The Wolf (Black Dagger Brotherhood - Prison Camp 2)

“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.

Swinging up and over the roof ’s molding, he hit the fire escape’s top level with a clang—and he didn’t hide how much noise he made as he descended the back and forth of flights and landings. When he got to the lowest set, he didn’t put the ladder down; he just pulled a dangler, hanging on by his hands and dropping to the ground.

Breathing in the air, he sifted through the scents coming to him: Motor oil and gas from that car. Rotten food from the dumpster around the corner, the one where that shooter had been. Fire from somewhere, probably down under the bridge by the river, where the homeless crowded around barrels and used lit trash to keep warm.

He was guessing that both the Charger mess and the body of the shooter had been long removed. No doubt the human police had had a field day with the pair of crime scenes.

“Where are you, Rio,” he murmured. “I’m waiting for you.”