The Wolf (Black Dagger Brotherhood: Prison Camp #2)(23)

While she kept the conversation going, she listened for sounds beyond the room. Smells. Anything that was happening outside. The clock over on the mantel said it was seven so it had to be morning. It seemed impossible that she had been out cold long enough for it to be after dark.

“How did they get me out of my apartment?” she asked, even though she could guess that her abductors had followed through on the sliding glass door/terrace drop evac plan.

“You Tasered the hell out of a friend of mine.”

“Did you expect me to shake his hand after he came at me from behind? Dragged me across my carpet by the ankles?”

There was a chuckle. “Rio, Rio, what am I going to do with you.”

“You’re going to put a bag over my head, let me loose from this chair, and take me back to my apartment. I will formally take over everything Mickie was doing, although I’m not going to work out of his headquarters, they’re disgusting.”

“You think I’m going to let you go.”

“Yes, I do. Because otherwise you’re down two people high up on your food chain. And who are you going to replace us with?”

“That’s my problem, not yours.”

“I am your solution.”

There was a long pause, and Rio straightened as much as she could in the chair. “Hello?”

A hand landed on her shoulder and she jumped. As Mozart tightened his hold on her, pain shot down her arm.

“What am I going to do with you,” he said grimly.

Rio closed her eyes and remembered the frantic phone call that had come in just before she’d met that supplier.

“Fine,” she muttered. “I don’t give a shit. I killed Mickie and I’m not sorry about it.”

“Why did you lie.”

Rio pulled at the ties around her wrists. “I’m not exactly a guest here, am I. And from everything I know about your financial situation, you can afford to replace this nice marble floor if it gets all bloody. So an arduous cleanup is not going to stop you from putting a bullet in my head.”

There was a long pause. “I hate liars, Rio. I really fucking do.”

A black-and-white image was lowered in front of her face, and she recognized the candid photograph immediately. It had been taken from a distance at her graduation from the FBI academy, at the secret ceremony that was supposed to have had no record and certainly no photographers.

Her face was younger and a little fuller, and that smile? It hadn’t made a reappearance since, as far as she could tell.

“Lucky for me,” Mozart murmured, “I have friends in all kinds of places.”

So this was how she died, Rio thought.

Ever since she’d found her brother’s dead body on the floor in his bedroom, she had wondered what her own last breath would be like. Whether she went from an accident or if it was an illness that got her. Whether she was in roaring pain or a fog from being medicated. Whether she lingered or if it was quick.

Some of those questions were going to be answered today. Soon.

Oddly, she thought of the couple who had walked out of the emergency department the night before, the old man and the old woman, helping each other not to just the exit of a building, but to the big departure.

“Officer Hernandez-Guerrero, what am I going to do with you.”

Rio closed her eyes and mouthed a silent prayer. All things considered, that was a rhetorical question, wasn’t it— The pinprick in her upper arm was sharp, and she whipped her eyes down and to the right.

A hypodermic needle was sticking out of her upper biceps, and as she gasped, she tried to rotate her limb to get it out. But like that was any . . . kind . . . of a plan . . .

Everything slowed down, not just inside her body with her breathing, heart rate, and thinking, but outside of herself, too, the whole world turning to molasses.

Her last image, as she lost consciousness, was of that antique golden clock, the curlicues and lovely, painted face full of roman numerals the kind of thing a princess might have had in her bedroom.

And then she knew nothing, sensed nothing, felt nothing.





That night, as soon as it was dark enough to leave the suffocating lockdown of the sanatorium, Lucan dematerialized to downtown Caldwell. When he re-formed, it was on the roof of the club he’d met the woman beside. As he returned to his corporeal form, the rhythmic beat of the music’s bass line came up through the soles of his boots, and on the breeze that wafted around the building, he caught the scents of the humans in the waitline.

He took out the portable phone he’d been given. Still no response from Rio.

He had called the number four times since they’d parted.

Even though she’d said they’d meet again, he had no time or place to go on. He came back here because . . . what really were his options.

Had she died during the day from internal injuries? Been killed?

Gotten fired the old-fashioned way, right into a coffin?

Heading over to the roofline, he looked down over the lip edge. The alley was empty, nothing but scattered litter, a car that was parked on the far side, and a lineup of trash bins that had been recently emptied by someone lazy or careless, their lids flopped back, their filthy maws still open. As the wind changed direction, the temperature was downright cold, the unseasonable warmth of the evening before gone, the winter flexing its muscles already.