Page 11 of Bishop's Flight
Brigid ran a hand over her face. “I thought the human trafficking was bad.”
“There is the Sokholov family, and then there is Zasha. I don’t think that they’re really connected anymore. At one point? Probably. But now?” Carwyn shook his head. “They’re not following anyone’s orders.”
Brigid curled her lip. “Could they be allies? Zasha shares a name with the organization, but they’re not faithful to that.”
Carwyn shook his head. “I don’t know, and it’s a dangerous game. Perhaps, but is that an alliance we want to form?”
“Definitely not.” She closed her eyes and closed the notebook. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“For some reason, Zasha has fixated on you. You think it’s a coincidence that they’re targeting someone in our backyard?”
Brigid pursed her lips. “Katya's too powerful to take on. Her network is widespread, and she controls territory from the edge of Russia to Northern California.”
“And Ernesto Alvarez controls all of Southern California, and he’s spreading into Northern Mexico since Ivan was killed,” Carwyn said. “Which we also had a hand in.”
“You think Zasha gave a fuck about Ivan’s life?”
“I don’t know.” He came to sit beside her. “But I think they cared that their child died and we helped to kill him.”
“But why Agnes and Rose? Why Las Vegas? Compared to Ernesto or Katya, their territory is ridiculously small.”
Carwyn looked around the room of a boy who was clearly loved. There weren’t just fancy gaming systems, computers, and large closets. He had multiple family photos with his sister and Rose in different locations. There was a photograph of Lucas and Agnes standing next to a massive trophy with a chess piece at the top. There was a portrait of a human couple with a little boy. The mother was pregnant, and the father was red-cheeked and beaming.
“They loved him,” Carwyn said. “Agnes and Rose love their children. They may be predators—I know they are—but they had a weakness for these children, and Zasha saw it for the vulnerability it was.”
Agnes sat behind a massive desk,smoking a thin cigarette and sharing a whiskey with Carwyn. Her lieutenant, Bernard, stood behind her and to the right, his rigid posture never easing and his face set in stern lines.
“We never wanted much.” Ash lingered on the glowing tip of her cigarette. “Just a safe place for those we valued, a comfortable life, and independence.”
Carwyn sipped his drink and examined the three photographs that Agnes had handed him. They were pictures of Lucas with that day’s newspaper, sitting on the ground in a featureless room with a black floor and white walls.
“For now it appears he’s safe.” Carwyn glanced up. “At least there’s that.”
“Is that supposed to be comforting?” Agnes flicked an ash off the sleeve of her coat. “Safety. Comfort. Independence. My son doesn’t have any of those things right now. I’m holding Rose off from executing his bodyguard, but if we don’t find him soon…”
Brigid had left the hotel with a list of Lucas’s friends that Rose had provided along with their parents’ phone numbers. She’d do her best to interview them that night, but she wanted to do some quick research, and she was hoping Lee would help her.
Carwyn sipped whiskey in Agnes’s plush office. It was an aged Irish blend that he had tasted before. “Brigid and I have family too. Not young children—”
“The children were Rose’s idea.” Agnes’s stern face softened. “She’d always wanted a child. Their mother was our housekeeper; she died in a car crash.”
“No family?” He looked around an office that spoke of backroom deals and ruthless business. There were no family pictures. There was no frivolity.
There was, however, a chessboard set up on the coffee table in the sitting area and cat hair on the leather sofa.
Agnes took a slow drag on her cigarette and tapped the ash meticulously into a crystal ashtray. “Both of Lucas and Anna’s parents grew up in the foster-care system. They didn’t have any family. Nothing had ever been given to them, but they were succeeding, making a real home and life together; we had to honor that. We couldn’t let Rebecca’s children end up in a system she’d worked so hard to leave behind.”
Carwyn suspected that Agnes Wong was a vampire who understood and respected grit. “Do you have any idea why Zasha Sokholov would be targeting you?”
“Because they’re greedy?” Agnes shrugged. “We have a small but highly lucrative territory. Because it’s small, it’s easier to manage. Not much happens in the city without us knowing.”
“How did Zasha come to the city?”
Agnes shrugged. “How else? They came as a tourist.”
“You invited them?” Carwyn glanced at Bernard, and the tension in the man’s jaw made Carwyn suspect his fangs had come down.
“Inasmuch as we invite thousands of vampires every year? Yes,” Agnes said. “Zasha Sokholov came to Las Vegas to visit, as nearly every immortal in the world eventually does.” Agnes drew on her cigarette. “We had no idea they had ulterior motives.”
