Page 32 of The Rogue's Curse

When Paris returned to the administrative building, he found a handwritten note on his computer monitor, telling him to visit Olivia if he saw it before three in the morning. With three minutes to spare, he ducked into Olivia’s office and found her straightening her desk into the impeccable order he’d come to love. Her brow furrowed as she looked him over. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “Nikko?”

“He’s still out with Phoebe,” she said. The pair was investigating a supposed animal bite victim in Kennesaw, which they suspected would turn out to be one of Shea’s people. “What about Infinity?”

“Looks like there were some Untethered vampires squatting there,” he said. “I’ll write it up for you. We got some laptops and phones. I’ll start going through it tonight, and you can pick up when you get back in tomorrow.”

She nodded. “I could stay up if you need me to.”

“No. You need to sleep,” he said. One of them had to.

Her quick smile came on the heels of the flicker of relief. “Okay.I emailed you with your travel information. I’ve got a flight for you and Misha tomorrow night. It’s strange hours, but the whole trip is during the night so you shouldn’t have to deal with the sun.”

“Perfect,” Paris said. “Thank you.”

Her smile faltered. “You’re not bringing Lilah and Kieran back here, are you?” she asked quietly.

“No,” he said. “You’re safe.”

She nodded, but obvious fear still weighed on her features.

He returned to his office, taking the next half hour to document the invasion of squatters at Infinity. After considering it, he added an order for the next night to have someone do a sweep of the Night Rose clinic. Between Jonas Wynn’s attack and the breach of security, the Night Rose was useless to them. The security cameras had been destroyed in the fires, so there was no way to check remotely. Still, the building was still standing and would have made a lovely place for another nest of vampire squatters.

After adding a sweep to the agenda for tomorrow, Paris searched Goodwin’s and crematorium, part of unfortunate David’s tearful confession. His search turned up Goodwin and Sons Funeral Services, a local funeral home owned by the fourth generation of the Goodwin family. Their thoroughly mundane story was lovingly detailed on an About Us page. Searching the names of the current owners turned up an obituary for Mr. Ronnie Goodwin IV, survived by his lovely wife Diana. Paris would bet money that Diana had either been turned or enthralled by one of Shea’s people. He sent a text to Jonas Wynn, requesting that he visit the business during the day to find out if it was still open. Any lead they could produce might be the tenuous thread that led them to Shea.

Finally, he stared at David’s phone, with that single, accusing saved number. Georgina.

He remembered the name from Kristina and Sasha’s tale of their imprisonment. Georgina was Shea’s assistant and wrangler, and apparently the contact who would gladly accept a delivery of Paris’s head. What would happen if he called the number and offered himself up?

Grabbing the phone, he hurried down the hall, up the stairs, and into Karina’s new workroom. The big room had once been a computer lab, and she had half a dozen monitors going at all times. Karina was already working on one of the laptops they’d brought back. A blue glow shimmered on her face. “Co to?” she asked without looking up.

“Can you make an outgoing call that can’t be traced back here?”

She looked up. “It is very hard to trace cell phone calls if you aren’t planning to.”

“That’s not what I asked.” He held out David’s phone and said, “This is a number to get in touch with Shea through his assistant.”

Karina’s look of barely concealed annoyance turned to curiosity as she took the phone and shook her head. “You don’t think it would be that easy, do you?”

“I think if you tell them that you have Number Two of the Shroud for delivery, they might be very interested,” he said.

“Sir, you can’t be serious,” she said. Then she sighed and said, “You’re serious.” After examining the phone, she said, “I would be less concerned about them tracing the call than using his account to locate his phone. If Shea has people in the police force—”

“Shea doesn’t know this guy. Besides, I put it in airplane mode before we left, just like you ordered weeks ago,” he said.

Her look of concern turned to a faint smile. “Well done, sir.” She thumbed through it and said, “You could take it elsewhere to make a call. If they are not sitting ready to trace your call, you should be fine. Or I can set up a burner account, but they would not recognize the number and may not answer. It’s your choice.”

“Set up the account,” he said. “Please.”

“I need your phone,” she said. “Don’t want to connect this one to a network.”

He handed it over, and she turned to her computer. “Don’t look in my camera roll,” he teased.

“Nothing I haven’t seen,” she replied without looking back. She narrated her work, half in English and half in Polish, and he barely followed until she turned to say, “I have a burner number now. But…shouldn’t we let Julian know?”

He narrowed his eyes, and she handed the phone back. She had set up an app with two new phone numbers. After dialing Georgina’s number, he began to pace. Anxious energy swirled in his belly as the first ring shrilled in his ear. Two, then three. After the fourth, an automated voice message played, directing him to leave a message.

Doing his best to affect a Southern drawl, he said, “This is Michael. I heard you might be interested in one of the Auberon vampires. I think I can get my hands on one of ’em. I know where they’re staying. You can call me back at…”

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