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“Was this while we were in New York?” I guessed. “When you did all those interviews, and we went to all of those fucked up, rich-person parties? When you were hunting for Brick after you got out of that prison in Louisiana, and––”

“Yes,” he said, cutting me off. He gave me a faintly warning look. “Yes, doc. Then.”

“You didn’t say anything,” I said, a touch accusingly.

Black brought the black SUV to the middle lane of Highway 101 South, turning the wheel right before I saw the police cruiser pass on our left. Luckily, it was nearly midday, so traffic was a sane level of busy, moving at roughly sixty miles an hour.

“At the time, I didn’t take it all that seriously,” Black said, his eyes still following the cop. “I read the guy, so I knew he wanted a reaction out of me, but there’s a lot that rich pricks get up to that no one really wants to know about, frankly. I was mostly relieved he wasn’t alluding to some fucked up pedophile ring, becausethenI would have felt the need to kill him, and that would have been… inconvenient.” He gave me a hard smile. “At the time, that is. I had a pretty full plate already.”

My mouth twisted into something between a smile and a frown. “But you were okay withmurder?”I now wondered if I was on Nick’s side when it came to Black’s bizarre moral code. “That didn’t ring any alarm bells? Rich people hunting other humans wasn’t enough to derail your obsession with hunting vampires?”

“I wasn’tokaywith it,” Black said, now sounding annoyed at both of us. “I just wasn’t sure how seriously to take it. He was trying to find an ‘in’ with me. Based on what he knew, with my carefully-curated media image, he obviously thought power-mad, murderous, dark, fetish shit was something he could dangle like a carrot. Possibly even use for blackmail. Like I said, I washeavily distractedat the time. I didn’t get a chance to read him thoroughly… and I haven’t run into him in the time since. The only thing I felt forcertainwas that he floated the idea mostly to see how I would react.”

He gave me another hard smile.

“You may not remember, doc, but in addition to being heavily distracted, I wasn’t exactly in my right mind while that was going on. Dealing with rich pricks and their mind games wasn’t exactly on my to-do list. I was fighting off massive doses of vampire venom while running a two-tiered infiltration op, and trying to keep my wife from leaving me, among other things.”

I frowned and looked away.

I usually willfully foughtnotto remember that trip to New York, specifically what Black had been doing, and who he’d been doing it with. When I found out at the time, I’d broken every breakable thing I could find in our New York penthouse suite, told him I never wanted to see him again, and left the city alone.

I hadn’t been back to New York since.

“Who was it?” I asked, my voice colder. “Who floated the idea to you in New York?”

“Ben Frasier.”

I frowned, then blinked as a face swam forward from my memories. “The guy who threw that penthouse party? Gray hair? With that obnoxious ‘companion’ of his, Rory Ungerman?”

“The same.”

I frowned as I turned that over.

I’d met Ben. I’d even talked to him.

Compared to most of Black’s obscenely rich New York “friends,” and especially Frasier’s significantly more out-there companion, Rory, Ben seemed like one of the more grounded members of the Wall Street crowd I met that night. He had a smug, witty, urbane quality to him that both repelled me and strangely entertained me. He’d been smarter than anyone else I’d met that night, and definitely one of the wealthier members of that club.

“Is it something you could broach with him again?” I asked.

Black snorted. He gave me a nearly offended look.

“The thought never occurred to me,” he said dryly, gold eyes flashing. He gave Nick a bare glance in the mirror, then looked back at me. “Icertainlynever considered sending Jem to New York this morning, to see if he could go about finding out more from Frasier in person. While I doubt it would take much for Jem to get an invite up to Ben’s penthouse… really, just putting them in the same bar together would likely do it, especially with Jem wearing even remotely human clothing… it never would occur tometo suggest it, doc. Although, really, with how Jem looks, I doubt he’d even have to smile, much less try very hard to make conversation––”

“Fuck off,” Nick growled.

He was glaring at Black furiously, not hiding his hostility, or his disbelief.

Black shrugged. “I’m not actually kidding.”

“I know you’re not kidding, youprick… and again…Fuck. Off.You’re not sending myboyfriendinto some rich murderer’s penthouse. Alone, as some kind of honeytrap––”

Black burst out in a laugh, like he couldn’t help himself.

“I didn’t have to send him,” he retorted. “I told him about the job, asked his advice on whether we could do it from here, and hevolunteeredto go. I was just going to have him do a jump from your house, with Yarli and Mika in support.”

“Like hell he did––”

But Black barely took a breath.