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“Positive,” Crow said.
“I see.” A cold fear skated up my spine. A blood-mad vampire was scary as shit, cunning in the way a serial killer is. They craved blood—lots of blood—and would do anything, break any rules, to get it.
“He’d be in the early stages, then,” I said, thinking aloud.
Then my breath hitched as a traitorous thought occurred to me. Was Crow telling the truth about Karoly?
I shook my head, telling myself she wouldn’t lie about something this big.
“He’s been purging the syndicate of his own men,” Crow added. “A kapitán named Andre Redbone. Apparently all the kapitáns are hunkered down, wondering who to trust.”
“I see.” I didn’t tell her I already knew about Redbone. But the fact that she mentioned it made me inclined to trust the rest of her intel, because Redbone had definitely been staked, although according to Zaq, it had been Gabriel doing the staking, not his father.
“There’s more,” she said. “PK is working the phones, pushing for a seat on the Board. Telling people we made a deal with Victorine Tremblay. The BOD has denied it, of course.”
“Hell.” I briefly closed my eyes.
“We can’t let him get a seat on the Board. There’s no telling what a blood-mad vampire would do with access to the kind of intel the Board has. And we can’t slay him ourselves. He’s too prominent. The other primuses trust him, and now with him telling this story about Zaquiel, all hell will break loose if we go after him directly. That’s why it has to be one of his sons.”
“Understood.” I raised my chin, even though she couldn’t see it. “Don’t worry, I have this under control.”
There was a long silence. A disbelieving silence.
My mouth flattened. “Have I ever let you down?”
The question hung there for several beats. “Not yet,” she said and ended the call.
I stared at the phone. Not yet?
Fuck. The last thing I needed was her deciding I couldn’t handle this and interfering. I grimaced and started back to the squat.
I was a block away when I stopped dead.
“Hey!” A woman nearly ploughed into me.
“Sorry,” I muttered and moved to the side. She hurried past with an exasperated look in my direction.
Crow had said here, as in, “You’ve been here in the city for three days.” Not “You’ve been there for three days.”
She was in New York. But why hadn’t she told me? Unless she was working her own angle—or having doubts about me.
And she hadn’t mentioned Rafe Kral either. She must know he’d been captured by Philippe Moreau. Twilight would’ve informed her. So why hadn’t Crow told me?
I should never have let her see how much Moreau’s treatment of Zaq bothered me. She was keeping information from me now.
Added to the fact that she’d followed me and Zaq to New York, and a horrible certainty welled up in me.
Crow was here to stake Zaq if he failed to kill his father. Because she didn’t trust me to do it—and she was right.
I swallowed sickly.
Damn, damn, damn.
A fine perspiration prickled my forehead. I swiped it away with the back of my hand. Thank God I hadn’t told her our real location, and she couldn’t track me through my phone.
You still have time. She won’t do anything with Karoly out of the city.
She was clearly waiting to see if Zaq could get to his father.
