Read Online Born To Be Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 3 by Jenn Stark - Free Book Online
Authors: Jenn Stark
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image of Mary Degnan. She’d be seventeen years old this year, her wide smile and sunny eyes somehow making it worse. “You think he has these kids stashed somewhere? These pictures…” Hope shot through me again, despite my best efforts to shut it down. “They look so healthy. So real.”
“They could be alive, Sara. But probably not. Not after all this time.” Brody’s words were gentle, but I couldn’t look at him. Could only look at the tattered posters he had lined up on the table. “The kids weren’t abducted in scenes of violence. They simply were—gone. Disappeared from parks, school playgrounds, the mall. Parents not three feet away in some cases. That’s why you got involved in the first place.”
I nodded, forcing myself to recall the details of the abductions. I didn’t have to work too hard. The memories were baked into my brain. The cards had represented the abductor as the King of Swords—cunning, intelligent, cold. His positioning card had him being all about power. It had been the Emperor, which showed that his command base had been sound and his financial support robust. His focus had been children, as evidenced by the Six of Cups.
Back then, I hadn’t mastered using the cards to pinpoint locations. I could get close, though, and that was why Brody and I had made such a great team. I’d narrow down the search area, and Brody would go door-to-door gathering details. But we never got close enough for those three kids. The best I could get was the Two of Wands. That had indicated a long journey.
Once Brody’s captain had heard the words “long journey,” they’d rolled up the case to the FBI.
Neither Memphis PD nor the FBI had ever found the abductor.
I thought of the Valkyries choosing who would live and die. The three Memphis kids had been chosen too, in their way: marked for death because of their psychic abilities. But the appetites of child traffickers were not easily assuaged, not then, not now. I knew that all too well from my work with Father Jerome.
Something didn’t fit.
“You mean to tell me no one was isolating psychic kids after that? I find that hard to believe.”
“Not in Memphis. And not in any other major city for the next few years, at least in a way that the pattern was easily definable. And believe me, I looked. I spent half a decade searching for anything that could help explain what went down that day.”
“It’s not all that complicated.” My tone turned flat. I’d relived that day so many times, I finally had most of the answers. Or at least the answers as I knew them. “I upset…well, this Viktor Dal, apparently.” After all this time, I had a name, a face. My pulse slowed, my body stilled, every sense pricking as I focused on the grinning image of Viktor Dal. “Mom paid for it. My house was blown up, and I ran.” The curling anger shifted deep inside me, turning my stomach sour. “After I ran, the kidnappings stopped, the killing stopped. The explosions stopped.” At least outside of my own head, anyway.
“We’ve never discussed it, you know. Not in depth.” Brody was staring at the screen too. The images of the kids scrolling through, the parents, the data. But I could tell he wasn’t really paying attention to the flow of images. He was slave to the same kind of internal picture show I’d been feeding myself for the past ten years. Except he had more pictures to fill out his catalog. Many more. “There’s never been a good time to discuss it. But if Viktor Dal is out there, targeting you again…”
“What do you mean, again?” I jerked out of my reverie. “I wasn’t his target back then. I was a roadblock. A roadblock he effectively removed.”
“So why is he back?”
I thought about that. My campaign to save the Connected children was laudable, I supposed, but I was only one woman. Despite the assistance of Father Jerome and the network he was building in France, we could save only so many from the dark practitioners. It
“They could be alive, Sara. But probably not. Not after all this time.” Brody’s words were gentle, but I couldn’t look at him. Could only look at the tattered posters he had lined up on the table. “The kids weren’t abducted in scenes of violence. They simply were—gone. Disappeared from parks, school playgrounds, the mall. Parents not three feet away in some cases. That’s why you got involved in the first place.”
I nodded, forcing myself to recall the details of the abductions. I didn’t have to work too hard. The memories were baked into my brain. The cards had represented the abductor as the King of Swords—cunning, intelligent, cold. His positioning card had him being all about power. It had been the Emperor, which showed that his command base had been sound and his financial support robust. His focus had been children, as evidenced by the Six of Cups.
Back then, I hadn’t mastered using the cards to pinpoint locations. I could get close, though, and that was why Brody and I had made such a great team. I’d narrow down the search area, and Brody would go door-to-door gathering details. But we never got close enough for those three kids. The best I could get was the Two of Wands. That had indicated a long journey.
Once Brody’s captain had heard the words “long journey,” they’d rolled up the case to the FBI.
Neither Memphis PD nor the FBI had ever found the abductor.
I thought of the Valkyries choosing who would live and die. The three Memphis kids had been chosen too, in their way: marked for death because of their psychic abilities. But the appetites of child traffickers were not easily assuaged, not then, not now. I knew that all too well from my work with Father Jerome.
Something didn’t fit.
“You mean to tell me no one was isolating psychic kids after that? I find that hard to believe.”
“Not in Memphis. And not in any other major city for the next few years, at least in a way that the pattern was easily definable. And believe me, I looked. I spent half a decade searching for anything that could help explain what went down that day.”
“It’s not all that complicated.” My tone turned flat. I’d relived that day so many times, I finally had most of the answers. Or at least the answers as I knew them. “I upset…well, this Viktor Dal, apparently.” After all this time, I had a name, a face. My pulse slowed, my body stilled, every sense pricking as I focused on the grinning image of Viktor Dal. “Mom paid for it. My house was blown up, and I ran.” The curling anger shifted deep inside me, turning my stomach sour. “After I ran, the kidnappings stopped, the killing stopped. The explosions stopped.” At least outside of my own head, anyway.
“We’ve never discussed it, you know. Not in depth.” Brody was staring at the screen too. The images of the kids scrolling through, the parents, the data. But I could tell he wasn’t really paying attention to the flow of images. He was slave to the same kind of internal picture show I’d been feeding myself for the past ten years. Except he had more pictures to fill out his catalog. Many more. “There’s never been a good time to discuss it. But if Viktor Dal is out there, targeting you again…”
“What do you mean, again?” I jerked out of my reverie. “I wasn’t his target back then. I was a roadblock. A roadblock he effectively removed.”
“So why is he back?”
I thought about that. My campaign to save the Connected children was laudable, I supposed, but I was only one woman. Despite the assistance of Father Jerome and the network he was building in France, we could save only so many from the dark practitioners. It
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