go deal with that.”
“Ronnie—”
“Just go, Colt.” His voice grew strained, matching the unshed tears in his eyes. “Please.”
Colt opened his mouth to speak, but his jaw hung slack when he realized there were no words that could fix this. None that wouldn’t just make things more complicated than they already were.
“I’m sorry,” Colt repeated, even though the words felt as hollow as he’d feared. He reached out, tilting Ronnie’s chin toward him. “This discussion isn’t over. I’ll be back as soon as I can, and I don’t want you going anywhere.”
Ronnie’s only answer was a noncommittal shrug, but Colt knew that was as good as he was going to get. He said goodbye and instructed his guards to step in if the boy so much as stepped foot out into the foyer, then left to meet Andrew for what he hoped was the last Jason-related crisis he’d ever have to deal with.
Chapter 40
Colt
Colt entered city hall expecting to find fires blazing and crowds running in terror, given the way Andrew had sounded on the phone. Instead, the building was bustling with the same casual office workers he’d passed by every other time he had been there.
If Andrew had called him for some bullshit he could have taken care of over the phone, Colt was going to reevaluate his stance on murdering humans. Just the once.
He looked around once he made it to Andrew’s office, but he saw no sign of Jason. One possibility occurred to Colt as to why he’d been summoned. Had Jason told Andrew about the break-in?
No… he would have been irritated at the most. They’d committed worse felonies together over lunch, and Andrew would’ve come to him before if that was it. It had to be something else.
He was about to walk past the secretary’s empty desk when Andrew’s office door flew open. The man stood on the other side, looking as unsettled and somber as he had sounded on the phone.
“Took you long enough,” he said, ushering Colt into his office.
“I was in the middle of something important, so this had better be good.”
“What, another dinner party with your cannibal friends?” Andrew asked bitterly.
“It’s only cannibalism if you’re the same species,” Colt said, offhandedly echoing the phrase that had been used on him no shortage of times. “Where’s Jason?”
“I don’t know,” Andrew muttered, going over to his desk to rifle through one of the drawers.
“You don’t know?” Colt echoed. “You’re supposed to know where he is at all times! What the fuck do you mean, you don’t know?”
The DA pulled out a familiar folder and dropped it on the table. “Have a look for yourself.”
Colt reluctantly took the folder and flipped it open. The first thing that greeted him was a photograph, taken from some distance away in a crowded room, but the subjects were unmistakable. One of the highest-ranking ghouls in the Kinship was on camera, attending some cheesy ribbon-cutting ceremony. Colt flipped through and found a dozen others like it, all pictures of important and often infamous officials within the Kinship, some of them Colt recognized from the surrounding states.
One photograph stood out among the others. It was a picture of Evelyn seated at a bar, leaning in to talk to some man she’d probably eaten once they left the place. Her face had been circled with a red marker, and when Colt flipped the page over, the harried scribbles on the other side filled him with dread. A date had been written at the top. 1978, followed by Evelyn’s full name and a cluster of known associates, including Vincent Moreau.
Colt looked up at Andrew, whose sullen expression hadn’t changed. “There’s more.”
He flipped through the pages, most of which were handwritten notes that looked like they’d been ripped out of journals rather than any official record. It wasn’t Jason’s handwriting, but he didn’t know if that was a relief.
“Carver wrote this?” Colt asked, flipping through the remainder of the file.
Andrew nodded.
“Holy shit.” He’d known Carver was sharp, and that Roland was concerned with just how much he’d been able to piece together about their kind, but this was more detail than he’d ever imagined. There were hospital logs and coroner’s reports interspersed with the journal pages, and Carver had written notes on those, too. Most were vague theorizing, nothing too concrete, but he knew they fed on human flesh and had made some startlingly accurate predictions about their population size, social structure and hierarchies.
“Why are you showing me this?” Colt finally asked. He was