Page 133 of Flames and Blood

“I have her name and her street. She talks to me. She won’t talk to anybody else, so nobody goes near her without me.”

“Noted.”

“Recently, he went back to her. Not for another body. He asked her how to make a murder look like an accident.” I wait while they take that in. “He isn’t hiding what he did last year. He’s planning to do it again, properly this time, and he started the week she walked back into that hall alive.”

Nobody says anything.

Bastien comes off the wall. “You drove here to warn the clan.”

“I drove here to get somebody up that mountain who the Aldrake would actually listen to so she’d believe Kalli.” I sound tired.

“But she’d already left.”

“It seems she did.”

“Then it’s the best news you’ve had in two weeks, and you look like somebody died,” Faine says. “She’s safe.”

“She’ll never be safe. He had a plan that got rid of her without killing her, and it failed. She’s back. He isn’t going to make that mistake twice.” I put my hands flat on the table. “He’s known she was gone since the morning after she left, because everybody on that mountain knew by then. She’s been on open roads for days, and nothing has happened to her.”

“Why not?” Viktor says.

I think about this.

“Because it’s too soon,” I say. “The whole clan knows she walked away because of this. If she dies on a road this week, every person up there puts two and two together. That’s exactly what he’s spent a year making sure never happens. He’d be proving to everyone that someone is trying to get rid of her.”

The room goes quiet.

“So he waits,” Viktor says.

“He waits until nobody’s looking at her. Until she’s living somewhere ordinary and it’s been long enough that a bad road in bad weather is just a bad road.” I hear how steady I sound saying it. “Months, if he has to. He already sat on this one for thirteen of them.”

“Putain,” Bastien swears, once, under his breath.

“Then we have time,” Caleb says.

“We have exactly as much time as he decides to give us, and he’s better at waiting than any of us.” I sit back. “But he thinks he’s still in control of this. That’s the one thing we’ve got. He isn’t in a hurry, and he doesn’t know anybody’s looking.”

“Which is why we don’t send anybody up that mountain,” Viktor says.

“Yes,” I say. “The minute the Aldrake admits there’s a killer under her roof, he stops being patient. He finishes it.”

“Agreed.” Viktor stands. “Nothing goes to that mountain until we have a name we can put in front of her.”

“I have one.”

The room stops.

“Then say it,” Caleb says.

“No.”

Viktor sits back down. “Explain.”

“I have a description. It came from a woman who spent time with him and has no reason to lie to me about any of it. It fits a man I sat in a room with on that mountain.” I keep my hands where they are. “That’s not proof. That’s red hair and good manners, and there are forty of those up there.”

“You don’t believe that,” Faine says.

“No. I don’t.”