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There was no way out but through.

“We’ve got enough here to provide some serious fucking motive for someone,” he continued. “Quite a few someones, really. Anyone who might know or be related to the girl.” Black felt a coil of sickness slide through his light. “Most seers would kill him for this. A hell of a lot of humans… the ones with an ounce of compassion, at least… would kill him for this. But if it’s not Gorren herself, or someone else involved in the money side of things, I’d bet on a relative. Brother, mother, father, aunt, cousin. Anyone, really, who might hunt the cub down and discover he was holding her. Those kinds of murders wererelatively common on Old Earth. Either way, this is much more of arealmotive than their stupid brain chip.”

His voice turned colder by the end.

He cleared his throat.

“Anyway,” he continued. “That would also explain the shot from the balcony. It was the one, niggling detail that made me think this might not be Gorren after all… or anyone with a financial interest in this.”

“The shot?”

“Lucian,” Black explained. “At the back of the Prometharis building. I don’t know if you noticed the angle on that, or the distance, or the wind, but it was all pretty extreme. It would’ve been a hell of a shot, even for a skilled seer. I can only think of a few humans I’ve encountered over the years who would’ve evenattempteda shot like that, much less pulled it off, and at least one of them is dead.” Black coughed. “Apparently it’s often windy and gusty like that out on the Point, but it was particularly bad that night.”

Remembering the details of the shot they’d seen, he felt even more certain.

He forced his mind back to the reason he’d called.

“In addition to what we found by that chair I told you about,” he continued. “We found recording equipment and headsets in the room Nick found behind the wall. We also found what we think is one of the brain implants,” he added. “Likely the first prototype, or one of them. That, one of the headsets, and the chair, all have semi-organic components, so there might be some link to Charles. It’s equally possible they bought it off the black market without any direct contact with seers at all. We knew there were machines circulating out there still.”

For the first time, Miri’saleimifelt relieved.

“So you have the implant?” she asked.

“An early version of it, yes. Rucker had it locked up in that playroom. It should be enough for us to figure out what it’s supposed to do.”

“So Rucker had a safe in that hidden room?”

Black hedged. “Not exactly. But there was a locked, built-in cabinet in the wall. Nick found that, too, and broke it open…”

He hesitated, cleared his throat.

He considered telling her just how fucking psychotic her best mate looked while he’d been using all his vampire strength to rip the basement “playroom” wall apart to get at Rucker’s stashed recording equipment, not to mention the implant and the three headsets, presumably for recording both his and the girl’s experiences of his many, many rapes.

They’d also found a rather impressive collection of tranquilizers and paralytics, and so many thumb drives containing virtual recordings, they took up an entire wall.

“…Bastard had a whole fucking library,” Black went on bitterly. “Labeled with numbers that corresponded to a color-coded directory with names, dates, kinks. The recordings go back years, over a decade, assuming this is all there is. Obviously, the girl we found wasn’t the only victim, but she appears to have been his favorite…”

Black choked on that.

He paused, cleared his throat, then made himself go on.

“…Maybe for obvious reasons, as the rest were likely human. But the names of a few dozen girls are recorded in the directory. Some he seemed to have around for a year or so. Cowboy and Mika put a few on the monitor and a lot of the girls appear to be drugged. More than just the seer cub look to be underage. In fact, some were significantly younger. There were kids… and he let some of his rich pals have turns with them, too.”

Anger colored Black’s voice, making it hoarse.

“I recognized a few of them,” he added. “The other men.”

“From New York?” she asked perceptively.

“Yes,” he said, choosing not to be coy about it. “Frasier was one of them. I tried to call Jem to see what he could find out, but the fucker’s still not picking up.”

“Who’s not picking up? Jem?” Her voice grew a touch of alarm. “What do you mean, he’s not picking up? Is Jem in danger, Black? Is he––”

“No,” Black cut in. “I don’t think so.”

He hesitated.

Walking a little further away from the mansion’s front door, he glanced around to make sure Nick hadn’t come upstairs yet. Black left him, Cowboy, and Mika in that horror show of a “playroom,” and he doubted the vampire would be satisfied until he’d torn the rest of the place apart. Ace and Dex were working on getting the chair out of that other room.