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I’m doubling my contribution to our lawyer pool. He’ll be available to anybody facing time. Maybe that’ll keep them from feeling desperate enough to flip.”
    â€œYou want us to start tidying up loose ends?”
    She hesitated. He wanted to know whether or not to order the execution of made men who posed a risk of flipping. Santoro would be first, most likely. Rastelli’s death sentence was already set in stone for betraying the family—if they could get at him, that was.
    â€œNo, that’s last resort stuff. Play too hard and we’ll drive people right to the Feds.”
    He nodded, but she couldn’t tell from his face whether or not he approved. “I’ll keep in touch.”
    He walked away, back across the street, and left her alone with a thousand worries.

Chapter Four: Message
    The sun dropped beneath the horizon. Karl opened his eyes to darkness and the cloying ghost-stink of mildew on rubber and old ice.
    The chest freezer lid swung open before he could lift it, and Bailey’s face appeared above him. Dark circles smudged under her eyes, and her skin looked even paler than usual. He could almost smell the worry seeping out of her pores like sweat.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” He pushed himself to his feet, and Bailey drew back to give him room to climb out. He shut the lid, trying to ignore the smells from the freezer that had bled into his black fatigues.
    â€œWe lost contact with the infiltrator.” She paced back and forth in the narrow aisle between the freezer and the computer station, then stopped and looked at him. “The Watchers picked up something, some kind of disturbance on the road. Even bigger than the last one. They tagged his last known position a few kilometers behind us. Command just gave orders to check it out.”
    â€œHow close did the infiltrator get to Cojocaru?”
    She hesitated, chewing at her lip, seeming to debate how much she could tell him.
    â€œIt’s time to cut the secrecy,” he said. “I need information if you want the mission to succeed.”
    â€œThe infiltrator was a mage. He’d become an acolyte to Cojocaru, but only recently—within the last week—did he meet up with Cojocaru’s main group here in Romania.”
    â€œIf the Watchers knew his position, couldn’t they track him at any time?”
    She shook her head. “Cojocaru kept them shielded. Our guy contacted me all panicked, all juiced up…and then he went dark.”
    â€œWhat did he say?”
    A longer hesitation. “You don’t have clearance to know.”
    The Order of the Thorn and their damned secrets. Nothing ever changed. “I’m just the hired gun, right?”
    â€œYeah… No. Maybe…” She paced back and forth again, head down, before drawing up short. A slow smile spread across her face, and the worry faded a bit. “We’re partners, you and me, right? Hell, I’ve been your handler since they hauled you out here, kicked you off the train.”
    He said nothing, only watched her.
    She began to pace again, aggravated, pulling at the edge of the fingerless glove on her left hand. “So screw Command and fuck all of Lord Sokoll’s secrets. It’s my ass out here in the wind, not his. I mean, you’re with the Thorn. You killed that vampire back in the States. I heard the story. You killed some crazy werewolf too. I can trust you.”
    â€œKilling makes me trustworthy?”
    â€œKilling for us does. You’re out here on the front line with me, and if Sokoll thinks we’re expendable…” She shook her head. “You and me, we gotta do what we gotta do to pull this off. Cojocaru’s planning a major spell-working in two nights. Some kind of powerful magic, something to do with a vampire prisoner.” She gave Karl a significant glance. “The infiltrator gave me a GPS location and a time, but he didn’t check in again