“Let’s see what information the others have for us already,” Samson said as he walked into the situation room, a large, windowless office with several monitors mounted on the walls. A number of computers stood on desks on one side. A large table dominated the middle of the room.
Thomas sat at one of the computers, his fingers flying over the keyboard so fast that the movement would have been a blur to the human eye. Cain was hovering behind him, staring at the monitor above Thomas’s head. It showed a split screen with various angles of a street corner.
Quinn leaned against the table in the middle, listening to Amaury and Zane who stood talking with Gabriel.
“You’re back,” Samson greeted his second-in-command.
When Gabriel turned to return the greeting, light shone on the scar on the right side of his face, showing it more prominently than normally. His long dark brown hair was bound together in a pony tail.
“Hey Samson, Oliver. Got back a few hours ago. Just in time as it turns out. Wouldn’t want to miss the action.” He grinned.
“Good to see you. Where’s everybody else?” Samson asked.
Zane walked to the table. “Jay is still sieving through the stuff he brought back from Valentine’s apartment. The place was a pigsty. Not everybody is back from their patrol yet, but they’ve been notified. Eddie is in the computer lab downstairs, cracking the password on a second cell phone we found in Valentine’s place.” Then he jerked his thumb in Thomas’s direction. “Thomas is trying to get us camera feeds for the outside of the building.”
Oliver stepped closer. “How?”
Thomas briefly looked over his shoulder. “The address you gave us is an old warehouse in one of the less savory neighborhoods of Oakland. There might be some surveillance cameras in the area, maybe a gas station, or some other business. I’m scanning the area for it.”
“What else do we have?” Oliver looked back at Zane.
Zane curled his lip up. “You running the show now?”
Oliver squared his stance, but refrained from fisting his hands at his hips, not wanting to look like a puffed up peacock. Instead he simply glared at his colleague. “Remember, I was the reason we got this break.”
The standoff took several tense seconds during which nobody spoke and only Thomas’s tapping on the keyboard was audible. From the corner of his eye, Oliver noticed that even Quinn tensed. Was his sire rooting for him?
Then Zane relaxed his shoulders and looked at Samson and Gabriel. “Guess the kid will have to run point eventually. Might as well do it with a case he cares about.”
Surprised that Zane had conceded, Oliver was speechless for a moment. Then he kicked into action.
“Cain, tell Eddie to lay off the cell phone for now and get us blueprints of the building.”
Cain nodded and picked up the receiver, dialing a two digit number.
For the next few hours, they set up surveillance of the warehouse and brainstormed ideas on how to attack without endangering the women and what to do with any clients found on the premises. They were in agreement about what the fate of the vampires who ran the brothel would be: they would be destroyed on sight. The punishment for the clients was a little less clear cut.
“We have no idea how many clients they even have,” Amaury said. “We can’t just go around and dust them all.”
“Hmm.” Samson rubbed the back of his neck.
Oliver paced. “They must have a client list. Otherwise they couldn’t have contacted Corbin to let him know about the new address. We’ll have to find the list. It’s the only way to find all affected vampires in the city.”
Gabriel sighed. “And then what? Bring them in and lock them up until they’ve gone through withdrawal and are clean?”
“It might be the only way,” Oliver mused. “Samson, how about we talk to Drake about it? He might be able to help us there. After all, addiction is in part mental. As a psychiatrist, he might have some ideas.”
Samson gave him an encouraging look. “That’s a good idea. I’ll talk to him.”
That problem dealt with for now, Oliver brought the focus back on the main task: how to get the women out safely.
“Thomas. Pipe the feed into the large screen so we can see what we’re dealing with.”
Thomas did as he was asked, and a moment later, a grainy black and white image appeared on the main TV screen in the room.
“What are we looking at?” Oliver asked.
Thomas stood and used a laser pointer to project a red dot onto the video image. He moved it over the screen as he spoke.