He shakes his head. “Looking at previous messages, seems like Perry messages him randomly… and… he’s replying!”
“Get the number so we can send it in to see if they can get a location on it.”
“Got it,” Finn says. “He just replied with a ‘Sorry, I can’t come in.’ Should I reply?”
I hear footsteps and listen closely to make sure they’re headed this direction. “Someone’s coming this way.”
“Shit, okay. Out the window?”
“Yeah, quickly,” I say as he rushes for it and flings the window open before popping the screen out. He awkwardly climbs through it and when he lands, he immediately falls forward, catching himself with his hands.
“Sometimes your grace shocks me. You alright?”
“I was hoping you’d catch me,” he says as I slip through the window and slide it shut.
“Kind of hard to do when I’m inside the building.”
He pushes himself up and dusts himself off. “At least we have a number.”
“We do. And we know he’s at the other end of it. If we can pinpoint his location, we might have something to work toward.” I notice he has a slight limp as we make our way back to the car. “Are you alright?”
He purposely tries to hide it. “Fine, why?”
“You fell.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m fine. How adorable! You care!”
“I don’t. I was hoping I could tell Brooks we should remove you.”
“Nah, that would never happen. You and me for life, Grandpa!”
“Splendid.”
Chapter Seven
FINN
After days of messing around with nothing to show for it, we finally get a warrant to search the apartment where they pinpointed the signal of Grady’s phone. A team from the department watched the building for a while until they could determine which apartment is his. When it’s apparent nothing else is going to get us anywhere, Brooks finally gives us the okay to search the place.
DeGray and Briar join us, but they slide into the back seat, leaving me up front with Marcus.
“It’s very interesting to me how much more they let you guys get away with,” I say as Marcus drives.
“How so?” Briar asks curiously.
I’ve noticed that if we’re with the others, Marcus doesn’t talk much and they don’t talk to him a lot either. They definitely treat him with respect, telling me he’s older than them, but they don’t go out of their way to make small talk with him. And if I start talking, they’ll answer me before he does.
“Well, for starters, they let you guys do just about anything without a team of people. I’m positive that if I wasn’t stuck to Church’s ass, he’d run into anywhere alone and wouldn’t be reprimanded for it,” I explain.
Briar looks thoughtful. “I guess our strength makes up for it. Especially when we know we’re not going up against other vampires. We can easily handle multiple humans. Also, our department is stretched thin since there are so few of us. So we do what we can, and they make it work.”
“I suppose,” I say, but who am I to judge?
“Also, you’re working with Marcus who is old as dirt and thinks he’s above the law,” Briar teases.
“I do what is required,” he grumbles while pulling out his brooding look.
I feel like that’s stretching the truth, but I don’t say anything because I’ve pushed him into things a time or two as well. “It’s kind of like you’re a catch-all department.”
“Ohhh, tell me about it,” DeGray says. “When I started, I was supposed to mostly do lab work and then gradually they just decided that I can do everything.”
“They really do need a different program for bringing in new employees,” Briar says.
“That aren’t human,” Marcus adds.
I nudge him with my elbow. “Oh, you’d miss me at this point.”
He snorts but doesn’t deny it. Being together for over a month at this point has allowed me to grow on him.
When we get to the apartment, we suit up in our bulletproof vests and actual uniforms. Mine hangs on me since they haven’t had the time to get me a fitted jacket. It’ll also be much more official once they start buying me equipment. Marcus leads the way into the building and up to the sixth floor as we follow close behind him. We pull our guns out and the vampires press up against the wall and listen as I awkwardly stand there doing human things.
“I don’t hear anything,” DeGray says.
Marcus shakes his head. “I don’t think he’s here. I’m going to knock just to see if we hear movement.”
He raps on the door as I stand there as the only one not pressing their ear against the wall.
“Nothing. DeGray, get the door,” Marcus orders, voice steady but precise.
DeGray steps forward and uses the key he’d gotten from the building owner earlier in the day. As soon as he pushes it open, Marcus rushes in with Briar right behind him. He calls out for Grady, but there’s no one inside to hear. Even so, we continue moving forward. We check each room, Marcus constantly in the lead, but we find it completely empty, which isn’t surprising.
“Alright, see if you can find anything. It looks like he’s been staying here quite a while if the trash is anything to go by.”
They begin searching through his belongings, and as they do that, I head to the computer. I sit down in front of it and wake it up, but it requires a passcode. We don’t have enough time for me to go through possible codes, so I look around on the desk. It’s fairly empty, nothing like his desk at the dorm, but there is a printer attached to it. I check the printer before looking down at the trash can beside it. There’s a folded paper on top that I grab and open up. It looks like the printer screwed up whatever it was printing out, but I flatten it on the desk and examine it.
My guess is that it’s some type of ticket, but it only printed half of the image. Thankfully, the half it printed shows the seats and the date.
“I might have something,” I call out.
Marcus comes over and looks down at it.
“Looks like a ticket for a showing at four o’clock today. I just need to figure out where and to what,” I say as I pull my phone out and take my right glove off. While my gloves allow me to work on my phone, it’s still easier to just take the glove off my right hand. I go to a ticket purchasing site and type in our location. There are two theaters within an hour’s drive, but the closest one does have a four o’clock concert.
“This could be it. If he’s there, we even know what seat he’s in,” I say.
“What time is it?” Marcus asks.
“Four-twenty,” Briar says.
“Let’s go, we’ll get a different team in here to take over,” Marcus says as he holds his phone to his ear.
“Church,” I interrupt, and he looks over at me as I wave my own phone at him. “Can you have them send another team over to the east side theater? There’s a four o’clock there too. We don’t want to waste time at the wrong one.”
“Got it,” he says as he alerts them while heading toward the door. “Brooks, hold on a second.” He turns to the others. “DeGray, Briar, stay here until the department gets someone over and then meet us at the theater.”