She hissed, and then said, “Was the death of Shona and the two werewolves assigned to protect her demonstration not enough for you, Ms. Pearson?”

I blinked. Though the voice was Amanda’s, the pronunciation definitely wasn’t.

“I’m going to fucking kill you for doing that, Rinaldo.”

“You were warned, were you not? You failed to live up to our agreement—”

“It was hardly a fucking agreement,” I bit back. “And it doesn’t change the fact you are a dead man walking.”

“Technically, all vampires are.” His amusement ran through Amanda’s tone. “And it doesn’t change the fact you were warned to contact me nightly and you did not. Those deaths are on your conscience, not mine.”

He was right; they were. But better three lives than the hundreds—thousands—that might die if Rinaldo ever got his hands on all the virus information. I didn’t know why he wanted it, and I didn’t care; I just knew I would do whatever it took to stop him from getting it.

Even if more people had to die.

“We’ve had nothing to damn well report at the time,” I said. “So it was pretty useless ringing.”

“That is hardly true, given your recent excursion into Brooklyn.”

“Which netted you the laptops—and if you didn’t get them, I don’t know who did, because I didn’t fucking tell anyone else about them.”

The sound of fighting ended abruptly. Jackson came up behind me, shaking his right hand. That bastard has a jaw of steel.

Keep an eye on him, just in case knocking him out isn’t enough.

Rinaldo was, after all, a strong enough telepath to control someone right down to their body functions and breathing . . . The thought stalled.

Was he strong enough to do that from a distance? Or was he, perhaps, somewhere close?

Good thought. Keep him talking while I check the rest of the apartment.

Jackson snagged the keycard from the guard, spun some fire around him to keep him secure, then stepped over the two of us and went looking.

“There was very little on the laptops, as I’m sure you’re well aware,” Rinaldo said.

“That’s not my fucking fault.”

“No, because we both know PIT was responsible for that little inconvenience.”

Meaning he did have someone inside PIT. How else could he have known PIT cleaned them out of anything useful before we got them back? “I did warn you that we wouldn’t get out of Brooklyn with anything of value. But whatever they erased could probably be retrieved with a clever enough tech guy.”

“That is the only reason I am not currently following through with my threat to flood the streets with the infected.”