The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Brad Magnarella (ink book reader txt) 📖

I thought of Arnaud’s threat against her son. Neither Vega nor I could be seen poking around Ferguson Towers. “Well, ah, what about our interview with Sonny?” I stammered.

“That can wait.”

I looked around desperately, torn between keeping Vega and her son safe and finding Caroline.

“Croft,” Vega said sternly.

“Uh, fine. I’ll catch a cab here in a minute.”

She hung up.

I wheeled from the phone booth and found myself face to face with the blond blood slave. “Geez.” I pressed my hand to my slamming heart. “Do you have to sneak up on me like that?”

“Get her away from the Towers,” he said.

I was preparing to play dumb before realizing that, with his preternatural hearing, Blondie had heard every word on Vega’s end of the conversation. He reached into a jacket pocket and held up a smartphone, the crisp image of a young boy at play on its screen: Vega’s son.

“That was taken two minutes ago in a Brooklyn park,” Blondie said. “I hear his sitter has a bad habit of texting when she should be keeping an eye on him. All I have to do is give the word.”

I shouldered him aside and waved for a taxi.

“Don’t,” I said. “I’ll get her out of there.”

I found Vega in a booth in the back corner of the dimly-lit diner. She was talking to someone across from her, the back of the booth blocking the person from view. As I approached, a pair of wringing hands slid into my line of sight, then thick arms, and at last a hulking body, the squat head swiveling to face me. I pulled up short. What in the hell was one of Stiles’s henchmen doing here?

“Thanks for coming,” Vega said. “This is Rancho.”

When my eyes slid back to the henchman, the one whom I’d dubbed the Mexican Wrestler, I half expected him to be reaching for a weapon. Instead, Rancho offered his right hand, his expression either fearful or earnest, I couldn’t tell. His palm was damp when we shook. Vega scooted over to make room for me, and I joined her opposite Rancho.

“So what’s up?” I asked, looking between them.

“Rancho has something to share,” Vega said. “Go on, tell him what you told me.”

“I’m not supposed to be talking,” Rancho said in a half-whisper, peering around the side of the booth. Besides being dimly lit, the hazy diner was empty. “If Stiles finds out…”

“Everything you say is confidential,” Vega said impatiently. “And I’m telling you that as an old friend.”

Rancho hunched his shoulders and pushed around his coffee mug with a finger. “I’m Stiles’s number two. I run security in the east towers and have a dozen guys patrolling for me. Every night around midnight, I do my own patrol. Make sure no one’s where they shouldn’t be, you know?” He wasn’t talking about the security of the residents, I understood, but the security of Stiles’s drug operation. His job was to keep Kahn’s sellers out of the east towers. “Anyway, I’m doing the tour of the lower levels. Pit Stop and Bones are down there.”

“The victims,” Vega told me. “Before they became victims.”

“Yeah, they’re not supposed to be down there,” Rancho went on, “but they’re whacked out pretty good, and I’m not gonna pick ’em up and carry ’em out, you know? So I keep going, and I’m getting this feeling like someone’s watching me. And I’m hearing things. Breathing. Something moving. But too big to be a rat, you know? And it’s bothering me, ’cause except for where my flashlight’s pointing it’s pitch black down there. So I give the room a sweep, and I swear to God, something’s moving just outside of my light, quick as fuck.”

“Did you get a look at what?” I asked.

“For a blink, yeah,” Rancho whispered. “Cause when my light forced it into a corner, the thing came at me. I mean, one second it’s back behind the pipes, and the next it’s almost on top of me. I caught a face, white as this coffee mug, and wild hair, and a mouthful of teeth.” Rancho arranged his shaking hands so he was holding an invisible gun. “I squeezed twice—bam! bam!—and got the fuck out of there.”

“Those bullet casings we found?” Vega said to me, raising an eyebrow.

“And he didn’t come after you?” I asked, the fact striking me as unusual.

“He?” Rancho shook his head. “That was no dude.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s why Stiles thinks it’s one of Kahn’s,” Rancho said. “Some of his runners are women. Stiles ordered me to go back down, to make sure I’d finished her off. But there was no way I was gonna have that thing come at me again. And just so you know,” he said, leaning forward to look me in the eyes, “I’ve dealt with some of the baddest mothers out there. Been stabbed, shot, bottles broken over my head—shit don’t scare me. But that thing in the basement…” His next breath rattled out of him. “I’m telling you, she wasn’t one of Kahn’s. She wasn’t even a person.”

Vega nudged my leg twice under the table, as though to say blood slave.

“So you lied to Stiles about going back down?” I said.

“Yeah, and the next day Pit Stop and Bones are torn to shit.”

I chewed on that for a moment. “Did any of your people see her come or go?”

“No one saw nothing,” Rancho said. “And we keep eyes on our doors twenty-four seven.”

I remembered the drain Vega had checked out in the boiler room and thought back to what I’d read about blood slaves lairing near their prey.

“I talked with Stiles earlier,” Vega said to me. “Son of a bitch is on a power trip. Isn’t going to let us take another look at the crime scene. Doesn’t want us anywhere near his towers, as he calls them.”

I felt the tension ease out of my shoulders. That’s a relief.

“But I sent Hoffman out to track down the plans for the buildings,” she said. “See if there