The thought of the poor woman being used as leverage like that was almost enough to bring tears to Samantha’s eyes. “But why is the doctor doing all of this? It seems like a lot of effort to go to just to have a chance to play God.”
Shaylee started to answer, but then snapped her mouth shut at the sound of a door slamming nearby, immediately followed by the thud of heavy footsteps.
Samantha watched as a man slowly shambled toward them in the dimly lit basement, stopping halfway between the door of her cage and Shaylee’s. He was short but stocky with wide shoulders that made his head look too small for his body. His face was brutish with thick, dark brows and deep-set, beady eyes.
The man stared at Shaylee for a long time. The way his dark gaze wandered up and down the woman’s body sent a shiver of dread down Samantha’s spine. She was just wondering if she should say something when he suddenly darted forward, his large hand coming up to slam against the metal grating of Samantha’s cage, making a loud noise and shaking the metal walls. She jumped, resisting the urge to take a step back.
“The doctor said he doesn’t want the two of you talking,” the man said gruffly, glaring at Sam. “So unless you want me to open this cage door and give you a reason to make noise, you’ll be quiet.”
His gaze ran down her body, taking in her silk blouse and dark slacks, leaving her skin feeling like it had been coated with dirty oil. She couldn’t help stepping back a little then, a move that drew a short bark of laughter from the creep.
He continued to leer at her for another moment before finally turning and walking over to jab Kyson in the chest with his stubby finger, like he was checking to see if the big man was awake.
Shaylee threw herself at the door of her cage. “Stay away from him!”
The man turned to pin her with a look. “Or what?”
When Shaylee didn’t answer, he laughed and left the way he’d come. A few seconds later, Samantha heard a door slam, then the sound of slowly fading footsteps.
“That’s Rogi,” Shaylee whispered softly from her side of the grating. “He carries the bodies, cuts the hands and heads off when the doctor doesn’t want to do it, and cleans up the blood. He doesn’t mess with me too much because the doctor needs me around to control Ky, but if I were you, I wouldn’t make Rogi mad. He’s not right in the head.”
That thought sent another shiver down her spine, and she prayed Trey figured out what happened to her and where she was…sooner rather than later.
Chapter 18
“Still no answer?” Connor asked from beside Trey as he ended yet another call to Samantha without attempting to leave a message. He’d left her a dozen already, each more urgent than the last. She simply wasn’t answering.
“No,” he murmured before getting out of his truck and heading across the parking lot to her apartment complex, forcing himself not to run even as the muscles of his legs twitched and spasmed with the desire to put on more speed. It was almost one o’clock in the morning. If she wasn’t home, he had no idea where she was.
The original plan had been for him and Connor to go to Nadia’s place with Hale and Trevor and confront her. Trey knew it was an overly simplistic plan, bordering on naive and stupid. But until they knew for sure the woman was actually a life-sucking vampire and found a way to tie her more directly to the deaths of those three men, there wasn’t much more they could do.
After trying over and over to reach Samantha most of the night without success, his pack mates had insisted they change the plan. While he and Connor were here checking on Samantha, Trevor and Hale were on their way to Nadia’s place.
“Samantha’s okay, Trey,” Connor said as they took the stairs to Samantha’s apartment. “She probably just put her phone on do not disturb so she could get some sleep. She’s been running herself ragged on the Butcher case.”
Trey wanted to believe his friend, and he appreciated what Connor was trying to do, but he knew for a fact that Samantha would never shut her phone off for the night in the middle of an investigation, and not when they’d made plans to get together this evening.
When they got to her apartment, Trey knocked hard enough to wake Samantha up, but not rouse every neighbor along this stretch of hallway. Before the sound faded, he knew it was a waste of time. There were a lot of heartbeats thumping gently within the limits of his hearing, but none of them were coming from her apartment.
At the sound of a door opening behind them, he turned to see Crystal standing there in a pair of pajamas with a bad case of bedhead.
“She hasn’t come home yet.” Crystal pushed her dark hair behind her ear, regarding them intently. “And since the two of you are here, I’m starting to think that means I should be worried.”
“Samantha and I were supposed to meet up tonight, but then she sent me a text saying she had something important to talk to me about,” Trey said. “She hasn’t replied to my calls or texts.”
“Hang on. I’ve got a key to her place,” Crystal said, disappearing into her apartment.
A moment later, she hurried across the hallway to where they stood. Unlocking the door, she opened it and immediately charged in, leaving him and Connor to follow. Samantha’s apartment was dark, and Crystal flicked the light switch before making a beeline for the bedrooms. Trey could have told her Samantha wasn’t in the either of them.
“She must still be at the institute,” Crystal said, coming out of the guest bedroom and carefully closing the door behind her. “She can sometimes get tunnel vision when she’s buried in evidence.”
Connor looked dubious. “If that’s all it is, why wouldn’t she answer her phone?”
Crystal was already heading back across the hall to her apartment. “She frequently leaves her phone in her office when she’s in the lab, so she won’t be disturbed. Or the battery might have died.” She glanced at them over her shoulder. “Give me a minute to get dressed and we’ll go find out one way or the other.”
“You don’t need to come with us,” Trey said to her, catching the door to her place before it closed, watching as she raced off through another door into what he assumed was her bedroom. “Connor and I can head over and check. If her car is in the parking lot, we’ll know she’s there.”
Crystal didn’t answer. Thirty seconds later, she came running out of the bedroom dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, jumping in place as she pulled on a pair of tennis shoes.
“And what would you do then?” she asked, grabbing up her purse from the counter in the kitchen. “Bang on all the windows until she lets you in or kick in the door?”
Not really having an argument to that logic, Trey exchanged looks with Connor, then they both followed her down the hall.