Page 120 of Flames and Blood

“I want everything Aurora took out of the compound. Not the summary. The intake records, the transport orders, anything with a client’s name on it.”

“That’s theft.”

“It’s copying.”

“It’s theft with a nicer word on it.” A pen scratches on her end. She’s already writing. “Where do you want it?”

I give her an address I’ve used before. She reads it back to me twice and makes me confirm it.

“And Ysabelle?”

“Faine doesn’t need to know yet.”

“She is going to be very unpleasant to me.”

“You’ll enjoy that.”

“I will, a little.”

I watch the sky over the pines start to go from black to something thinner.

“One more thing. I need to find whoever provided that body. That’s a name I can’t get from a records room.”

“No,” she says. “That’s a name you buy.” A long pause on her end. “You want Farrow.”

“I do. That’s partly why I’m calling. I need his number.”

“Merde,” she mutters. “That man is intolerable. Are you prepared to put up with his terms? You know he can be unreasonable. Don’t agree to it if there’s another way.”

“There isn’t.”

“There never is with you.” The pen stops. “Don’t get killed. I have money on you finishing the year.”

She reads me the number twice, and then she’s gone before I can say anything else.

Farrow picks up on the second ring and doesn’t say hello.

“Odile called ahead.” His voice hasn’t changed in twelve years. Pleasant, unhurried, entirely without inflection. “She said you’d be difficult.”

“She’s not wrong.”

“She rarely is.” Something sets down on a hard surface at his end. “Before you ask me anything, I don’t do Syndicate business,” he says. “I’d like that clear first so we don’t waste our time. I won’t touch it, I won’t confirm it, and money doesn’t change it. Those people make life difficult.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

“Good. Then tell me what it is.”

“A job I’m on. Woman I got out of a trafficking ring.” I don’t mention that it was Syndicate connected because he doesn’t need to know that. “I took her back home, and it turns out they thought she’d been dead all along. When she disappeared, they found a body in the mountains. Family identified it as her. It wasn’t. It was close enough that it fooled all of them.”

“Pro job.”

“Somebody supplied that body. I want to know who.”

He’s quiet for a second.

“That I can do.” Paper moves. “The money first. There’s always money first.”

He names a figure. It’s high, and it’s fair, and it’s within a hundred dollars of what’s in the envelope in my coat.