The Epilogues: Part I: Badge of Honor (The Potentate of Atlanta Book 6) Hailey Edwards (books for 10th graders .txt) 📖

spend too much time with gwyllgi.” He eyed me oddly. “Necromancers don’t eat one another’s livers.”

Hmm.

He might have a point about the gwyllgi, but I dared him to judge me after eating his way through one of their famous cookouts. Who in their right mind wouldn’t hang with them for all-you-can-eat brisket?

A buzz in my pocket alerted me to a call, and I answered, figuring it was Midas checking in. “Hey.”

“Hadley…”

“I’m sorry.” I put the call on speaker and caught Bishop’s eye. Fae ears were sharp. “I can’t hear you.”

“This is…Cruz…Torres.”

A lump formed in my throat, and I had to swallow before I could talk through it.

“Mr. Torres.” I kept my tone calm while I shook inside at his thready voice. “Are you okay?”

“They took him.” His breath hissed from between his teeth. “Neely.”

“Who took your husband?” I waited but only heard his labored breathing. “Mr. Torres?”

“Vampires,” he panted. “They were…”

The uptick in my pulse summoned Ambrose, but after he saw no immediate threat, he retreated back into the shadows.

“Where are you?” I smacked the button for the top floor with my palm. “Can you tell me your location?”

The line remained open, sirens and traffic blaring in the background, but he didn’t answer.

“Hold on, Cruz.” I did my best to comfort him. “Help is coming. For both of you.”

Bishop already had his phone in hand, waiting for my orders. We had to move fast, and he knew it.

“Call Grier.” I kept my cell to my ear. “Find out if she can track the Torres’s cell phones.”

The OPA embedded software into the phones issued to its members to make tracking easier in the event of an emergency. Since Linus had implemented the idea in Atlanta, I could only hope he had encouraged Grier to do the same in her city, with her people. But it was a recent safety measure, one we hadn’t fully embraced on personal-use cells yet.

Storming across the hall as soon as the elevator released me, I bulled into the apartment and filled in Midas.

“Phone, please.” I waited for him to hand his over then dialed Reece. “Get me eyes on Cruz Torres.”

Between the cameras mounted by the OPA and the feeds we mooched from the city, we had eyes in the sky across Atlanta. The coordinates from Cruz’s phone would tell Reece where to look, when we got them, but he was also playing with facial recognition software that might hurry things along.

“Will do.” He clicked keys in the background. “The more info you can get me, the faster I can work.”

Bishop was on the phone with Grier at my elbow, and he shot me a thumbs-up to say it was a go.

“I’m on it.” I ended the call and returned my attention to my phone. “Mr. Torres?”

The line was dead. The call had ended while I rushed to get help. Not a good sign.

Grier might be my former best friend, but she was the Potentate of Savannah and Dame Woolworth. Neely and Cruz were both in her employ, not to mention her close friends, and they were visiting Atlanta under my auspices. Now Neely was missing, and Cruz’s condition was unknown.

“Frak.” I braced my palms on the kitchen counter. “This is bad.”

And it was about to get worse.

Two

One miserably long hour later, I had dented the wall leading into HQ’s kitchen by banging my head against it. Okay, fine. The wall was reinforced. All I had done was smudge it with sweat. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was mocking me. I, however, had earned a beauty of a headache to act as the cherry on top of my frustration sundae.

“I’ve got a visual,” Reece announced from behind his shadowy screen at HQ. “Incoming.”

Shoving away from the wall, I invaded Bishop’s personal space at his command center.

“Where is he?” I kept watch on the lower screens while Reece patched through a live feed. “Goddess.”

The white room with its muted gray tile floors was chockful of beeping, flashing medical equipment.

“It could be worse.” Bishop shooed me. “A human hospital isn’t the most terrible place for a human.”

Hand on his chair, I drummed my fingers until he swatted at me. “How do we have this?”

“We tracked Cruz’s phone to Gershwin Memorial,” Reece mumbled. “We have paid informants at all the hospitals, so I contacted an RN on the payroll. He recorded this footage on his phone then texted it to me for verification.”

The reason it had taken an eternity to locate Cruz was the area where Neely vanished. They had been on their way to an upscale restaurant to meet with Cruz’s client when a ubiquitous black SUV screeched up to the curb at Marx’s on the Corner.

Two men hopped out. One aimed straight for Cruz, knocking him unconscious. The other went straight for Neely, scooping him over his shoulder as if he were light as a feather and ducking back in the SUV with his prize.

From the video Reece sourced, there was no doubt that Neely had been the target. None whatsoever. The question was…why? His ties to Grier? His much thinner ties to me? Or, least likely, given Neely was universally loved by all who knew him, a personal vendetta?

The good news/bad news was the abduction happened in full view of many well-off patrons. That meant the police got called on the spot. But, since Cruz was a human, the Low Society sentinels embedded within the Atlanta Police Department didn’t think to notify us. Which meant the EMTs loaded Cruz into an ambulance and carted him off to the nearest hospital rather than returning him to the Faraday where Abbott could treat him while under gwyllgi guard.

Concussed witness, missing spouse, trampled evidence.

This whole situation was FUBAR.

Frakked Up Beyond All Reason.

At least we had a smidgen of good news to share with Grier.

Hating to nag, I forced myself to bug Reece again. “Any luck with Neely’s cell?”

“Still no signal.” He grunted as more keys clicked on his screen. “Odds are good they