Disclaimer: I do not own Josef, Mick or anyone else that you may recognize. Riley and all of the others that come out of my head are of course mine. No copy write infringement is intended

Chapter 7

-Beth's POV-

"Mick calm down. She probably just turned her phone off. If she was as shook up as your say she was, that's not overly surprising." I tried to hold back a smile. Mick was already blaming himself for something happening, all because he couldn't get a hold of Riley as soon as he would have liked. Always playing the hero.

"Beth you don't understand. She was anxious, but she wanted a solution to this. She was so shaken at the thought of not being able to live her life the way she had, she needed to fix this. I got the impression that she was going to be waiting by the phone for me to call her. This just doesn't add, none of it does." He was so upset. I didn't know what to tell him to even begin to help him. He got up again and started to pace the length of the living room. I swear, he was going to wear the carpet down so thin that there would be hardly anything left.

I walked over and put my hand on his arm, stopping the nervous movement. He turned around and wrapped his arms around me. I returned the hug with as much force as I could manage.

"Listen, Mick, you have cases that you have to work on. You can't just ignore your work because of this. How about I go over to her apartment and tell her what you and Josef worked out. I'll talk to her. I promise everything will be okay. I will call you once I talk to her ok?" I looked up at Mick and finally got a smile out of him.

"Fine, but be careful Beth. I already don't have a good feeling about this and you going over there isn't going to help matters. Just be careful, alright?" I smiled and nodded my head. I stood up on my tip toes and gave him a small kiss. I then walked over to the door and grabbed my purse and car keys.

I drove over to the complex that Riley lived at. They were nice apartments, small, obviously only for one person, but nice. I took the elevator up to her floor and walked down the hall until I found 704C. I knocked on the door and waited for a response. When one didn't come I knocked again and yelled into the apartment, still no answer. Okay, maybe Mick was right, this is a little odd. I tried the door and was surprised to find it unlocked. I let myself in and walked into the main living room.

"Riley, are you here? It Beth, Mick and I were starting to get worried about you." I walked to the back of the apartment towards where I assumed the bedroom was. I knocked again on the door and then pushed it open. "Riley, where are you?" I looked into the bathroom and when I still didn't find anything, I walked back out to the kitchen. She wasn't anywhere to be found. I took out my phone and called Mick as I made my way back to the main entry hall. Right as Mick picked up the phone I stepped into a pile of glass and wet carpet.

"Shit, ow. Mick, are you there?" Great, that was probably the stupidest thing I could have done; now he is going to be worried.

"Beth, what's wrong, what happened?"

"I just stepped on a pile of glass. Mick, she isn't here. I looked through the entire apartment and she isn't here. I have to go get my foot cleaned up; you should probably come over and have a look around."

"Okay, Beth. I will be there in a few minutes, just hold tight." With that the phone in my hand went dead. I locked the front door and then walked back to the bathroom to clean up my foot. That will really teach me to where these sandals again. I sat down on the edge of the bath and started to pull some of the bigger pieces of glass out of my foot. I heard a knock on the door and then Mick was standing next to me in the bathroom.

"Let me get the rest of those out for you." He sat in front of me and was able to get all of the glass shards out of my foot. He then wrapped it and handed me a pair of tennis shoes that he must have remembered to grab before he left the apartment. I smiled up at him in thank you.

"Mick, what do you think happened to her? I mean there really are only a few possibilities. Either she ran away, she was taken, or there was some sort of emergency."

"I don't think she ran away. She wouldn't have asked for my help if she was still planning on leaving LA and I don't think there was an emergency. She was kidnapped; I can feel another vampire's presence in the room. Whoever it was came in and was able to take her with very little struggle. Nothing other than the glass, which she was probably holding, seems out of place. In all honesty, Beth, I don't really know where to start with this one. I highly doubt that anyone knew that she knew about us, but the attacker was not human. Nothing is really making sense."

-Josef's POV-

Damnit, Mick was supposed to call me almost an hour ago. He left so quickly after we talked about Riley that I didn't even get a real explanation. Damn idiot just comes in here, tells me that there was a miscommunication with Riley, then tells me that he is getting her to take a few days off, but that she didn't really quit. Why I told him I would consider letting her come back I can't imagine. While yes, she was good at her job, she was stubborn and was proving to be much more trouble than she was worth. So why the hell couldn't I just have told Mick that she wasn't welcome back here?

That was it. I am going home; Mick can try to get a hold of me later. All I wanted to do was to lie down in my freezer and fall asleep. This week had been absolute hell. I picked up a few folders that I would have to look over at home before I slept and made my way to the door. I was just about to lock the door when my office phone started to ring. Damn timing. I walked back in, set my things down and picked up the phone.

"This had better be really damn important." I was not in the mood to deal with clients or sales pitches today.

"Josef, its Mick. Sorry it has taken so long to get back to you. Listen, you need to come over to Riley's apartment now. Beth and I are here. Riley has gone missing. Hurry up and get over here man." As much as I didn't want to admit it, I was rather upset by this news, not because she was causing more trouble for me, but I was surprised to realize that I was actually worried about the girl.

"Do you know anything yet? Wait, don't tell me yet, I will be over as soon as I can, fill me in when I get there." I hung up the phone and walked back out of my office. I walked over to the elevator and quickly went down the secure parking garage that I had put in under the building. Some called it paranoia; I just looked at it as precaution. I slid into the car and sped out of the underground structure and on to the main LA roads.

It took me a little over 10 minutes to get to Riley's apartment. I raced up the stairs and stepped into her apartment. I found Beth and Mick fairly easily in the kitchen. "Mick, what the hell happened here?"

"We couldn't get a hold of her on her cell phone. Beth came over to talk to her and when she got here the apartment was empty. We think she was kidnapped. There are traces of another vampire being here and there is a broken glass in the entry hall. That's all we know right now, man. It looks like it is going to be a hard trail to follow." I couldn't accept that this was all we could do. Technically, this girl still worked for me and I had given her my word that I would protect her.

"I am going home, Mick. I am going to start calling some people to see what we can do. We have to keep this out of the news, Beth. I don't want the police getting mixed up in this. They don't need to be involved in this. Either of you call me if you get anything new." With that I turned and went back to my car and drove home.

One of the few rules I had for my life, don't get attached to humans. As much as I tried to deny the fact, I was attached. I needed to find this girl. I walked in and sat down at my desk. I closed my eyes and tried to get control of myself.

Sitting in front of me on my own desk was a note, one single piece of paper. On the paper it clearly laid out the terms that I would have to follow in order to get Riley back. She wanted 5 million in cash all in small bills. Probably the worst part about all of this is that the attacker, Charlie, was once one of my PA's. I had fired her about 20 years ago. Apparently she had tracked someone down to change her and was now trying to come after me. I don't think I could ever forgive myself if something happened to another innocent girl because I didn't deal with Charlie soon enough.

Charlie had figured out what I was. She didn't know how many others there were in the area, but she did enough to be a danger to me. I paid her well to keep her mouth shut. I had thought that it was finished. About two months after I let her go, a young boy turned up dead. Charlie had ended up working for the DA's office and knew details of the murder. A vampire had been involved, and knowing what she did, Charlie had been able to put the pieces together and figured it out. She had thought that I was the one who killed the boy. She came after me and almost exposed who I was. I threatened her with worse than death if she did.

She disappeared after that. I had Mick keep tabs on her for a while, but it soon became unnecessary. About a month after I pulled back security on her, almost 2 years after I fired her, she came back into my life. I had just fired the PA that had replaced her. The poor girl went missing about two days after I let her go and I received a ransom note later that night. We spent a week chasing after her but in the end Charlie ended up killing her. I couldn't find her after that and after a few years I forgot about it.

I knew that I should have killed her after she threatened to expose me for what I was. It really was too dangerous to let her live even after our history, but I decided not to act. It was because of me that one of my personal assistants had been killed. I refused to let it happen to another innocent girl, especially if that girl was Riley.

I scanned a copy of the letter and wrote out a note to Mick before I emailed it all to him. He would know exactly what this meant and how urgent it was to find a trail before it was too late.

-Riley's POV-

When I woke up I was incredibly uncomfortable. The last thing I remembered was having a cloth pressed up against my face and slowing blacking out. I guess that would explain why I was currently sitting on what had to be the stiffest chair I had ever sat in. I slowly picked my head up and opened my eyes. There wasn't much light in the room but the little that was there seemed to be too bright. I tried to bring my hand up to my face but found that I was unable to move. Where ever I was, my hands and feet had been tied to the chair. I tried to speak, but my throat was to dry to make a coherent sound.

Suddenly the door across the room flew open and the overhead lights were turned on. I felt a hand clamp down on my throat and the only thing I could hear was the laugh of the women standing over me.

A/N: So we have found out who took Riley. And Josef has started to let his feelings for Riley peek through! Now if only he could admit to them!

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