I dearly wanted to curl into a fetal position on my couch and sleep until November. Alternately, six shots of Jim Beam and a gallon of beer would work well as comfort food; but I was deep in Indian country, and there were hard miles to go before I had any kind of comfort.

“If you’d gone to the damn FBI academy you could have been politely arresting people between afternoons on the golf course,” I reminded myself. All of my inner voices told me to shut the fuck up.

The coin-operated washers and dryers were full but no one was down there. I jammed the cellar door shut, then I turned on the faucet in the laundry sink and held my head under the cold water for almost a minute. The water that sluiced over my scalp ran red for almost half that time. The cold knocked the pain level down a few notches though, and I could feel my brain reluctantly starting to clear.

My phone rang. Church was early. Sputtering and pawing water out of my eyes, I pulled my phone and punched the button.

“Yeah, boss?”

“Hello,” she said. “How many brownie points do I have now?”

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Golden Oasis Hotel

Tehran, Iran

June 15, 10:04 a.m.

“Ah … shit,” I said into the phone.

Violin laughed.

“That was you?” I asked.

Instead of answering she asked, “How badly are you hurt?”

“Why do you care?”

“How badly are you hurt?”

I sighed. “Somewhere between trampled by a soccer mob and found dead in a ditch, but … I’ll live. What’s it to you, anyway?”

Violin took a beat before answering, and even then she didn’t answer the question. “You’re lucky.”

I clicked the button to initiate the trace. Not that I thought it was worth the effort, but what the hell. “Lucky? In what way?”

“The knight should have killed you.”

“‘Knight’? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Another pause. “I don’t know if I should be telling you this.”

“Will it keep me alive?”

“Maybe.”

“Then tell me, for Christ’s sake. That son of a bitch nearly tore my head off. You should have seen him. You should have seen his frigging teeth.”

“I have—”

“He had fangs for— Wait, what?”

“I have seen his teeth,” said Violin. “Not that same knight, of course, but I’ve seen their teeth.”

“When? How?”

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you should not have seen him at all.”

“Meaning that I shouldn’t have and still be alive? Like that?”

“Like that, yes.”

I was quiet for a moment, thinking it through. “What are they?”

She took her time before answering. “I don’t know for sure, Joseph.”

“I think you’re lying to me. And what’s with the ‘Joseph’? Why so formal?”

“I like ‘Joseph’ better than ‘Joe.’ ‘Joseph’ is more dignified, more serious than a ‘Joe.’”