Voss's hands shook so badly that Lorcan took the phone from him.The thread belonged to a contact saved only as Caduceus, and it was a long column of cold messages about delivery times and preservation fluid. Lorcan typed slowly, reading each word aloud so the doctor would remember what he had supposedly written. "Complication during induction. Donor developed severe arrhythmia. Heart unstable, harvest unsafe tonight. New time, Friday midnight.""They'll know," Voss whispered. "They always know.""Then you'd better sound convincing." Lorcan pressed send.The answer came in seconds, as if someone had been sitting in the dark waiting for it. Approved. The buyer will not wait twice. Fail again and both donors are harvested.Lorcan read it twice, then handed the phone back. Seventy-two hours. The clock had started, and Esme's life was ticking inside it.He made Voss close the cut on his chest with six neat stitches, then sent him out through the service tunnel with one instruction: answer

There was no time to think, so Lorcan didn't.He dropped the gearbox into second, and the engine screamed as the car bucked beneath them. Annika was thrown against her seatbelt with a sharp cry. The tanker swelled in the windshield, its silver tank glowing under the streetlights, and Lorcan yanked the handbrake halfway and steered toward the guardrail.Metal met metal in a long, shrieking grind. Sparks sprayed past the windows, and the whole car shuddered as the barrier ate its speed. He dropped into first, hauled the handbrake all the way up, and held the wheel steady while the back end tried to swing out. The car slid, scraped, and finally stopped. The tanker's bumper was close enough to touch, and through the windshield Lorcan could read the warning painted on its tank. FLAMMABLE.In the back seat, Annika was breathing in short, shocked gasps. Slowly, she lifted her head and stared at him in the rearview mirror. For three years this man had apologized whenever he parked a little cr

Arlo's bed stood nearest the entrance, and the Matron's raised arm was barely a hand's width from the doorframe. Lorcan saw the angle, and he didn't hesitate.The scalpel left his fingers in a flat silver blur. It punched through the Matron's wrist and buried itself in the wooden frame, pinning her arm before her thumb could move the plunger. The syringe dropped onto the sheets. For a heartbeat, the Matron simply stared at the blade through her own flesh, too shocked to scream.Then the orderlies came at him.They didn't fire. They couldn't, not with the Matron and a boy worth a fortune in the line of fire, and that hesitation was all Lorcan needed. He went low under the first man's arm and drove a knee into his ribs, then twisted the pistol from his hand and smashed its grip into the second man's temple. The third swung at him and met an elbow that broke his nose with a wet crack. The fourth managed to raise his gun. Lorcan caught his wrist, bent it back until the bone gave, and thre

By noon, Stroud's men were everywhere. A gray sedan sat across from the front gates. A man in a delivery uniform had been fixing the same garden sprinkler for two hours, and another loitered near the garage, smoking and watching the doors. Every exit of the Ashcombe mansion was covered.Lorcan counted them from the kitchen window, a cold cloth pressed to his bandaged temple. On Friday night, those men would be inside the house, and he would need loyal hands of his own within these walls. Nadia's team was strong, but they were strangers here, and strangers would be noticed. Only one place in the city could give him people who belonged on these streets. Compass's Port Selwyn branch ran out of an old fish market on Pier Six, and its boss, Rocco Tierney, had stopped answering Nadia three months ago.On Thursday afternoons, the cook always sent Lorcan to the harbor for fresh fish. Today was no different. He walked out with a canvas shopping bag, and the gray sedan followed him all the way

Annika had found her way back to Lorcan's side as the doors opened. Without a word, she slipped her hand into his again, her eyes fixed on Fabian across the room as if daring him to try anything else. Lorcan barely noticed. Like everyone else, he was watching the doorway.Lucius Delmar came through it slowly. He was tall and gaunt, perhaps sixty-five, with silver hair and the hollow cheeks of a man whose body had been failing for years. His lips held a faint bluish tinge that no amount of candlelight could hide, and he leaned on an ebony cane. Even so, he moved like a king entering his own court.On his other arm walked a young woman in a high-collared silver dress.The champagne glass in Lorcan's hand cracked.It was a small sound, lost beneath the murmurs of the crowd, but he felt the thin crystal give way under his fingers and didn't loosen his grip. A drop of wine ran over his knuckles. He didn't notice that either.She was taller than he remembered, which was foolish, because the