Free Black Water: A Jane Yellowrock Collection by Faith Hunter Page A

the next best bet. He’s good at finding out things others can’t, so I need his intel or the rescue team might trigger an explosion that will kill them or the hostage.”
    “Her name is Heyda. Not hostage,” Ming said, her back still turned.
    “I know. I’m trying to get Heyda back to you in one piece. I’ll get back to you before dawn with an update.”
    “Quarters have been arranged here for you,” Ming said.
    “Thank you for that consideration, but the Master of the City of New Orleans has booked rooms for me uptown.” No way was I staying under a vamp roof, where there might be collaborators in Ming’s capture, or vamps wanting to try skinwalker blood. Or a blood-master on edge. No freaking way.
    “As you wish.” Ming, again looking mostly human, turned her face to me and stood. I stood just as fast. Protocol and all that. The butler appeared at the entrance to the parlor like some kind of magic trick—gone one moment, present the next. “I expect a report before dawn. You are dismissed.”
    Yeah. Right. I gathered up the papers and followed the butler to Heyda’s rooms, which I searched as well as I was able, getting Cai to take photos of everything and send them to Alex with a text telling him I had arrived and was okay. Before I left, I removed Heyda’s pillowcase from her pillow and took it with me. I might need a scent item to track her and wanted to be ready. I grabbed my cell on the way out, happy to be back in communication with my team.
    ***
    With the cell battery at least partially charged, I called the Kid back home. The Younger brothers were frantic, and I spent the ride to my hotel updating them.
    By the time I got checked into the suite—one of those corner rooms with windows on both outer walls, all with a view, a sitting area, a king-sized bed, a desk with computer access, and a fridge—it was two a.m. and I was exhausted. To wake up enough to function, I took a fast, frigid shower, dressed in the clean jeans and T-shirt I had carried up from Fang’s saddlebags, and made my way to the business lounge. Access to that department was quickly facilitated by the hotel night manager, who let me into the computer room for a number of twenties. In the short elapsed time, Alex had gathered more info to add to what we knew. A lot more.
    ***
    A cup of double-strong black tea on the desk beside me, I opened up the file compiled by Alex and read the summary he had prepared. Colonel Ernest Jackson was a third-generation cult member, grandson of the founder of the God’s Cloud of Glory Church, a backwoods religious cult of polygamists who lived on three hundred acres of hillside property not far from Beaver Ridge, which sounded appropriate for the cult in so many ways.
    God’s Cloud had a recent batch of problems, however, with papers filed against them by the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services and the Department of Human Services for human trafficking and child endangerment. Reports suggested that they married off their female children long before they were women. Two days prior to Heyda being abducted, there had been an attempted raid on the complex, but the church had clearly been alerted to the law enforcement plans, because by the time the LEOs got there, the access roads to the compound had been barricaded with recently felled trees and booby-trapped with nails, scrap iron, and rolls of rusted barbed wire. The social services types and the cops hadn’t exactly gone home with their tails between their legs, but they were stymied at the front gates of the church compound. It was looking like a combo of Ruby Ridge and the Nevada Showdown.
    I had to wonder how the colonel and his pals had gotten off the property to kidnap Heyda and then gotten back in without a law enforcement incident. I made a note to look for hidden entries. Cave passages, maybe? There were lots of caves in the hills of Knoxville. Maybe an undocumented cave accessed the property.
    Satellite maps and topographical