I left Matthew's house abruptly and didn't calm down until I reached my bike. I wasn't really angry that he'd known that Randal would cheat, or that he'd assumed I'd deal with it accordingly. In his situation, I would have done the same thing. But the fact that he nearly called me… I turned and punched a nearby tree, my first wrapped in fire.
Bark snapped and crackled from the heat and a small fire started, quickly removed from the tree as I absorbed it into my magic.
That name was behind me now. It was part of a past I no longer needed. The only person who should have known was Tommy and I would need to have words with him sooner rather than later about whom he told my secrets to.
I thanked the guards for keeping an eye on the bike, but they both shrugged as if they only did it because it was next to them.
There were no street lights around, and only the glow from the nearly extinguished torches helped light the road outside of the field. I removed my phone from my pocket, and tapped in Vicki's address, something I'd memorised from the file on Amber Moore. Apparently, it would take nearly an hour to get there, meaning I'd arrive just after three in the morning. That would give me a while to look around whilst it was still dark outside and while the majority of neighbours would be likely still in bed and not watching the comings and goings on their street.
I used the bike's lights on the journey to Vicki's, not wanting to try and outrun any police or explain why I was riding in complete darkness. I doubt they'd accept the "I can use magic to see in the dark" excuse all that easily.
The journey took a little over forty minutes. I stopped the bike outside further down the street, and switched off the engine, walking the remaining few hundred feet to Vicki's home. It was a fairly modest detached house, with an immaculate front garden, complete with lawn gnome who had been placed next to a small pond so that he appeared to be fishing. I wondered when, or if, lawn gnomes were ever considered funny or interesting.
"Do you plan on breaking in?" a woman asked as she stepped onto the driveway behind me.
"Hi, Olivia." I turned toward her and smiled. She wore dark combats, and a white top. I could see the butt of her gun in the holster beneath her dark jacket. "I thought you'd be trying to arrest your werewolf."
"Agent Reid is in charge of that. I got a call from Avalon about my request to get Mordred's file, and, thought I'd relay the info."
"I assume from your tone that it didn't go well."
"If I ever call with that request again, I'll be lucky to remain in Avalon, let alone in the LOA. You know what that means don't you? They really don't want anything about him getting out. They're circling the wagons where he's concerned."
"It confirms that someone there was involved. And that they were worried enough about it to wait a while to get back to you, so they could make sure there was nothing you could find for yourself. Thanks for doing that."
"What are you going to do about it?"
"Nothing at the moment; it's just nice to know that I was right."
"Well, while I'm here we may as well search the house together."
She strolled past me and walked up the three steps to the front door, where she unlocked it with a key from her pocket. Despite the alarm box proudly displayed on the front of the house, there were no tell-tale signs of any alarm needing to be switched off as I stepped into the house.
Apart from a shoe rack next to the door, a rug on the floor and a small table with a bowl to drop keys in, the hallway was devoid of anything. A set of stairs led up, and there were three doors, one a few steps inside the house, one at the far end of the hallway and another under the stairs. Olivia walked to the doorway at the far end of the hall.
"Kitchen," she said, as she clicked on a torch and opened the door under the staircase.
I took a moment to adjust my eyes with magic and could soon see, even in the almost total darkness that the house was in. "Why don't you just turn a light on?" I asked as Olivia disappeared from view.
Her head popped out a few seconds later. "You want to see this. And I don't want anyone watching the place to know someone's here. Just in case you're right and Vicki is involved."
"You're coming round to my way of thinking?" I asked.
"Just follow me." And she disappeared from view again.
I did as was asked and ducked my head as I stepped through the door. A set of steep stairs led down into a sizeable basement. "She has an office in the basement," I said, looking down.
"The house is only two bedrooms. I guess Vicki used the basement to get her work done."
And she would have spent a lot of time doing it. One long desk sat adjacent to the staircase. A computer monitor and laptop both had a thin film of dust on them. Two filing cabinets sat at the end of the room.
I took a step toward the cabinet, but Olivia stopped me. "You're not the only one who can get into a locked cabinet." She flicked her finger toward her target and a stream of ice smashed into the lock, pushing it into the cabinet with a shriek, where it ricocheted around the top draw.
There were no glyphs or marks that lit up under Olivia's use of her element. If I'd been standing in front of her, I'd have seen her irises turn a pure light blue, but that would have been it. Whereas sorcerers manipulated elements using magic, elementals were one with the element itself.
Olivia pulled open the top cabinet draw and removed a thick file from inside. She passed it to me, before she removed a second of equal size and began going through it.
I took mine over to the desk and opened the cover, immediately understanding why it was locked up. The front page had a picture of a man in full police uniform. According to the information written beneath it, he was over six feet tall, and weighed twenty stone. His name was Peter Jarvis, thirty-six and a serial killer responsible for sixteen murders in two years. The six victims were the same as those that had been in the files on Vicki's desk.
"So, why was she reading through the victims' files?" I asked.
"Because of this." Olivia passed me the file she'd been reading, which contained a picture of Peter with a young blond woman. They were stood in front of a large oak tree somewhere in a forest. They both appeared young and in love, the smiles genuine as they held one another. "This is Vicki."
"Your agent was dating a serial killer?"
"Yeah. It led to her drinking problem," Olivia said. "Like I told you, she had some anger issues."
"Anyone else know this about her?"
Olivia shook her head. "Just me. Peter used to beat her pretty badly. He nearly killed her once, just before she left him. She said she drank to forget what had happened. Sometimes she would wake up in a cold sweat at the thought of him coming after her."
"According to his file, he died in prison two years ago."
"His cellmate slit his throat. Vicki took a week off, and drank herself silly. I remember because Amber called me, worried that she was going to kill herself."
I bit my tongue, stopping myself from saying what I was thinking, but Olivia pretty much said it for me. "What the fuck have you got yourself into, Vicks?"
I grabbed one of the files inside the cabinet and started reading. related to a series of murders committed between five and seven years previously. Each of the victims had been young, pretty and murdered in brutal fashion. Their cars had been discovered on the major motorways around the New Forest, and their bodies found tied to trees with their hearts cut out.
"Fucking hell," I whispered. “Why wasn’t this house searched before? Hell, why didn’t you mention that Vicki’s ex was killing people in the same way as the current murders?”
Olivia snatched the file from me and started reading it. “Fuck. I swear I didn’t know the details of the murders. It was a human crime; I was far too busy to take notice. Even with it involving Vicki, I still didn’t find out much about what happened. She wasn’t exactly chatty about it, and I was swamped with work.”
“And the house?”
“Reid told me some human cops did it on our orders, just a cursory check… damn it, I fucked up.”
“We’ll ask Reid why he didn’t find anything.”
I opened the drawers on the desk, found a rucksack inside one, and used it to place the files inside. "They might come in handy," I pointed out.
We had one last look around the basement, but after finding nothing, decided it was best to head back upstairs.
Olivia's phone rang almost immediately and she walked off to answer it, leaving me alone to search the large living area of the house. Paintings were hung on walls, and a near empty bottle of vodka sat alone on the coffee table. Apparently, Vicki still had issues.
On a sideboard against the far wall sat rows of photos, all in elegant frames. Most of them were pictures of Vicki and Amber smiling, but one was a picture of seven women, including Amber and Vicki, all dressed up for a party. I picked up the photo and stared at it, until the realisation of where I'd seen them before clicked in my mind. They were the other victims. I turned it over n my hands and removed the photo from the frame. A date of four years previously was written on the back in pen.
I raced back to Olivia who'd finished on her call. "We got the bastard," she said with a smile.
I passed her the photo, fully aware that it would deflate her happiness. "I think we have a really big fucking problem."
Olivia's enthusiasm was quickly dampened when I showed her the photo, and the realisation that Vicki knew not only Amber, but all five of the remaining victims. And that every single person in the photo was now dead, or missing.
"You searched the victims' houses. Did any of them have the same photo?" I asked as Olivia placed the frame back where it had come from.
She shook her head, appearing slightly dazed, as if the photo had literally knocked the sense out of her. "Damn it, Vicks. Where are you?"
"We'll find her," I said.
"I hope so. Neil should be waiting for us by now, maybe he has some answers."