“Uh, yeah. Dad says they aren’t getting close to them. One guy rushed the barrier early this morning. He ran so hard and fast to get in and got electrocuted so badly they’re pretty sure he’sdead.”
Sinthy nodded grimly. “I told you. I will protect my family.”
I texted my parents, letting them know to contact me immediately if things escalated so I could have Sinthy teleport us back.
Tossing the phone on the table, I said, “Enough of this shit. What’s our plan? I want this woman dead.” I was surprised to find that I was totally serious.
“Well, a message would be good. Let her know that we’re ready for war,” Donatello said.
“Yes,” Maddy added. “But do we really want to stoop to her level? I mean, if we start an all-out war, innocent humans and shifters will get hurt.”
“She’s right,” Donatello said. “We lose our moral compass if we become as bloodthirsty as she is.”
“So, we need to let her know we’re ready to fight her, but we want it on our terms in our own way?” Luis said. “How the hell do we do that? What kind of leverage do we have? Other than the vial, I mean.’
“Viola is good at getting people to do what she wants because she knows how to pull their strings,” I said. “She does it because she always makes sure she has something they want or need. We have to find that thing.”
Donatello sighed and picked up his cup. “Well, as Luis said, we have thethingshe wants: the vial. And the person she wants:Maddy. What we need to find is someone else that’s close to her. I don’t thinkthingswill be enough. We should find out if she cares for anyone. A lover, perhaps? I’ve already checked, and her parents are dead—that’s how she gained control of The Monroe Group in the first place. Maybe a favorite cousin or sibling? Though we’ve found no trace that she’s anything but an only child.”
“She’s a horrible person, but there must be someone. Even Ted Bundy had a girlfriend, for Christ’s sake,” Maddy said.
“We just said we didn’t want to stoop to her level,” I said. “Are we actually talking about kidnapping someone? Holding a captive iswayfurther than I thought we’d go.”
Maddy looked me dead in the eye and said, “Things are dire now. Worse than ever. We would never hurt an innocent person, but we need leverage. Somehow, some way.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Maddy was right. After breakfast, we decided that the next several days would be an all-out push to dig in and find any secrets Viola might have. Donatello and his alliance of friends had spent millions trying to find Viola with no luck, but they’d only been searching for her current location, aliases, or allies. They never delved into the past.
Luis took the lead—as a private detective, he had more experience and contacts than we did. Donatello pivoted his own researchers and detectives to the same path. For days, we combed through everything we could find. It seemed hopeless after a while. We confirmed she was an only child, never married, had no children, and didn’t have any close connections to anyone. Both her parents had died, leaving her the company. She didn’t even have a close relationship with her other distant relatives that helped run her company.
Near midnight on the fifth day, Abi and Maddy sat at a powerful desktop computer Donatello let us use for research. Luis sat with them as they combed painstakingly through oldnewspaper articles. It had been going on for hours, and all three of them looked exhausted. I sat at a table, eating a pizza, which Donatello’s chefs had made for us.
“Okay, hang on,” Luis said tiredly, rubbing his face. “Let’s try something else. Maybe we can narrow this down.”
He walked them through taking a screen capture of Viola’s face and loading it on the computer. He then logged them into a program he used regularly.
“This is facial recognition software. Not quite as powerful as what the government uses, but still pretty damned good. This computer should be powerful enough to run it fairly quickly.”
“But haven’t other countries tried this?” Abi asked.
Luis nodded. “Yes. But, again, as Don said, they’re looking for her now. They haven’t been looking in the past.”
I put my food down and leaned forward, feeling hopeful for the new line of attack. Luis had Maddy punch in a range of dates from Viola’s birth date, which we’d found in public records, to a random date three years prior. Maddy hit the search icon and waited. Every few seconds, a picture or article with her name popped up, but they discarded it as being useless. The articles and photos were all from benefits, galas, and interviews. It took nearly an hour, and when it was done, we had nothing.
“Damn it,” Maddy hissed, smacking her hand on the table.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a red alert icon beside the search bar on the program.
Luis glanced at the screen. “It’s saying it has a partial match. Could be a traffic camera with a picture of someone who looks like her, a blurred photo, or a partial.” He shrugged. “You can open it to see if you want, but I doubt it’s anything.”
Maddy clicked the alert icon. A picture filled the screen, and in unison, Abi and Maddy said, “Oh shit.”
129
MADDY
We stared in shock and awe at the picture on the screen. It was obviously Viola. At such a young age, it was no wonder the program only thought it was a partial match, but I’d recognize those bitter and angry eyes anywhere. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. She was standing with a much older man, who had his arm around her. A swaddled baby lay gently in the crook of her arm.
Luis sat forward and gaped at the picture. “Holy hell. What is that from? Click the link.”
