Read Taken (Ava Delaney #4) for Free Online

to
look?
    “So she has to
have some kind of informant or contact or something, right?” I said
out of the blue, startling the others.
    “That picture
might not mean a thing,” Esther said.
    “You saw
Peter’s face. It meant something. It’s the ‘what’ that I’m worried
about. Do you think she came across someone else who had seen what
Peter saw? Or someone who works with them? Someone playing both
sides?”
    Esther
shrugged. “There are a lot of stories here about kidnappings and
such. Maybe she tracked down the survivors.”
    “Maybe,” I
said, disturbed by how let down I felt.
    Carl pointed at
the article in Esther’s hands. “There’s a name on the back
there.”
    Esther turned
over the page. “Another one for the list. But maybe it’s important.
I’ll try to check out some of the names of the victims on the
system back at Headquarters, see if there are any connections to
supernaturals. It’s a long shot, but it’s worth a try.”
    “Exactly how
high-tech are these headquarters of yours?” Carl asked with a great
deal of interest.
    She grinned.
“Not very, but Aiden’s been working on overhauling the plain old
magic with some good old hacking. He set up a system, but it’ll be
years before it’s finished, so the records aren’t complete. I mean,
they have to put millennia of info into the database.”
    “Will anyone
pick up on the searches?” Carl asked.
    “I don’t know.
But there’s a human guy working there that’s kind of sweet on me. I
could probably persuade him to cover my tracks. Maybe he could even
help with the other stuff, like the numbers we can’t figure out.
He’s super smart, and Aiden said he’s pretty much changed
everything for the better over there, so he should have a handle on
secrecy. Actually, they found him when he hacked into the original
system. They were going to kill him, but Aiden figured he needed
him on his team instead. He’s shy, but I think I could flirt my way
into his good books.”
    “Only you could
work a date into this,” I teased.
    “Nah, he’s in
his twenties. Way too young for me.”
    Carl laughed
loudly. “You’re barely an adult.”
    She tossed her
hair in an exaggerated movement. “I’m surrounded by centuries-old
creatures most of the time. I tend to steer toward older men.”
    “Some human boy
your own age would be good for you.” I was only half-teasing that
time. Sometimes Esther forgot about the other side of her heritage.
She was always so busy trying to live up to her role, her brother’s
reputation, and the expectations of the ancient beings around her
that she forgot she was a twenty-one-year-old who still had a
chance at something normal.
    “Whatever. I’ll
check on any phone numbers and see if my hacker boy can tell me
anything about breaking a siren’s code. I’ll get him to run that
name, but it might be unrelated.”
    “I’ll try to
dig up something on the victims and survivors from the newspaper
articles,” Carl offered.
    “I can do
that,” I said automatically.
    He grimaced.
“I’m capable of helping.”
    “I just
thought, well, you’d be busy in the shop. Especially with trying to
find out if Illeana bought that book there.”
    He closed his
eyes and took a deep breath. Esther and I exchanged glances.
    “Fine. I’ll
check the inventory for that book,” he said at last.
    “Carl, I wasn’t
trying to─”
    “Forget it.
It’ll be faster if you do the legwork, right?” His half-smile was
full of bitterness.
    Esther got to
her feet. “Listen, I should head on. I’ll take what I need and
leave you two to sort the details.”
    Esther gathered
most of Illeana’s things. When she asked me to help her carry some
of it to her car, I knew she wanted to talk in private. Bear
shifters tended to be stronger than they looked; Esther rarely
needed help carrying anything. I picked up a box and followed her
out to the car.
    She opened the
boot of her car. “He’s not dealing.”
    “What am I
supposed to