He stared at me so hard that I grew alarmed. “What? What’s wrong?”

“How old are you? Sixteen? Seventeen?”

“Seventeen, why?”

“The missing girls in Portland – they were all your age.”

“I know. It was in the news.”

“They were all blond.”

The meaning in his words hit me and I recoiled as if I’d been slapped. “No. You’re wrong.” The idea that four innocent girls were hurt or killed because of me was too much to bear. “There has to be hundreds of blond teenage girls in Portland. Do you honestly think vampires are going to randomly pick girls on the chance they’d find Madeline’s daughter? And why now after all this time?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I don’t think those missing girls were random either. As soon as the third girl disappeared, I started looking for a connection between them.”

“Look for a connection how?”

“I’m really good with computers.”

For some reason, that did not surprise me. “What did you find?”

“Nothing at first. Not until the last two girls went missing. I had a bunch of searches running, cross-referencing school records, social websites and some other not-so-public records when I came up with something all four girls had in common. They were all adopted.”

“What?”

He nodded slowly. “What are the odds of vampires taking four blond, adopted girls of the same age in Portland? It’s no coincidence.”

“My God.” I felt the color drain from my face.

“I don’t know how you stayed under their radar but keep doing it. My guess is that they want to use Madeline’s daughter as bait to draw her out.”

“I don’t understand. Vampires must have a lot of resources. It should have taken them no time to track down my uncle and find me.”

David shook his head. “I can find anyone if there is a paper trail and I couldn’t find you. It looked like you went into the foster care system and then just disappeared. Someone obviously went through a lot of trouble to hide you. I didn’t even know there was an uncle until you mentioned him.”

Someone hid me – and Nate? They must be really good to hide the fact that my dad had a brother. But who would do that and why? The werewolves had a large network but Maxwell had said he only suspected vampires had killed my father. Surely if he or someone he knew had covered my trail, he would have told me after everything that had happened in the last month. And it wasn’t the Mohiri because they didn’t even know I existed before a month ago.

“Whoever did it was very thorough and you owe them a big thank you if you ever find them because they probably saved your life. Just keep your head down and don’t do anything to draw the vampires’ attention to you and you should be okay.”

I gulped soundlessly. Too late.

“From what I’ve heard, the vampires are keeping a very low profile in Portland now. That scares me even more. I’m a freelance programmer and I can do that from anywhere. I’m leaving for a while, heading south to stay with some friends.” He gave me a small smile. “That’s why I agreed to come here today. Something told me I had to meet you before I left.”

“David, you don’t know what this meant to me, to learn anything about what happened to my dad. I still have questions but I feel like I’m closer to understanding it all now.” The aching hole in my heart felt a tiny bit smaller after meeting the one person who shared my painful history. I’d never find real closure as long as my dad’s murderer was alive and free to kill again. But I always knew this was as close as I would get. It had to be enough.

David pulled out his wallet and laid some bills on the table. “Listen, I have to go. Keep your head down, kid, until this mess blows over. You know where to reach me online if you want to talk.” He fixed me with a hard stare. “I understand how badly you want answers because I’ve spent years trying to find my own, but it’s not worth risking your life. Be careful who you talk to online and especially who you meet.” He smiled. “I know that is weird advice from a guy you met online. But the next one might not be as nice as me.”

I stayed in the booth and watched David walk out to a white Ford Focus and drive away. When I had planned this meeting, I never really knew what to expect or what I hoped to get out of it. Meeting David, learning how he had suffered because of his father’s association with Madeline, made me despise my mother even more. My dad, David’s dad and those girls: how many more people would be hurt because of her?

One thing was clear, this was way bigger than me and David and our fathers’ murders. If Madeline was still out there and she knew the identity of a Master, the Mohiri needed to know about it. With their resources, they could track her down and find out what she knew and if anyone had the firepower to go up against a Master, it was Nikolas’s people.

I glanced at my watch. It was two-thirty, which meant we’d been gone from Dylan’s for over an hour. I grimaced as I slid out of the booth. Maybe my news about the Master would deflect some of Nikolas anger. Not likely but a girl could hope.

I left the diner and joined Peter who stood by the phone booth. He wore a relieved smile as I approached him. “Well, how’d it go?” he asked impatiently.

“He knew a lot more than I expected. His father and Madeline knew each other.”

“Seriously? Tell me what he said.”