Page 26 of Crimson Oath
He leaned down and said something, and then immediately the young man stood up and the two walked out of the screen.
“Did you catch it?” Mika asked. “Does he need to rewind?”
“No.” Oleg didn’t need him to rewind the footage. He knew exactly what Mika had seen.
Mika pointed to the frozen image on the screen where the silver-haired vampire had grabbed the hand of the person working on the computer. “The young man?—”
“Was not a young man.” Oleg recognized Tatyana’s breasts even when they were covered by a bulky sweatshirt. Her delicate wrists. The curve of her neck and her jaw. “I saw. Is there more?”
Mika shook his head. “It was so quick, but then I went back and rewound it, watching her, but other than working on her computer, she doesn’t do anything else. No meetings. No video calls. She orders a glass of wine she doesn’t drink and sits there working.”
Had she cut her hair? Dyed it? Or had the cap covered her glorious golden hair so thoroughly that Oleg had missed it? The quality of the camera didn’t help, but he felt blind.
Blind and frustrated.
If she could sit in a corner for hours and he wouldn’t recognize her, how was he supposedto find her?
“Obviously, once you are near to her, you’ll be able to sense her,” Mika continued, “so I’ll keep collecting footage from area bars with Wi-Fi connections. I’m sure she’s using a VPN, so IP addresses will be useless, but visually we can be on the lookout for a young woman, or anyone who might be in disguise as?—”
“No.” Oleg’s eyes were drawn to a much clearer target. “She’s a young, recently human woman who can probably blend into many or all environments. As beautiful as she is, she can make herself somewhat forgettable. It’s useless to track her.”
Mika raised both eyebrows. “You want us to stop tracking her? She has no reason to think we know she’s going to Kaspi, and there are numerous bars and restaurants where she could access the internet.”
“No, don’t bother tracking her.” He pointed to the screen and the carved profile of the man with the silver hair. “Trackhim. I’ve never seen him with his head covered. He doesn’t speak, and I don’t see him touching anyone. Everyone who sees him will remember a silent giant with silver hair.” Oleg nodded. “He is how she’s moving around. Track him.”
Chapter 6
Tatyana
She went to Samson’s quarters with her backpack ready, expecting the accommodating wind vampire to be ready to take her. It was her scheduled night to call her mother, and she only had two hours to find a connection.
But Samson started shaking his head the moment he opened his door.
Not tonight,he signed.
“What do you mean?” Tatyana whispered. “It’s Omar Sharif’s birthday, and I only have two hours.”
Samson had come to his door wearing nothing but an open white shirt and a pair of loose black pants.Arosh told me that you need to stop going into town,he signed.
“But why? I’m not bothering anyone.” Shit. If her mother didn’t get a call, she was going to panic, and then Anna would probably call Oleg because apparently they were getting together for tea regularly and Oleg had sent her mother a new-to-her vehicle for the farm.
The fact that the vampire knew her mother would never take a new truck and had sent her one with just enough wear that it could be accepted as a present irked Tatyana to no end.
The man was too perceptive by half.
Samson continued,Arosh says you need to be planning for where you are going next, not playing video games online.
“Oh my god, does Arosh think I’m playing video games?”
Okay, shewasplaying video games sometimes, but very badly and only so she could use the direct-message features to talk to Grimace about options to disappear.
Samson shrugged and didn’t look pleased about it, but he also didn’t look like he was in the mood to defy Arosh.
No one in the compound was going to defy Arosh.
Stay here,Samson signed.You don’t need to go anywhere if you don’t want to. You don’t have to run.
Tatyana nearly growled. “That’s not what Kato and Arosh seem to think.”
