Candy grabbed her phone and hopped out of the car.

Jaggers called after her, “And V?”

She leaned back in.

“If you worried more about surveillance and less about a dead Crimean whore, we could’ve sizzled him at the front gate.”

She slammed the door harder than necessary and jogged for the building.

*   *   *

The Need raged and gnashed inside him. Without his infusions of young blood, René could already chart his deterioration. Achy joints, flagging energy, and that chalky residue always in his mouth. The taste of aging.

As soon as they coaxed the Nowhere Man out of hiding, Dex would put an end to him and they could set about rebuilding a new medical lab and acquiring new product.

Rising from his midday nap, René shuffled from the king-size bed toward the makeup counter of the bathroom suite. The windows were Lexan, of course, but to deter surveillance he kept the curtains drawn and the lights off. Just across the tile floor of the interior hall, the connecting door to Dex’s condo was in clear view. It was closed for privacy, though given all the cameras they’d installed throughout the rooms, privacy was hardly an issue. When Dex wasn’t at René’s side, he kept watch on every inch of René’s quarters from a collection of monitors next door, ready to alert their Greek freelancers at the first sign of anything out of the ordinary. It would take the tap of an iPad, no more, and hired knives would close in on Despi and carve her to pieces.

Dex had plans for Evan after that. He’d made multiple contingencies for how to eliminate him once he appeared. Disguised gunports in the common walls. Autolocking double-cylinder dead bolts on the solid-core front door to block egress. Vents wired up for gas just as in the chalet.

René braced himself for a look in the mirror. Despite the low light conditions, he winced at the sight. It was getting harder and harder to produce his confected self. Thinning hair swirled up from his pate. The bags under his eyes had grown bags beneath them, a landslide of bruise-colored flesh. His jowls held the weight of the world.

He began the process of putting himself together.

Cover-up filling in the crow’s-feet. Concealer and color corrector. Fish oil and zinc, calcium and vitamin E. No need for Cialis, not holed up here, but he’d upped his Lexapro in an attempt to filter out some of the gray from the Zagreb pollution. He was just reaching for his Rogaine when his hand brushed across a heap of silken fabric on the dim counter.

A scarf?

He lifted it. Two slender pieces that came apart. Each was a skin-colored tube of fabric covered with elaborate patterns.

Fake sleeve tattoos.

He let them slip to the shag carpeting. His eyes lifted to the mirror.