Something dark and angry uncurled inside him.
“It’s a very clever piece of photo manipulation.” Vivek continued to work. “That’s all there is right now. No money transfers to follow because, I assume, the buyer either knows these are forgeries—or doesn’t know which e-mail to believe.”
He used a second screen to bring up the photo Venom had taken, of Holly slumped in the backseat of the SUV. “That might be why you didn’t get a response to your message, though I’m more inclined to believe your surveillance theory. Mike and his men aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, but they’ve got a better track record than any of these others—reason enough for the buyer to keep a hopeful eye on them.”
Venom saw that the last forged photo, the one that looked genuine, had only been sent fifteen hours earlier. After Mike and his crew struck out—and after Venom’s message. “You’re monitoring the bank accounts associated with the bounty hunter who sent that final e-mail?”
Nodding, Vivek said, “No movement at all.” A single account appeared on the screen that had originally held Venom’s photograph of Holly. “I’ll keep digging, in case he’s smart enough to have hidden accounts.”
“If this is what you can dig up in a half hour,” Venom said dryly, “I’m guessing you’ll have his entire life in sixty minutes.”
A sharp grin from the other man. “It’s a busy day, so maybe sixty-five would be a better estimate.”
“Forward me the details of everyone who e-mailed.” It’d give him and Holly a place to start interrogations as they attempted to track down the origin of the bounty. “And continue to monitor the e-mail address.”
“Done.”
• • •
Holly showered with a frown on her face. What the hell had happened to her last night? And why wasn’t she more mad about it? Probably because her body felt good. It was like she’d slept in the lushest, most comfortable bed on the planet rather than on a stone floor. And it wasn’t as if she was living in a hovel. This was the Tower. She only had a small room, not a sprawling suite like Venom, but most of the space she did have was taken up by a freaking huge bed.
That bed, an ornate extravaganza the size of a small continent, was courtesy of her parents. They’d wanted to give her a “moving in” present and what could she do but say yes? Mia had laughed her ass off over it until Holly had pointed out that a similar bed probably lay in her future, too.
The memory of her sister’s aghast expression made her grin.
Leaving the shower after a long, hot time, she dried off, then stepped out and stared at the bed that had put that look on her sister’s face. It was a white four-poster with a thick mattress and curtains tied to the posts. The posts were carved with love hearts, the headboard with a plump cherub pulling back his bow as he prepared to shoot an arrow at a whole bunch of hearts across from him.
“I have a giant princess bed drowning in hearts,” Holly said to herself, not for the first time.
Then she smiled, because her parents had been delighted when Holly accepted the gift. Daphne and Allan Chang had even bought Holly a set of ridiculously expensive Egyptian cotton sheets and an equally expensive goose down comforter. The bed was cozy and soft and warm . . . and the stupid stone floor had still been nicer.
“Argh!”
Making her way around the bed, she opened the walk-in closet and stepped inside to dress. She really liked that she could do that; it meant she didn’t have to pull down the blinds on the floor-to-ceiling window on one side of her room. There wasn’t much of a view, not this low down in the Tower, but on a sunny day, the light was beautiful.
Today, it was a moody, water-washed gray.
Dressed, Holly sat on her bed, shadows streaking across her skin as she pulled on her boots. The rain wasn’t heavy, more a constant mist, so she could still see beyond her window. In her direct line of sight was the building occupied by the Legion, the strange beings who’d descended on the city during Raphael’s battle with Lijuan.
Pale-eyed and pale-skinned, with wings like a bat’s, the Legion were the definition of eerie. Of course, who was she to judge? She wasn’t exactly Ms. Normal. And she loved what they’d done with their building, turning it into a living creation swathed in lush green.
Holly had thought more than once about walking over and asking if she could look inside. She’d never done so because the Legion were so other, and so clearly powerful as to be beyond her reach, but today, boots on and hair scraped into a ponytail, she felt the devil take her. Or maybe it was that she wasn’t quite ready to face what Venom had brought out of her the previous night.
Since the area between the Tower and the Legion building was archangelic territory no stranger could infiltrate, she didn’t bother to alert Venom as she exited the Tower.
She did however send him a message: Don’t go hunting without me. Fear of herself or not, she wasn’t about to be sidelined. She just needed a few extra minutes to find her balance.
Despite the constant misty rain that felt like a cool kiss on her skin, New York carried on unabated. Steam escaped from a grate, suited office workers heading out to lunch flowed toward the subway entrance in the distance, and the warm, yeasty scent emanating from a nearby pretzel cart drifted over to tantalize Holly’s taste buds.
The recently emancipated vampire with quick dark eyes and dark hair had been cheeky in setting up shop so near Raphael’s stronghold, but he’d quickly created a number of high-powered fans. She’d seen angels swooping down to grab a pretzel before flying back up.
Today, she diverted from her course to grab one for herself. No bounty hunter was going to try to kidnap her with an entire angelic squadron within earshot of a scream; hair damp and expressions committed, they were seated on railingless balconies relatively low down on the Tower. A blue-winged angel with eyes of extraordinary gold and black hair tipped in blue—Illium—hovered in front of them.
Post-combat-training discussion, Holly thought, having seen the same sight multiple times since she’d moved into the Tower. The latter fact made her parents so proud they dropped it “casually” into any conversation with even a faint bearing on the matter.
Oh, our Mia? She’s a doctor now. And our Holly works for the Tower. She took her brothers to visit her apartment—she has an apartment right in the Tower, did I forget to mention that?—and well, the two couldn’t stop talking about it.
“My first customer of the day!” The pretzel seller beamed at Holly when she stopped in front of his cart. “Had to start late today—trouble with my cart, wouldn’t you know it, but here you are before I even finish my setup.” His hands moved quickly to half wrap the pretzel in greaseproof paper. “You get a free pretzel for being a good omen.”