"Did you and your friend in Brisbane happen to get the surveillance up and running on Lauren Macintyre's Gold Coast place?"
"Certainly did." He grinned, swung around in his chair, and lightly swiped several icons on the screen directly in front of him. Boxed images tiled onto the screen to his left. "Nothing much actually happens until this one."
He leant sideways and flicked one of the small boxes over to another screen. Lauren Macintyre jumped into view, impeccably dressed in what had to be a designer dress and shoes. She stood in the middle of the bedroom, and barked out orders to the half-dozen men moving a steady stream of boxes piled high with her designer dresses and shoes out of the wardrobe, taking them god knows where.
"When was this recorded?" I narrowed my eyes and leaned closer to the screen. There was something not quite right with those men…
"Four days ago now," Stane replied.
So she'd packed up and left before Lucian had died.
Suggesting, Azriel commented, that she somehow discovered your intrusion into her house. Perhaps that is why the storage place was also destroyed.
Yes. The bitch had been covering her tracks and finding a new hole to hide in – although undoubtedly it was a luxurious hole. She didn't seem the three-star type, that was for sure.
"Have you tried to identify any of the men?" I asked Stane.
"I've done a run through VicRoads's databases," he said, "but couldn't come up with a license match for any of them. I'm currently hacking into police files to see if I can find a match there somewhere."
One of the men on the screen turned to face the camera and shock coursed through me. It was one of the half-human, half-animal beings that had attacked us at the Military Fair when the second key had been stolen from under our noses.
And if Lauren was using them, then she was more tied up with the dark sorcerer than we'd figured.
"Fuck it all to hell," I muttered.
"To put it politely." Azriel's voice was grim. "Perhaps she is the reason the beings of those men are so twisted and unnatural. It would take a great deal of dark magic to so alter flesh and soul. More, perhaps, than one person – however strong a sorcerer – has."
I shot him a glance. "Could not the same be said for the ley-line gate? Perhaps it took all three of them to create it." I hesitated. "If that is the case, would Lucian's death have altered their ability to use it?"