Page 91 of Bought for Blood

My wolf gets up. She crosses the whole length of me and stops, facing the window, and stands there with her ears forward. Not the door anymore.

The window.

I take the key and turn it seven times.

The bird lifts its head. It opens its beak and sings its eleven notes into an empty room. The last one cracks, the same as before. Then it stops, beak open, quiet.

Somewhere down the hill, a second car starts.

Chapter 29

Bastien

They stage out of a logging yard seven miles from the compound, and by eleven the only thing anyone is waiting for is me to leave.

Jericho has me sit on the tailgate of his vehicle while he works a transmitter into the lining of my coat.

“Under the collar,” he says. “Don’t touch it. If you can find it, so can they.”

“What’s the range?”

“Through stone, poor. I’ll know you’re alive. I won’t hear a conversation.” He bites the thread and knots it. “If you want us moving, say the word.”

“Fenwick.”

“Twice. Once could be anything.”

Viktor walks the line of Craven’s dragons at the treeline and comes back without saying a word to any of them. Nadia has themap spread on the hood of a truck with a flashlight held in her teeth.

“Front doors on the signal,” she says, taking it out of her mouth. “Ward doors are Craven’s. Everyone else takes the vehicle gate.”

“And if there’s no signal?”

“Then we sit at that fence until first light, and nobody moves.”

Craven looks up from the map. “How long do you need inside?”

“An hour. Less, if she’s direct with me.”

“And if she isn’t?”

“Then it takes longer than an hour.”

Crowe is down by the fence with his back to all of it. I walk down and stand beside him and take the envelope out of my coat.

“Take this.”

He doesn’t put his hand out. “What is it?”

“The deed to the estate, signed over to you. There’s a letter with it. Both are witnessed, and Faine holds the second copy.”

He turns around.

“Put it back in your pocket.”

“It’s written so that it doesn’t have to go through a court. The house and the land go together, and the accounts under them are considerable. I’ve made it very difficult to contest.”

“I said put it back.”