Page 8 of Flames and Blood

“Comtesse de Rosemonde.” There’s a hint of warning in my tone.

“Gideon Crowe,” she huffs back. “Weeks on the road and not a single moment of impropriety.” She stretches and rolls her shoulders. “I should have brought one of my pretty boys along.”

I ignore her and dig the compound file out of the case behind my seat, copies Faine’s people lifted before Aurora sealed the quarry building. Intake records, page after page, names and numbers in the same clerk’s flat hand.

Something’s nagging at me.

I run through the records again until I find it.

“Odd,” I mutter.

Odile reads the page over my shoulder. “What is?”

“All of these records show regular incoming amounts,” I say.

“Yes,” she says. “Payments for blood.”

“Right.” I tap one entry that doesn’t follow the pattern. “Except this one.”

“Just one large sum, and then nothing.” She frowns. “What do you suppose that means?”

“Not sure.” My finger is still on the number. “But that asset is on this truck. I saw the same number under the log entry.”

Odile’s eyebrows lift. “You think that’s our girl?”

“Could be,” I say. “And if it is, we have a number to track.”

“Well, that’s something, at least.” She settles back into her seat.

I stare out the windshield. One large sum over a year ago. Probably when she was brought into the pipeline.

Dragons don’t get caught. Nobody pulls one off a mountain and walks away breathing. She was delivered. Somebody she knew handed her over quietly, or the Cravens would have heard about a fight on a mountain by now.

Fuck.

Nobody sold her to the trade. Somebody paid to put her in it.

I’m not hunting a trafficker anymore.

I’m hunting whoever she trusted.

I rub my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. Two trails now. The van ahead of me, and whoever sold her, a year back down the road. I can only follow one at a time.

The van’s still moving. I fold the intake record into my coat.

“Drive,” I tell the kid with the torn ear.

The truck lurches. We move.

Chapter 3

Kalli

They draw my blood through a hatch in the bars, not a door. A slot at waist height, hinged, just wide enough for a gloved forearm.

I put my elbow through before anyone asks. The strap comes over my forearm from the outside and cinches down. I know the drill. Elbow through, wrist rotated palm-up, hold still. Nobody’s come inside these bars yet. The whole rig is built to keep it that way: the hatch, the strap, the mirror bolted above it so they can find the vein without leaning close.

Two of them this morning, as always. The young one does the needle.