Page 125 of Taste of Blood

Zeke hesitates, curious about the process. I leave him to it, heading for the door without looking back.

I spend the next few hours waffling on whether or not to go to this stupid benefit. Yes, it’s important that I get eyes on Thalium, but not at the expense of Asher’s safety. When he calls me late in the afternoon, I almost offer up an excuse why I can’t go. But then he mentions that Elaine was able to crack the phone I gave her, and I agree to meet him at his office.

Elaine not only hacked the phone, she made a list of all the contacts and printed out the emails. It isn’t the motherlode, but it does give us more of a look inside than we have so far.

“When you look at the call log,” she says, “you can see one number stands out above the rest. I’ll be willing to bet that’s who this guy was reporting to.”

“Can you get any information on it?”

“Just that it’s a cell phone with an extension here in the city.”

“Have you called it?” I ask her.

“No, I figured I’d wait for you to do that.”

I take the phone from her and punch in the number, putting it on speaker. It rings several times then a man’s voice asks, “Identification code, please.”

I glance at Elaine. She grabs a piece of paper and jots down a series of numbers and letters. I read them off to the man on the phone.

“Just a moment, please.”

After a minute there’s a short click and another man’s voice comes on. “What do you have to report?”

I decide to wing it. “Three down.”

“Location?”

I give him the street name where we encountered the three vamps.

“We’ll send a team.”

The line goes dead and I look up at Elaine. “Where did you get that code?”

“It was in a locked text file on the phone. I just took a shot that it was what they wanted.”

Good thing it worked. “I need to call Dante.” I pull out my own phone and press Dante’s number.

“Yeah?” he answers.

“A team of the Python’s men are going to be at the corner near the bar we raided the other night.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I just ordered it using the cell phone we pulled off the dead vamp.”

“You were able to crack it?”

“Yeah. There’s quite a bit of stuff on it. I’ll bring it by, but in the meantime, you should get a team out there.”

“On it. Bring me that phone.” He hangs up.

Now that we have a way to contact whoever was on the other end of that call, we can set up a more elaborate ambush. I’m sure they’ll catch on shortly, so we only have a small window to use the advantage.

I head over to the warehouse and hang out until the team returns. Because they were successful in wiping out everyone in the Python’s rescue squad, I feel a little better about our chances when I finally go home. I even put aside my reluctance about attending the event.

Which brings me to tonight.

My phone dings, pulling me out of my head. I glance down; it’s a message from Asher.