As she drove, Violin racked her brain—and her heart—for an answer to the question that she knew would be coming. She prayed for another of her “flashes,” but aside from the brief one this morning, there was nothing. It infuriated her. What was God’s plan in giving her a gift that was faulty, questionable, and distracting? The fact that the flash had happened at all was skewing her focus. Was she acting on behalf of her mission objectives, or was she trying to save the life of Joseph Ledger?

It should have been an easy question to answer. Everything she had ever done, everything she had ever learned, had been geared toward making the response automatic. The Mission was all.

All.

Violin gripped the wheel. The muscles in her jaw ached from clenching.

The Mission was all.

Right?

“God,” she breathed. Mother was going to be so angry.

Chapter Sixty-four

Chapter Sixty-Four

Mustapha’s Daily Goods

Tehran, Iran

June 15, 3:01 p.m.

In my trade, confidence is built on a platform whose legs are made up of good intelligence, continuous training, proper equipment, and field support. I had a sick dog, a dead man’s gun, a stolen briefcase, a vampire hunter’s stake in my belt, and a cell phone; and I was walking down a street in Tehran less than a day after breaking three political prisoners out of jail. I was involved in several murders and had left sufficient physical evidence behind to convict me on enough charges to lock me up until I was a thousand years old. Or enough to have me put against a wall.

Oh, yeah, and there were seven rogue nukes and somehow vampires were tied up in that.

My life used to be a lot less complicated.

I didn’t need a safe house so much as I needed a nice quiet place to have a nervous breakdown.

We headed to the place Church assured me was genuinely safe. Ghost walked more slowly with every block, the fatigue catching up to him again. I stopped to pet him a couple of times, but he barely wagged his tail. I couldn’t tell if we were friends again or if the events of the day had driven some kind of wedge into our relationship. It’s like that with humans, and it can be that way with animals too.

When we reached the convenience store we walked past it and cut through an alley to the back where there was a small door beside a Dumpster. The store was the only open business in a district of warehouses that had been closed during the local economic troubles. The nearest residential area was blocks away, but there was a graveyard nearby and frequent mourners formed the basis of the store’s customers.

It was a very useful setup for a safe house.