The Darkest Kiss

“Okay,” Rhoan said from the backseat. “Enough chitchat. Jack says eight of those fifteen names have gone missing in the last six hours. There were witnesses to two of the kidnappings, and both gave descriptions matching Aron Young. One of them also gave a description of the vehicle—a white van that matches the plate number you asked Jack to trace earlier. Jack’s currently trying to patch into the satellites to track him.”

I twisted around to look at him. “So the eight were definitely taken, not killed?”

“Yes.” Hope had dawned brighter in his eyes. “And we’ve got an address for the house he lived in at Beechworth. Apparently, it’s just outside the town itself.”

“No indication as to the current owners and whether it’s occupied?” Qui

“The current owners have no relationship to Young, apparently. He’s tried ringing the listed number, but there’s no answer.”

“Young wouldn’t be up there yet, anyway.” After all, he’d only taken Liander little more than an hour ago. “Besides, there’s no guarantee that is where he’s going.”

“We’d better hope it is, because otherwise Liander’s a dead man.”

“Give him more credit than that,” Qui

Rhoan gave a soft, derisive laugh. “He might have decided otherwise after my stupid behavior tonight.”

“Well, with any sort of luck, you’ll get the chance to fix that.” I gave him a dark look and added, “And you had better.”

His smile was wan, but there nevertheless. “It’s like that old cliché says—you never know what you’ve got until you almost lose it.”

“Just make sure you tell Liander that when we finally rescue him.”

“I intend to, trust me.” He blew out a breath that didn’t seem to do a whole lot to ease the tension still evident in his body.

I resisted the urge to say “you’d better,” and asked, “I don’t suppose Jack found the files for Young’s disappearance?”

Rhoan snorted softly. “Apparently it’s regular procedure for regional police offices to purge computer files after twenty years. They have a hard-copy record, but it’s still being found.”

“Just as well we can go straight to the source, then.” I dragged my phone out of my pocket and pressed the button to ring the Directorate. “Has Jack got any other information about the house Young used to live in?”

“He’s going through the council records for house approvals. He’ll let us know if he finds site or floor plans.”

“What can I do for you, Riley?” Sal said.

I shoved the phone to my ear, and said, “I need to be put through to a Jerry Mayberry. He used to be the local police officer up in Beechworth. He’s retired, but apparently he’s still living up there.”

“Hang on, and I’ll see what I can do.” She put me on hold, and ti

“How is the cop going to help us?” Rhoan asked.

I glanced around at him. “He was the cop on duty when Aron Young disappeared. He might be able to tell us a little more than what was reported in the papers.”

Sal came back online. “Okay, I found an address and a phone number. You want me to patch you through now?”

“Yes. Thanks, Sal.”

“Hang on, then.” I went back on hold for a second, then there was a click, and the phone was ringing.

And ringing.

Come on, come on, I thought, then glanced at the clock and realized I was actually ringing at an ungodly hour. The poor man was probably tucked up nice and warm in his bed.

Eventually a gruff voice said, “Hello?”

“Is this former sergeant Jerry Mayberry, from the Beechworth Police Station?”

“That would be me.”

“Mr. Mayberry, it’s Riley Jenson, from the Directorate. We’re investigating several murders that appear to be linked to an old case of yours, and I was wondering if you could help me with some details.”

“I’ll try, but my memory is not as sharp as it used to be.” He hesitated. “The Directorate, you say? Which section?”

“Guardian division, Mr. Mayberry.”

“Martin Bass still in charge there?”

I smiled. There was nothing wrong with this man’s mind. Nor, I suspected, his memory. “There’s no Martin Bass working in the guardian division, sir. Jack Parnell has been in charge for the last eight years or so.”

“Ah, yes.” His tone softened a little. “What case we talking about?”

“Aron Young’s disappearance.”

“Ah. That was a strange one.”

“In what way, Mr. Mayberry?”

“We had evidence of rope marks on a tree limb, we had blood splatters we believe came from the victim, and we’re sure he was killed. But we never found a body and none of the kids would talk.”

“But you think they knew something?”

“Oh, yeah. Half of them were drinking or taking drugs within weeks of Young’s disappearance.”

“How many kids we talking about?”

“Seven. They were good kids at heart, but a little wild. They tended to egg each other on when in a group situation.”

And that was when a lot of bad things had happened. Peer pressure could be an incredibly powerful thing, especially when you were a teenager and trying too hard to fit in. As I suspected Young might have been. “What do you think might have happened?”

“Probably an initiation gone wrong. We had a gang problem at the time—most of the kids were in one, except for a couple of the wolf cubs. These seven represented the rowdiest of them.”

“So initiations were common, as well?”

“Hell, yeah. Usually it was something simple like stealing a street sign or getting their head flushed down the toilet, but Harvey’s mob believed in testing the strength and commitment of their inductees.”

“How?”

“We had one kid crack his head open with a rock. Apparently he’d been told to hold it above his head for several hours—starting at noon, in midsummer.”

“They sound like they were a bunch of charmers.” And if that was a sample of their stunts, then it wasn’t hard to imagine them slipping into more testing—and more dangerous tasks. “Who’s this Harvey you mentioned?”

“He was the gang’s leader. A real tough nut, with a mean streak a mile wide. He definitely didn’t have a heart of gold.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was found in the bush not far from where Aron Young was last seen. He’d been dead a few days by the time his body was discovered and the animals had gotten to him. His guts had been eaten away.”

A chill ran through me. Bhutas fed on the intestines of the dead, and it seemed a little too coincidental that the man in charge of the gang just happened to be found that way. So why didn’t he kill De

“What did the coroner say?”

“There was a large contusion on the side of his head, but there was no indication of a struggle or other injuries. The coroner said he probably slipped and smacked his head open, and died as a result of blood loss and exposure.”

And I was betting the blood loss had more to do with his guts being munched on than any head wound. “Time of death?”

“Ten o’clock, give or take an hour.”

Bhutas could walk in daylight, so it definitely wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that Young was behind Harvey’s death. “How soon after Harvey’s death did Young’s parents move out of town?”

“You’re not thinking they were involved, are you?”

“No. Just curious.”

He paused, and in the background a kettle whistled. “It wouldn’t have been more than a week or so afterward that their house went up for sale. We did question them, by the way, before we got the coroner’s report. They both had watertight alibis for the day of his death.”

Of that I had no doubt. It was their son who wouldn’t have, I bet.

So were they responsible for stopping Young’s rampage before he could even fully begin it? Was he the reason behind their sudden decision to move? “Where exactly was Harvey’s body found? We may need to go up there and have a look at the area.”