He stared at me, then used both hands to point at himself. “Okay, see this face? This is my what-the-hell face. Seriously, Riley. What. The. Hell. You snuck into enemy territory, dropped a figurative wasp down their pants and then brought that mess here, so I have to deal with it? Are you out of your freaking mind? Why would you do such a thing?”

“It’s…complicated.” He continued to give me his what-the-hell expression, and I scowled. “Look, I don’t need you to understand or approve of what I did. What I need is to know why my safe houses keep disappearing, and how St. George suddenly knows exactly who I am and where I’ll be. If there’s a mole in the network, I want to know about it. And I need to find out what Talon is up to, where they are, if they know I’m here. Think you can grease a couple palms and dig up some dirt for me?”

“On Talon and the Order?” Griffin scratched his eyebrows. “Probably, but it could take some time. I’m going to have to be very, very careful about whom I talk to.”

“Please. I know the kind of people you work with. I don’t think you have to do too much greasing. If they need incentive, you know I’m good for it.”

He sniffed and sipped his drink. “Actually,” he mused, looking thoughtful, “there is this one thing that came up recently. Something I heard just this morning, in fact.”

I rubbed my eyes. “That didn’t take long.”

“Oh, trust me. You’ll want to hear this.” He paused as the waitress returned, asking if we needed anything else, and waved her off with a smile. “I don’t know how credible the story is,” he went on, “but my contacts seemed to think it’s legit. It’s actually quite amusing. Apparently, some poor bastard saw something in an abandoned hotel that freaked him out of his mind. A ‘fucking huge lizard’ I believe were his exact words.”

I straightened quickly. “A runaway hatchling?”

“They seemed to think so.” Griffin shrugged, swirling the ice in his glass. “I can’t do anything about it, of course, but this sounds like the type of thing you’d be interested in. Might be worth checking out.”

“Dammit.” I sighed, knowing I couldn’t ignore this. “Fine, send me the info. I’ll check it out when I can. It’s not like I have a million other things to do, like keeping Talon and St. George off our backs.” I glared at him over the table. “This place is still off their sights for the time being, right?”