Page 38 of Flames and Blood

And her eyes changed while I was looking at them. Gold, and bright. Bright enough to light that cab up.

I can’t explain any of it, and I’ve stopped trying for today. Nothing about this has made sense since it started.

This has stopped being a job.

It’s never been a job, Crowe.

I’m not dressing that up, and I’m not taking it back. I don’t know what it is instead. I leave it alone.

The phone in my coat goes twice around the middle of the day. Faine. I don’t look at it. What do I say? That I had my hands on her and let her go?

Kent wakes in the afternoon, moves the arm, gets told to stop moving the arm, and comes over to look at what I’ve got spread on the floor.

“Can I ask about the woman?”

“No.”

“I put my head through that door for ten seconds,” he says anyway. “She’s got gold eyes, Crowe. Not brown. Gold, and they were glowing. Actually glowing. I’ve been alive a while, and I’ve never—”

“Kent.”

“What?”

“Leave it.”

He looks at me for a second longer than he needs to.

“Right,” he says, and sits down across from me. “What have you got?”

“Paper.”

“Funny. What’s on the paper?”

“Two piles. This one came out of the site we just hit.” I put my hand on the notes I’ve written so far. “A ledger with her entry details. A transport order with a route number. And what the guard on her cell told me, that someone came and examined her, and then everything changed. There’s a client, and the client’s timetable moved up. That’s everything I know about the client, so don’t ask.”

“And the rest?” He looks down at the stack of files beside my other hand.

“Copies out of the old compound. The one they held her in for the year. Faine’s people lifted them before Aurora sealed the quarry building.”

“And?”

“And this is the one that matters.” I pull the courier sheet out and turn it so he can see it. “For over a year, they took her blood twice a week. Two small vials each time, sealed for shipping.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because the number listed here is the same as the number assigned to that truck we just hit. That’s her.”

“Okay. I get it. So what about it?”

“Every time, the same courier collected them, signed this sheet, and drove away. Same man. Same two days a week. Over a year of it.”

Kent runs his finger down the column of signatures.

“Where did he take them?”

“The sheet doesn’t say. It says when he collected and where from. Where he delivered them was never written down anywhere.”

“But he knows.” Kent looks up. “He drove that blood to the client twice a week for a year. Whoever the client is, wherever they are, that man has driven there a hundred times. It’s in his head.”