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

We left the basement, Vega helping Blade up the stairs and out to the street. When we reached the sedan, I set Alexandra in the back seat, and Lady Bastet got in on the other side.

“This is where I split,” Blade said.

“Can we drop you off somewhere?” I asked.

“No need.” She nodded toward an old blue paint truck rumbling toward us. As the truck neared the curb, Bullet leaned across the passenger seat and opened the door. Blade sheathed her samurai sword into a scabbard on her back. “A pleasure working with you,” she said as she climbed into the truck. “Even if it cost us thirty grand.”

“Now will you tell us who hired you?” I asked.

“Nope.” She waved from the window. “Don’t be a stranger.”

“I won’t,” I said. “Take care.”

It certainly didn’t hurt to know a few vampire hunters in the city.

When I dropped into the passenger seat, Vega was staring at her smartphone, the glow paling her tense face.

“What is it?” I asked.

She turned the image for me to see. I squinted a moment before I understood what I was looking at. It was a close-up shot of her son’s neck. A small blue vein had been pricked, as though by a pin, and a thread of blood leaked from the vessel.

Beneath the picture, someone had typed, “Better hurry. The scent alone is intoxicating.”

36

We dropped Lady Bastet and Alexandra off at the rug store. While Vega waited stiffly in the car, I carried Alexandra inside, setting her on a cot Lady Bastet had unfolded in the back room. “Tell no one she is here,” Lady Bastet warned me as I left.

Back in the car, I focused on my cane, tapping into what remained of the hunting spell. My cane vibrated and then jerked in my hands. Good. Still connected to the file. But probably not for much longer. I powered down the window and aimed the cane outside. The spell tugged northwest.

“That way,” I said.

Vega peeled from the curb. At my directions, we ended up on Second Avenue near where we had aborted our earlier pursuit of Moretti’s men.

“Hold this course,” I said.

“I need you to be damn sure about this.”

“I am,” I said, but I understood what she meant. With her son imperiled, every second mattered. And in the time it had taken for us to deal with Alexandra, Moretti’s men should have circled back. The spell should have been pulling us south, toward Little Italy. Not north.

When we reached the East Seventies, Vega blew out her breath. “This isn’t right. What in the hell would Moretti’s men be doing way up here? We’re getting into the Russians’ territory. I’m going to ask you again. Are you sure you’re—”

“Turn right!” I cried, clutching the bucking cane in both hands.

Vega slammed the brakes and cranked the wheel. The sedan skidded over the slick road, grazing a parked car, then leapt forward again, blowing through the next intersection. Three blocks later, with the night sky beginning to pale over the East River ahead, the cane steered us left onto an affluent street. A tree-filled park rose outside my window.

“Slow down,” I said. The cane was rotating toward an opening in the tall security gate ahead. “There,” I said, nodding at a driveway and what appeared to be a guard house beyond.

“I don’t believe it.” Vega slowed to a stop and cut her lights.

“What?”

“You don’t know where we are?”

I looked around, trying to get my bearings. It was a corner of the city I rarely visited. The closest intersection was with East Eighty-seventh Street, which was telling me something.

“Wait a minute. Is this…”

Vega nodded, her eyes hard. “The mayor’s mansion.”

“Budge is involved in this?”

“Apparently.”

“I don’t get it. He’s working for Moretti?”

Vega narrowed her eyes at the guard house. “More likely Moretti’s men are working for him.”

I clenched my brow, trying to make sense of the development. Now the shock of revelation opened everything wide. Alexandra was the stepdaughter of someone powerful, but not Mr. Moretti.

“Budge is the stepfather,” I said numbly.

“Meaning his wife’s the mother.”

I thought of the soft-spoken woman at the gala. “Penny is Chastity Summers?”

“That’s what Arnaud meant by the truth not being far from me,” Vega said. “Little Italy is close, but City Hall is a hell of a lot closer. Practically across the street from police headquarters.”

Vega pulled out her smartphone and began tapping the screen.

“Who are you calling?”

“I’m replying to Arnaud, telling him we know who the mother is.”

Moments later, her phone blipped with a response. Vega sighed harshly through her nose.

“What?”

“He wrote back, ‘Is that your final answer? Tick-tock, tick-tock.’”

Vega veered into the driveway.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“Making sure,” she said.

“Shouldn’t we, you know, strategize?”

“There’s no time.”

She pulled up to the guard house, stopping in front of the mechanical gate barring our way. The man inside the booth, though big and bulky, didn’t look as mercenary as the guards for the Financial District. Then again, he was a public employee.

“Detective Vega with the NYPD,” Vega said, holding up her ID. “I need to see Mayor Lowder immediately.”

The guard consulted a console, the screen glowing green against his face. “Is he expecting you?”

“No, an emergency came up.”

“Those usually come from the police commissioner. But I can ask him.” He picked up a phone and punched a button. “Good morning, Mayor. There’s a Detective Vega here to see you regarding an emergency.”

“Tell him it concerns his family,” Vega said.

“It has to do with your family.” The guard scratched his chin. “All right, sir. Thank you.”

When the guard stooped down, I called power to my prism, ready to cast. But instead of a weapon, he reappeared with a clipboard, which he asked Vega to sign. Vega passed the clipboard back. The gate blocking our way rose while a row of bollards beyond sank into the driveway.

“That seemed too easy,” Vega muttered as she crawled the sedan forward.

I uttered an invocation, and a shield glimmered thinly around the car as the