Aden stood. Silas didn’t know him very well, if she thought this was enough to weaken him.

“Bastien, you’re with me. We’ll talk to the police.” They walked out into the main room. “The rest of you, clean this up. I’ll make sure the police remain downstairs”—another way of saying he’d nudge the human investigators’ minds in the right direction—“but I want these men moved to their bunks to recover. The bodies can be put in one of the side rooms for now, until the funeral home picks them up. And, Trav, get the appropriate cleaning crew in here. Make sure they arrive after the police are gone. And someone start checking the video feed of the lobby.”

He looked down at the sweatpants which was all he had on. They were covered in blood and wholly unsuitable.

“I need to change clothes.” He glanced at Bastien who was similarly half-dressed. “You, too. We need to make an impression. We will assure them that our security was never breached, and that we will, of course, cooperate fully.”

Aden raced up the stairs with Bastien in his wake, forcing himself to focus on the details of what needed to be done right now in order to protect himself and his vampires. Entering his suite, he shoved aside the rage that was eating him alive, ignored the images of Sidonie’s fair skin covered in blood, her face filled with terror. It wouldn’t do her any good for him to storm all over the city in a fruitless search. He’d taken enough of her blood that if he got close enough, he could track her.

But Chicago was a big city, and her abductors could be hiding her anywhere. She might not even be in the city any longer. He didn’t know when the attack had occurred, didn’t know how many hours they’d had to spirit her away, to torment her . . .

He picked up a heavy brass sculpture and threw it at the wall with such force that it hung there embedded in the plaster. He stared, not seeing it, his fists clenched with the need to hit something, someone. When he found whoever was behind this, their life would become nothing but pain. They would live a very long time, and every moment of it would be spent learning what it meant to defy a vampire lord, to take from him the only woman in his entire long life that he’d ever cared for. The only woman who’d ever honestly cared for him.

Turning away from the destroyed wall, he dressed quickly, pausing only to eye his reflection in the mirror, to straighten his tie and button the double-breasted jacket. The police were expecting a vampire, fangs and all. He’d give them a solid citizen, a businessman who was shocked at the intrusion of violence into his ordered life.

And if they didn’t believe that, he’d wipe their minds until they couldn’t remember what they’d had for breakfast. He didn’t have time for this shit. Someone had broken every rule of vampire society, someone had taken his Sidonie, and they would pay before the sun rose in the morning.

SIDONIE TWISTED and yanked at the plastic ties binding her wrists until her skin was slick with blood, but she couldn’t get them off. Maybe if she’d had something sharp to cut them with, some edge she could use, but there was nothing. They’d tossed her into the trunk of a car, closed the lid, and taken off. The trunk was airless and reeked of exhaust fumes and something dead. The smell was nauseating, and she was fighting a constant battle against the urge to vomit, which could be fatal since her mouth was taped over, and she’d watched enough crime shows to know she would choke to death.

She didn’t know how long she’d been stuck in this damn trunk. She’d faded out more than once, maybe from the fumes, or maybe from the blow to her head when they’d first taken her. But it left her unsure as to how long they’d been traveling. She only knew it was long enough for her to wonder where she’d gone wrong, how she’d found herself tied up and in the trunk of a car.

She sighed. It would be easy to blame Aden, but it wasn’t his fault. Her current predicament was the multiplied effect of so many choices made over the years, beginning with her decision to forego the usual hometown stories of pancake breakfasts and basketball heroes in favor of pursuing what she considered serious journalism. Stories that could make a difference. She’d made a difference all right. Janey was dead, and she was probably going to join her before the night was over.

Was it even night yet? It had been full daylight when they’d taken her. She’d been half out of it from whatever had been on the wet rag they’d slapped over her face, but she remembered that much. The sun had still been shining when they’d dragged her out a back door and into the alley behind Aden’s building.

Her heart lurched in a sudden burst of fresh fear. Aden. She had to believe he was okay, that the intruders had never made it past the last, and most hardened, layers of his security. She didn’t think they’d had time, and besides, why take her if they had Aden?

But what would he think when he woke and found her gone? Would he find her blood on the wall where she’d hit her face? Or had her abductors cleaned that up, leaving him to wonder what had happened? Would he think she’d run? That she’d left him? Tears filled her eyes at the thought. Every woman in his life had betrayed him. But Sid hadn’t. She wouldn’t. Did he understand that?

Sid swallowed her tears, forced herself to think with her brain instead of her heart. She didn’t think Aden would believe she’d run. And even if he did, he’d find her. Aden wasn’t the kind of man a woman walked out on—he was the kind of man who made sure he did the walking. So, he’d come looking for her, even if it was only to dump her.

A new horrible thought struck her. What if that was what her abductors wanted? What if she was bait for a trap to catch Aden? She couldn’t let that happen. She wouldn’t let that happen.

She sighed, or she tried to. It was difficult with tape over her mouth and a nose that was so swollen she could barely breathe. Still, big words from the little lady all tied up in the trunk. She shifted awkwardly, but there was no comfortable way to lie scrunched up in this small space with her hands bound behind her back. They could have at least kidnapped her in a bigger car. Her head throbbed, her shoulders ached, and there was a hard something digging into the side of her belly. She tried moving again, but the hard thing kept digging… Sid froze. The hard thing was her gun! They must not have searched her, or at least not very well. The knowledge made her more determined than ever to get her hands free, but it didn’t make it easier. The more she struggled, the deeper the plastic seemed to bury itself in her skin.

She made a frustrated sound behind the thick tape then forced herself to calm down, to think rationally. Her gun was useless if she couldn’t get to it. She still needed her hands free, but it wasn’t serving any purpose for her to thrash about. She had to think smart, and that meant planning ahead. Eventually, they’d have to open the trunk and get her out of here. Even if the plan was to use her as bait, they’d have to have a place to lure Aden to, someplace better than this car. There was no way to predict where that would be, though. So, the only thing she could do for now was be ready to take advantage of whatever opportunity presented itself. As impossible as it seemed, what she needed to do now was to rest, to turn off her head and sleep.

Good luck with that, she thought. But she closed her eyes and focused on relaxing one muscle at a time, feeling the dregs of the drug still in her system, letting the exhaustion take her . . .

She jerked awake when someone pounded on the trunk lid, surprised to realize she’d actually managed to sleep. The pounding came again, simply to scare her, she thought, because a moment later a key scraped in the lock, and the lid popped open. Her first reaction was surprise that it was nearly as dark outside the trunk as it had been inside. She must have been stuck in there for hours. But her next reaction was pure relief as cold, fresh air washed over her face, and she drew a strained breath that didn’t reek of fumes and death.

Her relief was short-lived as one of two men staring down at her grabbed her upper arm and dragged her from the trunk, jerking her shoulder and whacking her ankle painfully against some sort of trailer hitch on the back of the car. Her legs, cramped from too long in a small space, couldn’t hold her when she tried to stand, but her abductor didn’t even try to catch her. He let her fall onto an asphalt driveway, and her elbow cracked against the hard surface. Her cry of pain was muffled by the tape still covering her mouth, but at the same time she registered the fact that the tape was no longer as tight as it had been. The heat and stress of hours in the small space had left her sweaty, her face tear-streaked, and all of that had combined to loosen the tape a little. The knowledge didn’t do much to free her, but it made her feel better somehow. It gave her hope.

The man gripped her arm once more, and every muscle shrieked in protest as she stumbled upright. She closed her eyes, shutting out the sight of her abductors, wishing she could shut out the whole experience as easily. Everything hurt, from her swollen nose to her right ankle and everything in between.

“Walk, bitch. I ain’t carrying you.”

Sid really looked at her guards for the first time. She couldn’t be positive—everything had happened so fast—but she didn’t think either one of these two had been among her abductors this morning. Maybe that was what had taken so long. Maybe they’d driven her around until these two could pick her up. Or maybe they’d been parked somewhere while she slept. Or, hell, maybe she was simply mistaken about who’d been in on the original kidnapping. One thing she felt sure of . . . whoever was behind all of this was waiting for her in the small clapboard house at the end of this driveway.

She swiveled her head around as much as she could. The neighborhood was familiar in a way that told her she’d either been here before, or, equally possible, she’d been to someplace just like it. Badly run-down houses were squeezed onto tiny lots and surrounded by apartment buildings in even worse shape. Cars lined both sides of the street, some up on blocks and all of them old and badly used. The street was dark, lit mostly by the light of the half moon, the street lights either shot or burned out. And it struck her. This was the same neighborhood where she’d staked out some of Klemens’s drug dealers. Not this house, but it was close enough that it worried her.