex’s footsteps. I held the butt of my gun in both my hands, arms outstretched. I couldn’t remember if that was the way Alex told me to hold the gun or if I saw it on Cops, but either seemed good enough so I took a few more tentative steps, letting my gun lead the way. When I reached the front porch it was empty.

“Alex?” I whispered, lowering my gun a half inch. “Alex?”

I scanned the surrounding landscaping for any sign of Alex, and then I noticed the front door was slightly ajar. I gently shouldered it open just enough to squeeze through, and promised myself that should I get out of this alive, donuts were strictly off-limits. Well, off-limits right after my “I survived this rescue attempt” donut party.

The lights were off in the foyer; all the curtains were drawn, casting the room into shadows. The house was ungodly still, and the only sound anywhere was the thunderous beating of my heart, the ridiculously loud rush of my blood through my veins. I held my breath and paused before blinking, certain that both would come out as loud as a snare drum, causing Ophelia to rouse from her hiding place and slit all of our throats. When nothing happened for a thirty count I tiptoed farther into the house, calling out for Alex in my mind. If I was going to get any additional powers, I prayed, now would be the time.

I had to stop and get my bearings. Okay. I thought to myself, if I had kidnapped a vampire and was holding her hostage, where would I take her? I blinked in the near darkness, letting my arms and my gun fall to my sides as my arms started to ache. I prowled farther down the hallway, using one palm against the wall to guide myself through the relative dark. When my fingers stumbled on the cold plastic of a light switch cover I instinctively went to flick on the light and then paused—Ophelia would come toward the light. Or, she had the whole house wired to this very light switch, and when I flicked it on we would all go up like a powder keg. I jammed my hand in my sweatshirt pocket and moved on.

I found my way to my father’s office and pressed my back against the wall, holding my gun