Page 79 of Isabelle’s Forbidden Love

“Several.”

“Damn.” Orlando again looked at the live feed. “There’s some red brick. Looks older than the rest of the building.”

“Okay,” Thomas said and looked at his tablet. “I think I got it.”

Orlando sidled up to him.

“This part here is the older part of the building. And there’s a chimney.” Thomas looked at Orlando’s cell phone. “That could be it.”

“Okay. I’m going in. Who’s quickest with the lockpick?”

“I am,” Patrick said from inside the van as he jumped out. “And here’s the comms.” He handed Orlando an earpiece, and gave the others to Thomas and Samson.

Orlando put the earpiece in and tested it. “One, two.”

“We can hear you,” Samson said.

“I need a gun,” Orlando said.

Hesitating for a moment, Samson stared at him. “How good a shot are you?”

“I’m good. And trust me, if there is even the slightest chance that I could hit Isabelle, I won’t take the shot.”

Samson nodded, then turned to the van and retrieved a semi-automatic. “Loaded with silver bullets.”

Orlando took it and handed Samson his cell phone in exchange. “Here. Let me know via the comms if anything changes.” Such as: if LaRuson made a move to kill Isabelle. But he didn’t have to say that. Samson understood.

With another look at the blueprints on Thomas’s tablet, Orlando oriented himself.

“Patrick, let’s go.”

Orlando took only a few steps toward the building when he realized that everybody was following him and Patrick, not just Samson and Thomas, but everybody else who’d come in the second van. Haven was carrying a bolt cutter, while Amaury and Gabriel were heavily armed. Cooper carried a messenger bag across his torso. Only Ethan was staying behind with the vans.

“You can’t come with me. If LaRuson sees us all coming, he might kill Isabelle. I can’t risk that.”

“We won’t go in, not right away anyway,” Samson assured him.

Patrick was already at one of the doors leading into the abandoned warehouse, hunched over the lock to pick it. It took less than a minute, before he turned around and nodded, indicating that the door was open. Nobody spoke.

His heart pounding in his chest, Orlando took a breath and eased the door open, spying into the interior to acquaint himself with it. Seeing nobody, he slipped inside, his gun drawn, setting one foot in front of the other, careful not to make a sound. The building wasn’t empty. There were old partitions dividing the space up into individual areas. Some areas contained old furniture, others palettes and trash. Several hallways culminated near the entrance and led to individual rooms, most likely offices or storage rooms. He also noticed industrial machinery and wondered whether the property was truly abandoned. There was evidence of a fire having burned inside the building not too long ago. Most likely homeless people squatting, though right now he couldn’t smell any humans inside the building.

“Nelson put duct tape over Isabelle’s mouth,” Samson said through the earpiece.

Fuck! That meant he wouldn’t be able to hear Isabelle if she tried to call out to him. He’d have to rely on his other senses.

“I’m not sure what Nelson is doing now. He’s out of the frame,” Samson added.

Treading lightly, Orlando moved in the direction where the blueprint had indicated an old chimney. It smelled musty, reminding him of an old root cellar before humans had invented refrigeration. Carefully, he edged closer to the part of the building where he suspected LaRuson was holding Isabelle prisoner.

The space he was now walking through felt like a labyrinth. Obstacles lined the way: old machinery, broken glass, wood pallets. Doors led into different sections of the building. There were virtually no light sources anywhere. There were windows higher up, all but a few were painted black or boarded up. Barely any light from street lamps shone into the interior. The moon was hidden behind clouds. It was an ideal place for keeping a prisoner without anybody noticing.

And were he a human, not a vampire, he wouldn’t have been able to perceive the faint smell of blood. Isabelle’s blood. It drifted to him now, though he didn’t hear any screams. He wanted to find out from Samson what he saw, but he didn’t dare speak. LaRuson might hear him.

“Shit!” The curse came from Thomas via the communication device in Orlando’s ear. “Orlando, listen carefully: the drone just picked up three heat signatures. Two people are moving: you and Nelson. He’s not with Isabelle anymore. He’s close to you.”

Fuck!

He’d barely finished the thought, when something reflective whirled toward him so fast that he couldn’t get out of the way. A throwing star embedded itself in his left biceps, the pain so sharp that Orlando knew instantly that it was made of silver. Diving to the side to get out of the way of any other flying objects, he pulled the throwing star out of his upper arm with his bare hand, causing burns on his fingers. He bit back the pain and ignored the damage to his skin, while aiming his gun in the direction of where the throwing star had come from. It appeared that LaRuson wasn’t planning on killing him quickly. Death by a thousand cuts was more likely, because a quick death would certainly not give LaRuson the revenge he was seeking.