Page 82 of Bought for Blood

Faine’s hands stay folded on the table. “And I wanted his intel verified before I brought it to Aurora,” she says. “It’s verified.”

Craven looks at the map, then at Viktor. “Am I here for a rescue or a raid?”

“That depends on the next hour.”

“Then I’ll listen to the hour.”

They put the map up on a screen and start pulling it apart, and for a long while I answer questions. Nadia wants the guard shifts. Six in the morning, six at night, and the night crew runs about a third thinner. Craven wants to know if the roof will hold a dragon’s weight. I tell him I’ve never been on it, and he nods and moves on.

Jericho has had a laptop open since the map went up. “You were in the room when the manager called his superiors. Is that right?”

“I was standing four feet from him.”

“Did you see the number he dialed?”

“No. He dialed from memory with his hand over the base.”

“But he called from his office. The phone on his desk.”

“At four in the morning. In October.”

He starts typing. “Then I don’t need the number. I know the line, and I know the time and date. Give me some time, and I can find out where that call rang.”

Vanya has been writing since I sat down. Now she puts her pen down.

“Tell me about their paperwork.”

“There isn’t much of it. When something leaves the building, two pages go with it. A code instead of a name, a rating, and a signature.”

“Whose signature?”

“Someone above the manager. He’s never met them. Whenever they come up, he gets flustered.”

She opens the folder beside her, takes out a single page, and slides it down the table to me.

“Is that the form?”

I look at it. Same layout. Same code block at the head, same rating box, same signature line. This one is blank, and the letterhead belongs to a different house.

“Where did you get this?”

“Out of the facility we raided this winter. Different building. Different manager.” She takes the page back. “On paper, that facility and your compound have nothing in common. Not an owner, not a bank, not a name. But the same person signs off on both.” She looks at Viktor. “He hasn’t found us another branch. He’s found proof that one person sits above at least two of theseoperations. If we can find out who that is, we’ve found the top of this trade.”

There’s a light knock at the door. A woman with cropped red hair comes in with an armful of folders, puts them at Viktor’s elbow, says something to him too quietly for the table, and goes out again with the empty coffee pot.

“Thank you, Zoe,” Viktor says as she walks out of the room.

Nadia gets up and shuts the door behind her.

The small fair woman at the end of the table hasn’t spoken yet, and I keep not looking at her.

That’s what makes me look.

My attention has slid past her four times now. Each time it lands on the bear instead, and each time it feels like my own choice. It isn’t. I’ve spent weeks living with this exact trick, and I recognize it. My eye is being moved along, and she’s the one moving it. That’s why her name never reached me at the introductions.

I make myself keep looking at her.

She’s small. Fair. Her jacket is too big, and she sits very straight inside it. There’s a healed mark at the join of her neck and shoulder. Under her heartbeat runs a second one, smaller and faster, that isn’t hers.