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

knee, the impact leaving me sick and gasping. From my new vantage, I noticed a smear of reddish oil on the pavement below my face.

Wait … blood? My bribe had gotten the guy killed?

“If you don’t wanna join your friend,” the guard said, wrestling with my hand now, “you’re gonna give this up.” I realized he was trying to pull Grandpa’s ring off my finger.

Arnaud, I thought. By his reasoning, I had entered his territory; ergo, he had rights to my ring. I balled my hand against the guard’s wrenching fingers. I was risking my life, yeah, but the ring seemed to be compelling me—it had some future role to play, and it wouldn’t do to be in a vampire’s possession. My hand balled tighter, gripped by the mother of all cramps. If my own life played a role, it appeared it was going to be as a footnote.

“Tough guy, huh?” the guard said, ramming an elbow against my ear for leverage.

I was angling my cane toward him, wondering what the penalty would be for magic exercised in self defense, when his partner entered my peripheral vision.

“Stand back,” he said, raising his rifle.

Before I could summon my light shield, a pair of explosions sounded. In the ringing aftermath, I recognized the register. I opened my eyes and blinked twice. The shots hadn’t come from an assault rifle.

“NYPD,” a familiar voice shouted. “Get the fuck away from him!”

I raised my face to find Detective Vega storming toward us. She lowered the nine millimeter she’d fired until it was level with the nearer guard’s head. He backed away, palms showing. His partner adjusted his rifle’s aim from me to Vega, but he looked hesitant before the tiny tornado in a black suit.

“This man’s wanted in an investigation,” Vega said, using her free hand to haul me up. The guard who’d been grappling for my ring began to stammer. Before his words could take on intelligence, Vega was pulling me toward her sedan, which she’d left idling at the auto checkpoint.

I wasted no time getting in. She joined me on the driver’s side and drove us from the Financial District.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” she demanded.

“I was making friends,” I said. “Sheesh. Now they’ll never call.” I was buying time until I could determine just how much she knew about my morning excursion.

“Were you at the church?” she asked.

The inflection in her tone told me it was an honest question. I’d caught a break.

“Um, sorry, but were you not just witness to my near-execution?” I jerked my head back. “I was kidding about being pally-wally with those guys, in case you missed that, too.”

“You were intending to go to the church, though.”

“Can you prove it?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

Ripping off a string of Spanish curses, Vega accelerated around a line of cars, blooped her siren, and shot through a red light. “You’re lucky I had business downtown,” she said when she’d calmed down enough to return to English. “Those guys could’ve put two dozen bullets in you, and the NYPD wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing.”

“Why not?”

“Official immunity,” she grumbled.

I nodded in understanding. Probably one of Arnaud’s conditions for bailing out the city. Which also meant that if the guards had gotten it into their meaty heads to gun down Vega, they could have done so without fear of prosecution. Boy, did that make me feel like a dick.

“Hey, listen—”

“Save it,” Vega said sharply. “The next words I want out of your mouth are what you can tell me about the message. Today’s the deadline. In case you forgot,” she added wryly.

“Well—”

She cut me off again. “Not here. My office.”

We emerged from underneath the off ramp for the Brooklyn Bridge and into view of One Police Plaza. I had a sinking sense of déjà vu. The last time Vega had driven me here, it was for processing.

She veered into a secure underground garage. We rode an elevator up in silence, stopping every floor or two for plain-clothed personnel and uniformed officers to get on and off. I caught more than a few sidelong glances. It was my six-foot frame, dark brown hair, and cane. I could all but feel my face being lined up with the police sketch and had a feeling Detective Vega was the only reason I wasn’t being slammed against a wall and cuffed.

I edged closer to her.

On the eighth floor, I followed her off the elevator and down a hallway to a busy workspace whose cluttered desks and colony of Styrofoam coffee cups shouted HOMICIDE. Of course, I’d been here before, so I was cheating. Vega led me into a windowless office—not an interrogation room this time, thankfully—rounded a desk with piled-up folders and an outdated computer, and sat down hard. I scooted up one of the folding metal chairs.

“Speak,” she said as I lowered myself.

I had already decided to be as truthful as I could. I owed her that much.

“All right.” I laced my fingers, save my splinted pinky, and bent them back until they cracked. “The message on the rector’s back translates to ‘Black Earth.’”

“What does it mean?” she asked, jotting it down on a notepad.

“I don’t know.”

She stared up at me as though there had to be more. I shrugged.

“I gave you three days for that?” She threw her pen at the pad.

The pen ricocheted and collided into a propped-up frame, knocking it onto its felt back. When I reached forward to right it, I saw it held a photo of a smiling Detective Vega—white teeth and all—clutching a giggling boy of five or six, her chin propped on his feathery curls.

“Your son?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she replied, her frustration seeming to have gotten lost for the moment. She took over the task of righting the frame, angling it toward her, where I could no longer see the photo.

“Good-looking kid,” I said. But then so was his mother. And I’d been right about her smile—wow. I blamed Thelonious for flicking my