Page 85 of Bought for Blood

“His objection is sound. I’m going anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m the only person they’ve agreed to see. I’ve spent considerable time and money earning that house’s trust, and a new man would be starting from the beginning. And because if it works, I walk out of that building at midnight and hand you the name at the top of this trade.”

Craven speaks from the end of the room.

“Then let’s talk about what happens if it goes wrong.”

They build it in under an hour. Two teams, one on the access road, one in the treeline off the north fence, which is as close as anyone can get without lighting up the whole compound. Jericho runs communications from a vehicle. Craven puts fourteen dragons on the ward doors once the signal goes, and nobody argues with him about it.

“Once you’re through the front doors, you’re on your own in there,” Viktor says. “Nobody comes in behind you until you give the signal. If it goes wrong, the fastest anyone can reach you is four minutes.”

“Four minutes.”

“On a good night.”

“That’s acceptable.”

“It isn’t,” Crowe says.

“We’ve already heard your objections, Crowe.”

“I’ll keep saying them.”

Viktor closes the folder. “It’s set, then.”

The room starts standing. Chairs go back. Craven is already talking to Jericho about vehicles, and Nadia takes the map down off the screen and copies something from it.

I pull my coat on.

Serenity will be up when I get home. She waits for me in the study now, with a book off my shelf that she has no intention of giving back. She’ll ask where I’ve been. I’ll say out. She’ll let it go.

I could tell her tonight. I could tell her that her sister is alive.

Then she’d ask how I know, and I’d have to tell her I sat nine feet from Grace for two hours and never opened my mouth.

Zoe comes back in with a fresh pot nobody wants. Viktor lifts the stack of folders off the table and puts it into her hands.

“Copies for the file,” he says. “One set for the field kit.”

“Yes, sir.”

She puts them under her arm and carries them out into the corridor.

Grace is at the table, saying something to Decker with her hand on his arm. Four words would end months of not knowing for her.

I button my coat, and I walk out of the mountain without saying them.

Chapter 28

Serenity

Three cars came up the drive this morning, and none of them came inside. They stopped at the top with their engines running. Men got out, spoke to the guards, and the cars went back down the hill without them. I counted from the landing window. There are four more men on that wall tonight than there were yesterday.

Marthe burned a tray of bread before noon.

“Don’t say anything,” she said when I came into the kitchen. “The oven’s possessed, and I’m too old for it.”