The Reluctant Vampire - Lynsay Sands [104]
“She didn’t know that. I hadn’t told her yet. I was going to after I got on the highway.”
“You didn’t have to tell her,” Mirabeau assured him. “She would have read it from your mind.”
Anders didn’t laugh at the suggestion. His mouth tightened, and he said, “I made sure I didn’t even think about it. There was nothing to read.”
His words told Drina that he knew about Stephanie’s special abilities, or at least knew part of it. He knew she could read his thoughts even though he was old and not a new life mate, but didn’t know it wasn’t restricted to surface memories. Which meant Lucian knew. She saw Anders’s eyes narrow on her and sighed as she realized how he’d known. He was reading her thoughts even now and had probably read them before, both from her and Mirabeau.
“It doesn’t matter,” Drina said wearily, moving past him to get to the closet and retrieve the bomber jacket.
Anders turned toward the door again. “I’ll go back out and look for her again.”
“Wait for us,” Mirabeau said, reaching past Drina to grab her own coat and Tiny’s. “You can drop Tiny and me at Casey Cottage. Our SUV is still there. We can help search too.”
Drina had started to shrug into Stephanie’s bomber, but paused and glanced to Harper uncertainly when she realized she’d just assumed he’d be willing to search for the girl and hadn’t asked. “I’m sorry. Would you mind if we—?”
“No, of course not,” he said solemnly. “Hand me my coat.”
Sighing with relief, she passed his coat over, then grabbed her boots and moved back into the dining room to don them. Teddy was hanging up the phone as she entered. When she glanced his way in question, he shook his head, and then sat down at the desk and opened the phone book again.
“I’m going to make a few calls,” he announced. “Get the clerks at Tim Hortons and the corner store and anywhere else still open to keep an eye out for her, and then coordinate a search party. Report in here if you see or hear anything.”
Drina nodded and sat down to quickly don her boots. By the time she finished, Mirabeau, Tiny, and Anders had left, and Harper was straightening from donning his own boots in the entry.
“Ready?” he asked.
Nodding, Drina led the way outside and to Victor’s borrowed car.
“Where do we start?” Harper asked as he started the car. “The gas station by the highway?”
Drina frowned and considered briefly, but shook her head. “Anders is probably heading back to the gas station, so there’s no use trying there.”
“I don’t know,” Harper said as he backed out of the driveway. “Stephanie might hide from Anders because he was going to take her to Toronto, but I don’t think she’d hide from you. She might come out if she saw us driving around.”
“Do you think so?” Drina asked, hoping it was true.
“Definitely,” he said solemnly.
Teddy hadn’t been kidding; the gas station was a hell of a distance out of town. It seemed to take forever to get there, but Drina spent the whole journey scanning the streets and anybody they passed, growing increasingly desperate to find Stephanie as she considered what could happen to her on her own.
Drina wasn’t worried about perverts or mortal sickos attacking the girl. With her increased strength and speed, Stephanie was pretty much mortal proof. Actually, any mortal foolish enough to look at the petite blonde and see her as a victim, would find they were very much mistaken. But someone had been attacking them, and if it was Leonius . . .
The thought of what might happen to the girl if he got his hands on her was worrying Drina sick.
They saw Anders at the gas station, but no Stephanie, so set out to drive around the surrounding area, scanning fields and businesses, and then houses and yards as they got closer to town and a more urban area.
“Is there anywhere she would go? Somewhere she liked or . . . just anywhere you think she might go?” Harper asked some two hours later. They were driving in circles now, recovering old ground and seeing nothing but the others out searching for Stephanie.
Drina