Vampire Beach Hunted (11 page)

Sienna slowed to match him. ‘Ugh, I’m so stressed,’ she sighed. ‘I know we all thought coming to school and acting normal was the right thing to do. But I can’t think about anything except Christopher, the vampire who helped Van Dyke. Who knows what kind of experiments they could be doing on the poor guy right now.’

‘I know.’ Jason took her hand and squeezed. ‘I think everyone is preoccupied. Adam hasn’t made a single film reference all day!’

‘Wow!’ Sienna said with a tiny smile.

‘Don’t worry. We’ll make a plan today and we’ll rescue Christopher as soon as possible,’ Jason assured her.

When they reached the cafeteria, the other vampires were all gathered around a big table in the back. Adam was on his way over, carrying a tray with a gigantic salad and a bottle of water.

‘What, are you on a diet?’ Jason teased him. ‘Where’s the pizza and Coke?’

Adam looked startled, but Sienna chuckled. ‘Ignore him, Adam. Brianna probably convinced you to start eating healthy, right?’

‘Um, yeah.’ Adam blushed.

‘Oh, I should’ve guessed,’ Jason said. ‘You guys must be pretty serious if you’re letting her dictate your diet.’

‘Well, I did have a taco for breakfast,’ Adam defended himself. He plopped his tray onto the vampires’ table and sat down. Jason and Sienna sat next to him.

‘What’s going on?’ Sienna asked.

‘Argument,’ Belle told her. ‘Van Dyke wants us to gather as many vampires as possible and then charge the warehouse because there’s no way they could fight so many vampires at once. Zach thinks we need to sneak in and avoid another fight.’

‘I’m with Zach,’ Jason said. ‘One fight against the freakishly strong humans was enough. And what if they called for reinforcements after last night?’

‘Good point,’ said Brad.

‘Besides, I don’t fight,’ Belle put in. ‘I believe in peace.’

‘You just don’t want to break a nail,’ Van Dyke grumbled.

‘I can kick your butt, Michael. Or don’t you remember the locker incident from eighth grade?’ Belle said sweetly.

Van Dyke flushed red, and Jason smiled. ‘You’ll have to tell me about that sometime,’ he murmured to Sienna.

‘Focus, people,’ Brad commanded them. ‘If we’re sneaking in, that means we have to find an entrance that the security goons aren’t watching.’ He grabbed a pen from the table and began sketching on a napkin. ‘The place was all one storey, with the lighted doorway here . . .’ He drew a rough plan of the place as he talked. ‘I thought I saw a bank of windows on this side—’

‘But there were bars on them,’ Zach put in. ‘We can’t get in that way.’

Brad drew little Xs over the window on his napkin blueprint.

‘Let me see that pen,’ Sienna said suddenly, grabbing it from him.

‘Hey!’ Brad protested.

Sienna ignored him. ‘Where did you get this?’

‘I borrowed it from Belle in English,’ Brad said.

‘I took it from the van last night,’ Belle added. ‘Why?’

‘The logo looks really familiar to me,’ Sienna said thoughtfully. ‘Look.’ She held the pen out so they could all see the logo: an H and a C intertwined in elaborate script.

‘I don’t recognize it,’ Zach said.

‘Me neither,’ Jason admitted.

‘Well, I do. And if it came from the van, it could give us some more information about what we’re dealing with.’ Sienna stood up. ‘You guys keep planning. I’m going to take this to the computer room and see what I can dig up about the logo.’ She gave Jason a quick kiss and took off.

Brad sighed. ‘Anyone else have a pen I can borrow?’

‘Don’t worry about drawing the warehouse,’ Adam said. ‘I think I can get the actual blueprints for us.’

Everybody stared at him in surprise.

‘Brianna’s mom is a realtor,’ Adam explained. ‘And she just happens to cover commercial real estate in that area.’

‘What are you saying?’ Zach asked.

‘Well, I mentioned the warehouse to Brianna this morning, and she says her mother brokered a deal for it last year. So I can get Brianna to look in the files, find out who bought it, and get us a copy of the schematics for the whole place.’

Brad let out a whistle. ‘That would be great.’

‘You can’t tell Brianna why we need them, though,’ Jason pointed out. ‘How are you going to convince her to help?’

‘I’ll make up a story,’ Adam said with a shrug. ‘It’ll be just like writing a movie script. Leave it to me.’

‘Thanks, Adam,’ Zach said. ‘You’re a good friend.’ He turned to the rest of the group. ‘Let’s meet up at Van Dyke’s place after school. Adam will bring the schematics, and we’ll figure out the best way in.’

‘Hey! Maybe we could tunnel in,’ Van Dyke suggested. ‘Like in that film, er . . .
The Great Gatsby
.’

He means
The Great
Escape
, Jason thought, waiting for Adam to correct Van Dyke. But Adam didn’t say anything. Jason guessed the situation was just too serious.

‘Let’s wait until we’ve seen the plans,’ Zach said.

‘OK,’ Van Dyke agreed. ‘But then those security guys better watch out, because I’m not leaving this time – not without Christopher.’

Sienna was waiting on her doorstep when Jason pulled up in the VW that evening. She’d changed out of the short skirt she wore to school, and now she had on a pair of jeans that hugged her curves and made his pulse pound.
I can’t believe we fell asleep last night
, he thought ruefully. Was he ever going to get a chance to really
be
with his girlfriend?

‘Thanks for the ride,’ she said, climbing in next to him. ‘The Spider started, but it was making that funny clanging sound.’

‘That’s never good.’ Jason put the VW in gear and pulled back out onto the road. ‘Did you find out anything about that logo on the pen?’

‘Yup. Ten minutes of internet research and I had it. HemoCorp. That’s what the H and the C stand for.’

‘What’s HemoCorp?’ Jason asked.

‘It’s some kind of scientific think-tank. I must’ve seen the logo on papers in my dad’s office or something. It’s a subsidiary of Medi-Life, I think.’

‘The big drug company?’

‘Yeah, their headquarters are around here, off Mulholland Highway,’ Sienna said. ‘You don’t think those security guys stole the van from Medi-Life, do you?’

‘I think it’s more likely that they stole the
pen
,’ Jason said. ‘But either way, we should get rid of that van as soon as possible. Because
we
definitely stole it, and even though Adam has connections with the police, I don’t think we can get away with grand theft auto.’

‘Let’s search the van for evidence tonight, as soon as we get toVan Dyke’s,’ Sienna suggested. ‘Then while the guys are breaking in to the warehouse tonight, the rest of us can get rid of the van somehow.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ Jason replied. ‘Although if there’s any breaking and entering to be done, I’m going along.’

‘Jason—’ Sienna began.

‘I’m going,’ he insisted. ‘I wasn’t much help last night, but you never know when a spare set of fists can come in handy. I feel like I owe it to Van Dyke to help save Christopher.’

Sienna didn’t look happy, but she nodded.

Jason turned the VW into Van Dyke’s driveway, and they went inside. Everybody was gathered in the living room, waiting for Adam to arrive with the schematics.

‘Sienna and I are going to check out the van some more,’ Jason announced. ‘See if Van Dyke’s captors left anything behind that might give us a little information about what we’re dealing with.’

‘It’s in the garage,’ Van Dyke said. ‘I meant to search it myself today, but I couldn’t handle getting back inside that thing. I feel like I might explode if I don’t get to Christopher soon.’

Brad laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘We’ll save him. Don’t worry. As soon as Turnball gets here, we’ll have a plan.’

Sienna led Jason through the kitchen and into Van Dyke’s attached garage. Jason frowned when he saw the large dent in the side of the black van – the dent made by his body colliding with the metal. Whatever their plan was for tonight, he hoped it didn’t involve a repeat of last night’s brawl.

‘You take the back, I’ll take the front,’ Sienna suggested.

Jason nodded and opened up the double doors at the back. Since it was a cargo van, it had no seats in back, just bare black floor mats. ‘Shouldn’t be too hard to search,’ he said. ‘Although I feel like I should be wearing gloves, just so I don’t leave any evidence of myself behind.’

‘This isn’t
CSI
,’ Sienna told him. ‘Besides, we were all in this van last night. If there’s evidence, there’s evidence. I’m more interested in what those security goons left behind.’

Jason crawled around for ten minutes, pulling up the floor mats and peering at the dusty metal underneath, but he didn’t find anything more interesting than a couple of paper clips and an old can of WD-40. He climbed out the back and went around to the driver’s side door. ‘I got nothing,’ he reported.

‘The cab is pretty clean, too,’ Sienna said. ‘There isn’t even a registration in the glove compartment. But I did find this.’ She handed him a small brown bottle.

‘Looks like a prescription bottle,’ he said.

‘But there’s no label,’ Sienna pointed out. ‘And there are no markings on the pills inside.’

Jason took off the cap and shook a couple of pills into his hand. They were dark red with no identifying marks. ‘Are you sure they’re not just mutant M&Ms?’ he joked.

‘You want to try one and find out?’ Sienna challenged.

‘Nope. Let’s go show everyone else.’ Jason pocketed the pills and helped Sienna out of the van, helping himself to a kiss along the way.

When they got back inside, the group had moved to the kitchen, where they were all studying a set of blueprints spread out on the table.

‘Hey, Adam,’ Jason said, surprised to see his friend there. Usually Adam would seek him out before just sitting right down with the vampire crew. But maybe he was as anxious to get down to business as the rest of them.

‘Hi.’ Adam shot him a smile. ‘I got the plans, but we have to get them back to Brianna by tomorrow morning so she can sneak them back into the filing cabinet before her mother notices they’ve gone.’

‘What did you tell Brianna?’ Jason asked. ‘Some elaborate conspiracy story?’

‘Sort of,’ Adam said.

‘He probably told her he was researching a movie,’ Belle said, giving Adam a nudge. ‘Am I right?’

Adam grinned. ‘You know me too well.’

‘Does the file say who the warehouse was sold to?’ Sienna asked.

‘No, just that it was a private investor,’ Adam replied. ‘There wasn’t even a name, just a bank account.’

‘Well, you can hack into that and find out whose it is, can’t you?’ Zach asked.

‘I tried, my man. The account was closed right after the sale last year,’ Adam said. ‘It’s a dead end.’

Look at him getting all cosy with the vampires
, Jason thought, amused.
I don’t think anyone has ever called Zach Lafrenière ‘my man’ before
.

‘Tear yourselves away from the plans for a minute,’ Sienna told her friends. ‘We found something in the van.’

Jason pulled out the bottle of pills and placed them on the table. ‘No markings,’ he said.

‘But they were in the driver’s seat. I think maybe they fell out of someone’s pocket when they were driving,’ Sienna said.

Zach frowned as he looked at the pills. ‘We need to find out what these pills are,’ he said. ‘Sienna, can you take them to the DeVere Center and get the lab techs to analyze them? I know it’s late but, given that your father practically owns the place, they should be willing to work all night if you ask them.’

‘I’m on it,’ Sienna said.

‘I’ll go with you.’ Belle got up and grabbed her purse from the counter as Sienna bent to kiss Jason.

‘Be careful,’ Sienna whispered.

‘You too,’ he told her.

As she and Belle left, Van Dyke looked worried. ‘Hang on, we’re not waiting for the analysis before we make our rescue attempt, are we?’

‘We probably should,’ Zach said. ‘But I’m starting to worry that Christopher may not have time for us to wait. You said he was in bad shape already, right?’

Van Dyke nodded. ‘And that was two days ago,’ he added.

‘I say we go tonight,’ Jason put in. ‘We find a way in on the blueprints, and we go pull Christopher out.’

‘You’re going with them?’ Adam cried, surprised.

‘Um, yeah.’ Jason raised an eyebrow. ‘Aren’t you?’

Adam’s mouth fell open and his face paled. ‘Uh . . . well . . .’

Everybody burst out laughing.

‘Chill out, Turnball, nobody expects you to get involved with this,’ Brad said.

‘Well,
more
involved,’ Erin put in.

‘No, no, if I’m supposed to go, I’ll go,’ Adam said, his voice a mere squeak.

‘Honestly, dude, I think you’d be a liability in a fight,’ Van Dyke told him. ‘I’d be so busy trying to protect you that I wouldn’t be able to think straight.’

‘I thought the point was to do this without another fight,’ Maggie chided him.

‘Yeah, and besides, I know how to punch,’ Adam protested. ‘I’ve seen lots of boxing movies.’

‘That settles it, you’re not coming,’ Zach laughed. ‘You can’t risk getting caught breaking and entering, anyway, Adam. Your father would kill you. You’ve already helped us enough.’

‘OK, OK, if you insist,’ Adam replied in a relieved tone. ‘Anyway, look, I was thinking this air vent might be the best way to go.’ He pointed out a section on the north side of the warehouse schematic. ‘This says the opening is two by three. Plenty of crawling room.’

‘And it will take us right into the main warehouse,’ Zach said. ‘Good plan.’

‘Let’s get ready.’ Brad jumped up, followed by Van Dyke.

‘Erin and I will take the van out and dump it somewhere. I’m thinking long-term parking at the airport – that’s what they did once on
The Sopranos
. Call if there’s any trouble,’ Maggie said. She hugged Van Dyke. ‘Don’t fight.’

‘We’ll see,’ he said grimly.

‘I’m gonna get these blueprints back to Brianna,’ Adam said, rolling them up. ‘Jason, walk me out?’

Jason nodded and followed Adam out to the driveway where his Vespa was parked. ‘Listen, I wasn’t kidding in there. Are you sure you want to go along with them?’ Adam asked quietly. ‘I saw that fight last night, Jason. Those guys might have
killed
you if we hadn’t gotten you out of there. They meant business.’