Page 80 of Stolen Empire
Two men.
One is Daniil.
The other is older, his voice more gravelly.
"—girl is clean," Daniil is saying.
"Fired by Vetrov this morning. Everyone saw it. She has debts and nowhere to go."
"And you trust her?" the older voice asks.
"I trust that she's desperate enough."
There's a pause then the older voice says, "Run her through the usual tests. If she holds up, bring her in. We need someone on the inside."
"What about the other issue?" Daniil asks.
"Still looking, but if what we heard is true, old blood runs deeper than money. It's a name worth more than cash. If she is who they think she is, we use that."
My chest constricts.
Old blood.
A name worth more than money.
They're talking about Katya.
But what do they know?
The recording ends.
I replay it twice, listening for any detail I might've missed.
But there's nothing.
Just the cryptic reference to old blood and a name.
It makes no sense to me at all.
I call Gavriil back and before he even greets me, I'm grilling him.
"Who is the other man?"
"Don’t know, Boss. Voice doesn’t match anyone in our database."
I end the call and sit back down, my mind racing.
They know something about Katya and they think it’s valuable.
It's something I don't even know and I had a source dig up everything they could on her.
Old blood?
A name?
I run through everything I know about her.
She's a thief—a con artist.
