Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last

front door without bothering to communicate with the twins; nothing was on his mind except getting over to that little house as fast as he could.
    A second was all it took to dematerialize, and as he resumed form in the front yard, he thought that of all the scenarios he’d run through in his mind for coming back, this was not it.
    As the grandmother reported, the Audi was parked on the street at the end of the walkway. Just where it had been. But what was of note? There was a scramble of messy footfalls disturbing the snow, the trail crossing the lawn to the street in a diagonal pattern.
    She’s been kidnapped, Assail thought.
    Goddamn it.
    Jogging up the squat steps, he hit the doorbell and stamped his feet. The idea that someone had taken his female—
    The door opened and the woman on the other side was visibly shaken. And then she seemed further taken aback as she took him in with her eyes. “You are…Assail?”
    “Yes. Please let me in, madam, and I shall be of aid to you.”
    “You are not the man who came before.”
    “Not that you saw, madam. Now, please, let me in.”
    As Marisol’s grandmother stepped aside, she lamented, “Oh, I do not know where she is.
Mãe de Deus
, she is gone, gone….”
    He glanced around the tidy little living room, and then stalked outinto the kitchen to look at the back door. Intact. Opening it wide, he leaned out. No footprints other than those he’d left a week ago. Closing things back up and locking the dead bolt, he returned to her grandmother.
    “You were upstairs?”
    “
Sí
. In the bed. As I said, I was asleep. I hear her come in, but I was half-awake. Then I hear…that sound, of someone falling. I say I come down, then the front door opens.”
    “Did you see a car drive off?”
    “
Sí
. But it was very far away, and the license plate—nothing.”
    “How long ago?”
    “I called you fifteen, maybe twenty minutes after. I went to her room and looked around—that is where I found the napkin with your number on it.”
    “Has anyone called?”
    “No one.”
    He checked his watch, and then grew concerned about how pale the elderly woman was. “Here, madam, sit down.”
    As he settled her onto the floral couch in the living room, she took out a dainty handkerchief and pressed it to her eyes. “She is my life.”
    Assail tried to remember how humans addressed their superiors. “Mrs.—ah, Mrs….”
    “Carvalho. My husband was Brazilian. I am Yesenia Carvalho.”
    “Mrs. Carvalho, I need to ask you some questions.”
    “Can you help me? My granddaughter is—”
    “Look into my eyes.” When the woman did, he said in a low voice, “There is nothing I will not do to bring her back. Do you understand what I’m saying.”
    As he sent his intention out into the air between him, Mrs. Carvalho’s eyes narrowed. Then, after a moment, she calmed and nodded once—as if she approved of his means, though there was a good chance they were going to be violent. “What do you need to know?”
    “Is there anyone you can think of who would want to hurt her?”
    “She is a good girl. She works at an office nights. She keeps to herself.”
    So Marisol hadn’t told her grandmother anything about what she really did. This was good. “Does she have any assets?”
    “Money, you mean?”
    “Yes.”
    “We are simple people.” She eyed his handmade, tailored clothes. “We have nothing but this house.”
    Somehow he doubted that, even though he knew little of his woman’s life: He found it hard to believe she hadn’t made some cash doing what she did—and she certainly didn’t have to pay taxes on the kind of income she’d been bringing in from the likes of Benloise.
    But he feared that a ransom call was not going to be forthcoming.
    “I do not know what to do.”
    “Mrs. Carvalho, I do not want you to worry.” He got to his feet. “I shall handle this promptly.”
    Her eyes narrowed again, belying an intelligence that made him think of her granddaughter. “You know who did this, do you?”
    Assail bowed low as a measure of respect. “I shall bring her back to you.”
    The question was how many people he was going to have to kill to get that done—and whether Marisol herself was going to be alive at the end of it.
    The mere thought of bodily harm to that woman had him growling in his throat, his fangs descending, the civilized part of him shedding as the skin from a cobra.
    Whilst Assail left the modest house, he had a feeling what this was all