"Ashley."
It was the second time she'd heard someone say her name and seen no one. She did a full three-sixty and then went still, senses on high alert. The safehouse was in the lower level of a two story building in a historic district in a tiny town in Rhode Island. Quaint brick buildings lined a two lane, cobblestone street. The downtown area was quiet and void of traffic and people this late of night.
She heard Charles and the other vamps searching the rest of the building and started forward again. Only five vamps had been present and very quickly dispatched. The first time she heard her name, she'd been on the second floor, looking for anyone hiding, and had followed the direction of the sound. She walked cautiously in the direction of the voice, weapons drawn. Her senses picked up no one, but she wasn't one to hear things, either.
She cleared two more rooms and reached the end of a hallway before she heard it for a third time.
"Ashley."
A muted whisper before, it sounded a lot like Brandon this time.
"Brandon?" she called softly. Her adrenaline soared, and she tensed, ready to kill anyone within ten feet of her brother.
No answer.
She backtracked to the middle of the hallway and held her breath.
"Ashley. Are you there?"
Brandon's voice came from one of the rooms she'd already searched. Ashley returned and looked around. It was an office with nowhere to hide, not even a closet or file cabinet.
"Please tell me you're there."
She cocked her head to the side and approached the desk. The quiet purr of the computer beneath the desk was audible, though the screen connected to it was dark. She clicked it on.
Her heart seized in her chest.
Brandon sagged in his seat before the monitor on the other side. A bandage was wrapped around half his head, and his remaining eye was focused listlessly on the keyboard before him. He was pale, sickly, weak.
"Brandon," she whispered, stricken by the sight of her brother.
"Thank god," he said. "I thought he'd kill you."
"Where are you?" she demanded. "Why are they hurting you?"
"I can't talk now."
"Brandon …" The shadow on the wall behind him shifted despite his lack of movement, and she realized her brother hadn't hacked their systems to contact her; they'd put him up to this. She squeezed her fists hard enough for the nails to bite into her palms.
"Valon says if you surrender, he'll let us both go when he's done with Jonny," Brandon said.
"After chopping you into pieces? There's no fucking way he's serious!" she exclaimed.