Ilya was not one to run in the opposite direction and as an otso, a werewolf, it was not in his nature to break off a hunt even if the odds were against him. To turn away could mean only one of two things. He'd been called off or he had reason to believe he did not need to chase us now to catch us.

  I slowed the vehicle down to a more respectable speed. "He is gone," I said.

  Catalin let out a long breath of air and slowly released the death grip she had on the door handle of the car.

  "Will he follow our trail?" she asked.

  Normally, yes, I thought. But now? I wasn't so sure. "He has no way to know how far we're travelling and he cannot catch us on foot."

  "That didn't really answer the question, Rafe."

  I smiled internally. I liked her using my nickname. I shouldn't have liked it, but I did.

  "He has broken off pursuit," I told her. "That is unexpected." And the ituna was back at work, forcing an answer. For several days, it would be a rollercoaster ride of magic versus willpower. Once the magia had found its equilibrium, however, we would settle into a more natural response to the tenets stated in the pact.

  I could not wait for that day to come.

  "Called off, you think?" Catalin asked.

  "Possibly. Or he may believe he can catch us at another time and place."

  "A trap?"

  "It has crossed my mind."

  She stared out the window for a moment. I glanced at her profile, enjoying the view. Witches were inherently beautiful. Ama had sex appeal in spades. But behind that beauty was always a vile rot. In Ama, I could sense it. In Catalin, I was unsure yet whether it existed or not.

  And that scared me.

  I am not a shallow creature to be turned at the sight of a beautiful woman. But I am also a man. And the more time I spent in her presence, the more I noticed the enticing curve of her jaw, the smoothness of her skin, the striking shade of her eyes, the glossy shine of her hair. Her scent appealed to me in ways I should not let it. Her strength of character called to me like a siren's song, promising ruin as I broke upon her rocks.

  I gripped the steering wheel so hard, I heard it crack.

  "Where are we going?" I asked, needing something — anything — to take my mind off this inconvenient attraction.

  "Take the Melling Link into Hutt Central. We're checking out a contact over in Stokes Valley."

  "What do I need to know about this contact?"

  "Not much to tell. Paintball Company; been operating for 20 years. Adventures-R-Us, that type of thing. 'From the ridge of Isolation Hill to the valleys of Hostility Creek, Paintball Co. has scenarios to suit everyone.' It's marketed as a civilian or public adventure park, but a lot of off-duty grunts from Trentham Military Camp exercise there. It's also the unofficial base for a chapter of the Mongrel Mob; a local gang established in the area about 60-odd years ago. Our contact is one of their sergeant at arms."

  "A gang working out of a paintball gaming site where the army exercises when off-duty?"

  "I never said it made sense."

  I shook my head. The NCB was grasping at straws. I couldn't blame them. Every stone needed to be overturned. But a local gang — although a logical choice for investigation in a normal missing persons case — was not going to provide the answers Catalin needed.

  I considered saying something to that effect, but that was the ituna at work; compelling me to be honest, to earn her trust. And although I wanted Catalin's trust, I wanted it on my terms and not the pact's. There were things I still needed to keep from her.

  "How safe is it to walk into a gang's clubhouse?" I asked instead of redirecting her focus elsewhere. The case would not be solved today, nor any day, I thought.

  "I know the contact, so it should be okay. And anyway, this isn't their clubhouse, it's just a location they commandeer to have discussions outside of listening ears."

  "In amongst the public, the army, and paintball pellets?"

  She shrugged. "Organized crime has to entertain their team members and train them somewhere. Why not a paintball arena? And the type of off-duty soldiers who frequent a place like Paintball Co. aren't put off by gang members joining in on the fun."

  She had a point, I suspected.

  Catalin provided adequate directions to the Paintball Company and in short order, we'd crossed the CBD and made it to Stokes Valley and the acres of bush set aside for 'an action-packed, adrenaline-pumping adventure'. Or so the brochure said.

  It amused me that we had to sign up for a game, pick a side to play on, and actually kit ourselves out in the appropriate gear. Catalin waved off the instructions and safety session, proving with a few short words that she'd played the game before and knew the rules and regulations.

  Finally, we stepped into a native landscape that would provide a decent challenge to most of the team we'd been assigned to. We listened to the team captain give his orders and then once everyone had set off to follow his commands, Catalin led us away from the action and toward where I suspected the gang congregated.

  It felt a little bizarre to be traipsing through the bush, lurid yellow paintballs waiting to be fired from my 'gun' or 'marker' as the instructor had called it.

  "Is this really necessary?" I asked, holding up the offending article and raising my brows at Catalin.

  "Don't the FBI at least try to blend in, Agent Nonpareil?" she asked.

  "Very funny," I muttered. She knew I wasn't an FBI agent; she was just enjoying my discomfort.

  I heard the pop-click of the pellet being fired before I felt it connect with my protective layer. A bright pink smear of paint appeared on my chest, directly above my heart. Catalin looked back at me and smiled.

  "Bang-bang, you're dead," she said.

  I noticed she'd stepped behind the trunk of a tree and was in sufficient cover to avoid the same fate as me. How had she reacted faster than a vampire?

  "What now?" I said between gritted teeth.

  "Drop the gun and follow."

  I unhooked the strap and lay the marker on the ground at my feet. I was armed in a more lethal fashion, so did not feel the loss of the weapon in the slightest.

  I did, however, feel a shadow of embarrassment at having been marked at all. The fluorescent pink shade of the paint marking my torso wasn't difficult to miss, but I was not going to remove the protective clothing.

  Catalin weaved through the trees as if she had done this a thousand times before; halting at times, sidestepping at others, backtracking and swerving through the bush for reasons I couldn't work out.

  I heard their heartbeats before I smelt their odour. At that point, I became as adept at avoiding contact as Catalin had been, but it chafed that her abilities aided her far sooner than mine did me.

  This was an extraordinary witch, I ruefully acknowledged. I watched her as she casually stepped out into a clearing, surprising the group of rough-looking men sitting around a battery-powered campfire, drinking what smelled like hard liquor.

  "Surprise," she said, gripping their flag in her hand.

  Half a dozen guns were raised and pointed at her and, by extension, me. And these guns weren't called markers at all.

  Cat

  "Come now, Rangi," I drawled, placing the flag down on a rock to the side. "Don't you recognise me?"

  "Cat," Rangi — the sergeant at arms of this chapter of the Mongrel Mob — said. "Long time, no see, kō."

  "It's been a while," I agreed. "This is a colleague," I said, waving a hand at Rafe. "Who is not used to playing paintball, despite his American accent. You got a lucky shot off, but don't think he's not as capable as me."

  Rangi glared at me, his heavily tribal-tattooed arms crossed over his wide chest. "You come in here and throw your weight 'round like that, Cat, and my boys might take offence."

  "This isn't me throwing my weight around, Rangi; you know that. This is just a friendly chat and sharing of information. You used to be agreeable to that."

  "Times change, Cat. You're no longer playin' for the A-team, and they pay better than the spooks."

  I ground my molars at the reminder I'd been shunted out of Bowen House because I possessed unusual skills. There was nothing I could do about it, though, and letting Rangi see he'd gotten to me would put me at a disadvantage, so I swallowed the biting retort on my tongue and shrugged my shoulders.

  "I'm not paying anything, Rangi," I told him. "I'm appealing to your soft side."

  This got a round of raucous laughter from the group of men still fondling their illegal weapons.

  "You should know better than that, Cat," Rangi scolded me.

  "Kids, Rangi. Tamariki. About twenty of them. Brought ashore two days ago. Their abductors would be looking to offload at least some of them here. We don't expect them to find a buyer for all of them, so those who miss the opportunity of continued life in our fair land will be taken from our shores and sold elsewhere. I'd like to avoid that."

  The group stared at me with a range of expressions that spoke volumes. Anger, outrage, shock and vengeance. Even the Mongrel Mob loved their children.

  The hostility of before lessened. Rangi even uncrossed his beefy arms.

  "Not heard nothin' about it, Cat," he told me; an open and, I thought, honest offer of information.

  "Would another chapter have heard something?" I asked.

  "If they had, we'd of been told pretty quick. Shit like that's not tolerated by our president. He's got ten kids and twenty grandkids and he loves every single one of 'em."

  Frustration welled in me, but I forcefully ignored it. One dead end after another. This case just wouldn't cut us a break.

  "If you hear of anything," I started.

  "I know where you are, kō. I'll tell you if I can." If his president let him, he meant. "How long you staying at Goldie's?" he asked.

  This was the part where he made me pay something. If he couldn't have a pound of flesh, he'd take a metaphysical thimble of blood instead.

  "Indefinitely," I said. "Goldie's Brae is a one-way ticket."

  "Ouch," he said, chuckling. "You pissed off someone bad, Cat." To anyone looking in, Banana House was a punishment. It felt like that sometimes. Truth was, though, that being seen as lesser was a good cover. Even the likes of Cox-the-bullet-dodger on the A-Team thought we were the crud on the bottom of his boots.

  "You know me, Rangi," I said, "no good with authority."

  That turned the group into a pack of hyenas. Their cackles followed us out of the clearing and into the bush. My heartbeat thudded in my ears, my skin prickled with shame and the unfairness of it all. But I told myself, my problems weren't as bad as the missing kids'.

  I had to find them.

  "What is it with this case?" I muttered to myself. Rafe floated behind me like a wraith. Silent and deadly, and probably just as judgemental. "Don't you think it's odd that we're striking out with every contact?"

  "Did you truly expect a gang member to have known anything?"

  "They have a very good network; if there was something to hear, they would have heard it. Why is there nothing to hear?"

  "That's rhetorical, right?" Rafe drawled.

  "Well, no. What do you make of all of this?"

  He hesitated, perhaps thinking of an appropriate way to tell me the kids were already dead — the abductors having cut their losses — and that's why there was nothing to hear on the grapevine about them.

  "I think you are up against professionals and they have covered their tracks well."

  "Nobody can enter a foreign country and not trip some alarms."

  He shrugged as we dodged a group of paintballers, making sure to stay out of their notice. I did not want to get hit now; I'd enjoyed Rafe's dismay too much and didn't like payback one little bit. Or karma, come to think of it.

  We finally exited the bush and returned our weapons and gear. Rafe had uplifted his marker on our way out. That done, not answering the curiosity of the guy signing our gear back in, we exited the building and headed toward my car. Rafe sniffed the air but didn't stop, so I assumed Ilya hadn't followed us here.

  I kept my guard up in any case.

  "Where to now?" Rafe asked as I slipped behind the wheel and he took the passenger seat without complaint. "We have more contacts on the list to check out?"

  "A couple, but I think I'll touch base with Tac and the others first. I'm not feeling excited about following another trail to a dead end. Although someone's got to, I suppose."

  "You sound depressed."

  "I'm pissed off. None of this is making any sense. We should have heard something. The best hit we have is Gio and the contact he had with them through that self-destructing radio box. Gio, the banpiro, a member of The Involition who could be telling porkies for all I know." I turned in my seat to glare at Rafe. "Are you telling porkies, Raphael?"

  "We've been through this before, Catalin. We share an ituna now, one in which you made it clear honesty and trust were paramount. I cannot lie to you under those conditions."

  I snorted. "I note the qualification there, buddy. But that just means Giordano might have been lying."

  "I don't think he was," Rafe said, staring out of the window as I navigated the parking lot. "Someone contacted him in that fashion, but that does not mean they contacted anyone else."

  "Let's see what Harlee and Brant have found out on their end before we discount the abductors' need to offload these kids."

  I opened a connection to my phone via Bluetooth on the steering wheel and voice-activated a call to Tac.

  "Enjoy your game?" Tac said on answering the call.

  "Is that tracker still on my car, Tac?" I asked. "We've talked about this before."

  "I can't do my job if you don't let me, Cat," Tac replied.

  "My car is private property. It does not belong to the NCB."

  "Neither does that tracker. Consider me your friendly neighbourhood…"

  "If you say Spiderman, I will hit you next time I'm in the office."

  "I was going to say stalker, but whatever."

  I huffed out a laugh. "So, Stalker Tac, it's a no-go with Rangi Hohepa and his cohort. The Mongrel Mob haven't heard a thing about kids for sale."

  "Harlee's come up blank at the Post Office, too."

  "Post Office?" Rafe whispered.

  "I heard that," Tac informed him. "Good pickups."

  "Only the best for one of the team, right, Tac?" I said. He snorted. "There's a certain post office employee who sells info to the highest bidder," I told Rafe. "It just so happens we know about his illegal activities — the opening of private mail — and allow him his peculiarities in order to use him when we need to."

  "You really are a shady organisation."

  "Oh, come on!" Tac said over the speaker. "You don't do that in the FBI?" He hesitated and then laughed; it sounded self-deprecating. Tac knew Rafe was an imposter, but I appreciated the fact that he didn't blurt it out to Rafe's face.

  "Anyway," I said, stretching the word. "It was a long shot that the bad guys would write about their crimes in a letter. Still, had to be checked."

  Just like the last two contacts on my list had to be checked and yet I knew — I knew — they'd come up blank like all the others. Had Gio been the unsubs' first attempt to offload the kids, and the mobster's reaction had spooked them? What had Gio done exactly? He'd mentioned his own protection; a sniper to take out the sniper so to say. Had he done something else, something Involition-ish to scare them away from the city?

  "Are we looking into other locations around the country they could use?" I asked Tac.

  "We are," he said, emphasis on the word we. He was, he meant. "Dean and Kai are checking into them."

  "You sent them off again? Dean's gonna be stoked to get out of the city. He loves spending the travel allowance."

  "He loved stepping out on his wife under the guise of business," Tac said archly.

  "Meow, Tac," I teased. "We should not judge our co-workers."

  "I'm judging," Tac grumbled. He'd liked Dean's wife. We all had. We had also pitied her a little, and I think she knew it. No one had heard from her since she left. I didn't think any of us ever would.

  We were coated in Dean's bad-boy germs by the fact we worked at NCB with him.

  "So," I said, trying to get the tactical officer to focus. "The big boys have gone off to play. What's Harlee up to now?"

  "Got a tip-off. Anonymous message in the public dropbox. She and Brant are looking into that."

  "Anonymous?" I queried. "Since when is anything anonymous to you?"

  "I can't crack the security. Whoever posted the tip does not want to be located. Sounds legit to me."

  "Sounds suspect," I said, glancing at Rafe. He was scowling, but as yet, his jaw wasn't ticking, so that was good.

  "Suspect as fuck, but also legit," Tac told me. "Hold on a tick," he suddenly said. "I'm getting something off one of my tripwires."

  I continued driving along the highway, heading back to the capital. We were a good half hour away from reaching Wadestown where Godlies was located.

  "Ah, Cat," Tac said. "There's a fire alarm at your apartment building. Fully involved, it says. Two stations are responding."

  I wasn't sure what to address first. The fact that there was a fire alarm at my apartment block or the fact that Tac had sensors on my building.

  "Ah, okay," I said. "That's not good."

  "Do you have a cat, Cat?" Tac asked.

  "Not funny, Tac," I growled as my fingers started to tingle. "Shit," I muttered.

  "Sorry, Cat, but it looks like the entire building is going up in smoke. It's on the news now. Hope no one else has a cat, either."

  "I'm more worried about my neighbours. Some of them work from home."

  "The alarm failed to activate. That's why it's so far along. I'm not sure…" He paused. I could hear him swallowing. "I'm not sure everyone got out."

  The NCB is not the Police, but we are law enforcement and so have the ability to get through traffic at speed. I flicked a switch on my dashboard and the car's beacons started. Not that teeny-tiny Citroens are usually used by law enforcement, but we all had the kit fitted in our vehicles.