“Are we going in?” Yvette asked behind him.

Gabriel pushed aside his thoughts about the deformity and stepped inside the apartment. He sniffed, trying to ascertain if Maya had been here. His gaze swept through the place. It still looked the way they’d left it only two nights earlier. Nothing had changed. And there was no fresh scent of Maya. She hadn’t been here.

“Where else would she go?” Gabriel asked and ran his hands through his hair.

Yvette opened her mouth, but then her cell phone rang. She picked it up. “Thomas? Did you get my message?”

Gabriel could hear Thomas’ reply. “Yes, the GPS on Samson’s Audi shows me she’s in my area. Wait … She’s moving. Heading northwest.”

“Where to?” Gabriel ground out.

Yvette lifted her hand and listened to Thomas. “Where—”

“I heard him. I think she’s going to Parnassus.”

“Parnassus?” Yvette asked.

“The hospital.”

“Meet us there,” Yvette ordered and flipped the phone shut.

“Call Amaury. I’m calling Ricky.” Gabriel rushed out the door and back down to the car. As he jumped in, the call to Ricky connected.

“Maya’s left the house.”

“Shit, what happened?” Ricky’s concerned voice reached his ear.

“She’s on her way to the hospital, probably to see her friends there. We need to find her and bring her back before the rogue gets her. Meet us there.”

“Will do.” Ricky disconnected the call.

“Amaury’s on his way too,” Yvette reported as she fell into the passenger seat.

Gabriel hit the gas pedal and sped down the street. The limousine Carl normally drove wasn’t as fast as Samson’s Audi, but it had GPS and would help him get to Maya, hopefully before the rogue did.

***

Maya’s heart raced as she pulled the Audi to a stop right in front of the hospital’s no-parking zone. For all she cared, they could tow Samson’s car—she didn’t have a second to lose. If her stalker had killed Paulette to silence her, Barbara would be next. If she hadn’t already been … She swallowed hard.

How he could possibly know about Paulette and Barbara, she wasn’t sure. Unless, of course, she’d actually introduced her girlfriends to him. But then, wouldn’t he have merely wiped their memories too? Something didn’t make sense here.

Was the rogue trying to send her a message? Was this revenge for not giving into his advances? Because she was even more convinced now that he had to be a spurned lover. No one else would spit the kind of hatred that had radiated from the bloody message in Paulette’s bedroom.

It’s your fault, Maya.

The words echoed in her mind like a broken record. Could she have saved Paulette? Had she only thought things through, she would have considered this danger right when Gabriel’s colleague Ricky had shown up and offered to help. Maybe he’d already talked to Paulette—she’d given him her contact info after all.  Maybe he’d even led the stalker to her.  How could she know?

It didn’t matter.  In the end, it was her responsibility to protect her friends.  She should have gone with him and warned Paulette. Urged her to go someplace safe. But that night she’d gone into heat and her mind had been clouded. She’d only thought of herself then. And because of her selfishness her friend was dead. It was her fault.

Maya swallowed the lump in her throat and rushed up the stairs to the ward. She knew Barbara was on service all week and would most likely be in the on-call room of her ward. As she reached the double doors that separated the public area of the hospital from the restricted part, she realized to her horror that she didn’t have her access card with her.

She cursed and looked around her, but nobody was in sight. The clock in the corridor showed a few minutes past one o’clock—the regular staff would be long gone, and only the night shift would man the stations. Barbara’s ward wasn’t a critical care area, so staffing was thin and consisted mostly of a couple of nurses and one on-call doctor, Barbara herself. None of them were in sight.

Maya pushed against the doors, but they didn’t budge. Through the glass windows she could see the button that allowed people to leave the area without using their access cards, but there was no way in. If she could get somebody to press the button for her, then she would be in luck, but there was no human around on whom she could try out her mind control skill. Not that it would have worked anyway—despite Thomas’ coaching. All she’d been able to influence was a chair and some glasses and bowls.