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“Why do you care?”
He swallowed. “Was it Lucien? Didhedo this?”
Emerald sighed and leaned on her desk. “This didn’t come from me. Got it?” Tyler nodded. “I mean it Ty,” she said, her voice deadly serious. “If even a whisper of this comes back to me, you can forget about my intervention the next time you get yourself arrested or worse.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Tyler said, “I get it. I’ll take it to the grave. Come on. What’s going on, huh?”
Emerald examined her blood-red manicure for a long, tense silence. “Recently people have been…vanishing. Taken out of their homes at night. No signs of a struggle, nothing. They were just…gone. But I got a call this morning. Sounds like they all turned up at the police station—what was left of them, anyway. I wasn’t sure I believed it, but you said you saw it?”
“How many went missing?”
“Four, that I’ve heard of. But it’s only become weird because of this last guy…Terry Fleetwood.”
“What’s so special about him?”
“The other three were under investigation—two for kiddy pictures, another for drugs. Police hadn’t been able to get anything solid, probably never would. When they went missing, suspicion was some cop had gone rogue…until Fleetwood vanished.”
“Fleetwood was the wife beater?”
“So Walker figured it out, did he?”
“What’s the deal with Fleetwood?”
“Hewasn’tunder investigation,” she said. “Not even suspected. The wife never reported him.”
“Butyouknew?”
“I know people who knew,” she hedged. “Guy liked to piss away his money in a few of my places, drink and run his mouth, so word got about. But the police were never involved. That means it can’t have been a copper that did this.”
“So…” He swallowed, his blood running cold. “Lucien?”
She spread her hands. “No one knows. A pro, that was the guess. No struggle, no mess—at least, no mess at the scene of the abductions. No one left behind to care. Though why a pro was targeting these charmers was anyone’s guess. But this morning…” Emerald picked up her phone, tapped at the screen and passed it over.
“What’s this?” Tyler said, scrolling through some text full of medical terms.
“The medical reports on your gents from this morning.”
Tyler scowled. “I don’t know what I’m reading here, sis. I failed biology, remember?”
Emerald sighed and took the phone back. “Blood loss, Tyler. They were all suffering from massive blood loss.”
Tyler went very still. “Any of them talking?”
“If they are, my source wasn’t able to find out.”
“So this was him…” Tyler’s blood ran cold. “He’s still here…in York.Bitingpeople. And that moron Walker’s doingnothing—”
“It’s a haemo attack, sure,” Emerald said. “Whether it’s this Lucien of yours—”
“He’s notmine,” Tyler’s face flushed with heat. “He’s a fucking maniac. And he’s loose in my town, and no one is taking it seriously.”
“The city’s packed with haemophiles at the moment, Ty,” she said, her voice level and infuriatingly calm. “There’s a whole contingent of them at Oswald House right now. Blew into town over a month ago. Something to do with this marriage bill Novák is trying to push through with help from that haemo lawyer of the Baron’s. Why do you think I’m run off my feet trying to play interference?”
“Lucien attacked these men,” Tyler said, stabbing his finger on the desk. “I know it.”
“Even if he did, who cares?” she said with a wave of her hand. “Let him clear the scumbags out of the city. Saves me a job.”
“You won’t be saying that when he starts coming after the scumbags who work for you.”
