I ran into Julio’s, but didn’t see any sign of her. There was a back door, but I knew Kanesha would not have done anything like that.

Not voluntarily. “Where did the black girl go?” I demanded.

“Rest room?”

I checked. The ladies was empty. So was the men’s room. The door to the alleyway was open. “She’s not here.”

“Not our…”

I stepped over to the counter. “She wouldn’t just have left through the back room. Who went back there?”

“Nobody.”

I gave up. It was probably something supernatural that he had not been able to see. Something cloaked from him.

Or, they’d come in through the back door. How about some logic? Kanesha was in trouble, though, and that was tending to turn off my personal logic circuits.

I went back into the back corridor. Two rest rooms. Door to the kitchen. Door to the alleyway. And yes.

A male sized boot print in the dust, stepping into the corridor. Scuff marks in the dust. She probably had ducked back to the rest room.

It was a particularly big boot print. That didn’t necessarily mean giant, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

I moved back into the alleyway, looking for signs of a vehicle. It was rather unfortunate that it really was spring now – the snow had all melted. I could see all sorts of tire prints, but I wasn’t sure what was recent and what wasn’t. And, of course, the fyrhund had vanished.

Maybe it had vanished to look for her. I took a deep breath, tugged out my cell, and called Mike.

“What’s up?”

“Kanesha’s been snagged.”

He cursed. “Do you know who by?”

“All I have is half a boot print and I can only be sure it’s too big to be a woman. I wish it was still winter.”

“Do you? Okay. I can’t put out an APB just yet, but I’ll make some calls.”

I trusted that he would. Then I looked both ways down the alleyway. I had to find her. But whoever had taken her was, almost certainly, counting on that. Counting on the bond between us.

There was only one reason anyone would have kidnapped Kanesha. To use her as bait. For which they needed her undamaged.

I would know, in the deepest part of me, if she died. I would know, because she was mine. They would know that.

Unless, of course, it wasn’t supernaturals after all.