LITMIR.BIZ

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fingers, silently urging her to hurry. After an agonisingly long wait, the console beeped as the results of the search were returned. Kate grimaced as she read them, and Jamie felt his heart sink.

      “What is it?” he asked. “Where is she?”

      “I don’t know,” said Kate, looking up and staring at him. “Her chip stopped transmitting nine hours ago.”

      “Where?” asked Jamie. “Where was the last position it was tracked?”

      “About seven hundred miles off the west coast of Ireland,” said Kate. “The middle of the Atlantic Ocean.”

      Kate pushed the door of her office shut and slid into the chair behind her desk. She turned on her terminal, trying to slow her rising unease as she waited for it to go through its series of security checks.

      She had left Jamie in her quarters with strict instructions to stay there until she got back. He had looked thoroughly defeated, as though the life had been drained out of him, but she knew from long experience that it would only be temporary; his despair would rapidly turn to anger, and before she knew it he would be charging through the Loop, demanding a search party be raised for Larissa or, more worryingly, going to look for her himself. He’d agreed to sit tight, but Kate knew she needed information fast; right now, they had nothing to go on, and a response based on nothing was only likely to make an already bad situation worse.

      Her monitor bloomed into life and Kate’s fingers flew across the keyboard, accessing the Security Division logs and entering Larissa’s name into the search field. The terminal worked quickly, bringing up a minute-by-minute record of her locator chip for the last twenty-four hours. Kate scrolled down to the point where Larissa had left Brenchley, and studied the subsequent lines of text and coordinates.

       She came back through the hangar. Went to her quarters, then down to the cellblock, where she stayed for eleven minutes. Then back to her quarters, out through the hangar, and in a straight line west until her chip stopped transmitting.

      Kate’s eyes settled on the line that listed the Level H cellblock. She knew full well that there were only two vampires currently being held down there: Marie Carpenter, who was perhaps the least likely person in the Loop that Larissa would decide to visit, and the third oldest vampire in the world.

      Valentin, she thought. Why did she go and see Valentin? And what the hell did he say to her?

      One floor below, Jamie sat on Kate’s bed, his foot tapping incessantly as he waited for his friend to return. He knew that waiting was the right thing to do – they needed to know more before he made the fuss that he was already itching to make – but doing so was frankly killing him.

      She’s out there somewhere, he thought, as he checked the time on Kate’s bedside clock for the hundredth time. And there’s only one reason why her chip would have stopped transmitting.

       Because she doesn’t want to be found.

      He checked the clock again.

      Twenty-six minutes.

      That’s how long Kate had been gone.

      It felt like hours.

      Jamie checked his console again, hoping against hope that he would see a message from Larissa glowing on its screen. He knew it was stupid, but he couldn’t help himself; it made him feel like he was doing something, no matter how insignificant, and distracted him for a brief moment from the onslaught of accusation the guilty part of his brain was currently hurling at him.

       Your fault! You drove her away! You ruined everything! Idiot! Loser! Failure!

      He tried to ignore the howling voice, but couldn’t; it was, after all, absolutely right. He had driven her away, of that there could be no doubt; she had come back to the Loop after their fight and within an hour she had been gone. There was simply no way to even begin to pretend that the two events were not connected. It was his fault, plain and simple, and if he got the chance he would apologise to her until he lost his voice.

       What if she’s gone for good? What if she’s never coming back?

      Jamie shook his head. He could not allow himself to think like that. It was possible that Larissa was simply blowing off steam, that she had just needed to get away from everything, including him, for a little while. Maybe she had gone back to Nevada, where he knew she had been happy. Maybe a message would arrive from General Allen, telling them that she had gone to visit her friends at NS9 and would be home soon.

       Then why would her chip have stopped transmitting?

      “Shut up,” whispered Jamie. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

      Footsteps echoed down the corridor, a rapid rhythm that would have been inaudible to anyone without his supernatural senses, and Jamie froze, listening for the telltale pause outside the door that would signal Kate’s return. The steps stopped, followed a second later by a beep and the whirring sound of locks drawing back. Jamie was on his feet before the door swung open, heat boiling into the corners of his eyes. Kate stepped into her quarters and recoiled.

      “Jesus, Jamie,” she said. “Have you been standing there the whole time?”

      “What did you find out?” he asked. He was aware that his voice was on the verge of becoming a growl, but was helpless to control it.

      “I pulled her chip’s record,” said Kate. “She got back here just after eight thirty last night and left about forty minutes later. Other than her quarters, she only went to one place while she was here.”

      “Where?” he asked.

      “You have to promise me that you’re going to stay calm.”

      “I can’t promise you that,” he said. “Where did she go, Kate?”

      “To the cellblock,” said Kate. “She went to see Valentin.”

      Jamie stared at her for long seconds, then strode across the room, and hauled the door open. His feet left the ground and he was halfway down the corridor before Kate managed to shout, “Wait!”

      In his quarters on Level A, Paul Turner opened the message that had appeared on the screen of his console and frowned.

      It was from Angela Darcy, announcing that she was back from the cellblock and had ordered the Security Division to officially list Larissa Kinley as AWOL while an investigation was conducted. Turner knew that the formal classification was merely procedural – he had no reason to believe that the vampire Operator represented any kind of threat to the Department – but her disappearance was a body blow nonetheless; with the exception of Valentin Rusmanov, whose loyalties were murky and changeable at best, as the morning’s developments were illustrating yet again, Larissa was the most powerful Operator in the Department and her loss would severely diminish Blacklight’s ability to respond to Dracula’s next move, whatever it was and whenever it came.

      The news of Larissa’s disappearance had been a bad start to the day. Beyond the tactical problem it presented, Turner was also seriously concerned about the effect her disappearance was going to have on the morale of the Department.

      There had been widespread distrust of her when she had accepted the offer to become the first vampire Operator in the Department’s long history but, while it had never entirely gone away, it had been dramatically reduced by Larissa’s role in repelling Valeri Rusmanov’s attack on the Loop and her performance at the Battle of Château Dauncy, in which she and Valentin Rusmanov had fought Dracula to a standstill. He knew there were still people in the Loop who were uneasy at the thought of a vampire Operator, and a small number who would simply never accept her, but he also knew that the majority had come to believe that they were better off with Larissa on their side than without.

      Now she was gone, and he suspected that her disappearance would be yet another blow to the already fragile confidence of the Department he now led.

      And there’s one thing that’s

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