I HELD myself still and calm in the back of the car as Julius parked by the diner where we’d arranged to meet his old military colleague. Blaze had managed to dig up Petrov’s contact information with his usual skill, and he’d agreed to speak with us. Well, with Julius and Talon, but I’d insisted on coming along for additional back-up as well as to help with the questioning.
This guy had been part of one attack on us. He and whatever pricks he was working with wouldn’t hurt my men—not again.
Blaze was watching the streets around the café from afar, ready to alert us if he saw any signs that the former soldier had brought company. We’d chosen this spot partly because of the extensive street cam coverage in the area.
The diner was kind of dingy, not unusual for this neighborhood on the fringes of the city. Only one of the rickety patio tables was occupied—by an elderly couple who didn’t look like much of a threat. We scanned the nearby buildings cautiously through the car windows.
Julius frowned. “This could be another trap. We reached out to him, but who knows what he did after that. The fact that he was involved in that first ambush means he’s not the same man I once knew.”
I touched the gun concealed at my side. “If he makes one wrong move, he’ll regret it.”
Talon gave me a grim look, but I thought I caught a hint of amusement behind his pale eyes. “I think we should try to avoid shooting anyone unless it’s definitely necessary. We’ve got to give him the benefit of the doubt. Why are we here otherwise?”
Julius nodded. “Wary but open to listening. We’re ready for whatever he’s got in store.” He sat up a little straighter. “Here he is.”
I recognized the man immediately as he came into view. He was nearly as tall and brawny as Julius, with tattoos that stretched up his neck and over his forearms. The shadows under his sunken eyes suggested he’d been dealing with stress, health issues, or drugs—or all three, for all I knew.
His gaze swept over the street just as ours had a moment ago. He looked as apprehensive as I felt. That reassured me a little. He wasn’t trying to put on a show and lull us into a false sense of security. It seemed like he was worried about what we might do to him.
Julius checked his phone. “Blaze says the area is still clear. No sign that anyone else has come with him. Let’s go.”
As we got out of the car, Petrov was just sitting down at one of the larger tables at the opposite end of the patio from the elderly couple. He spotted us immediately, his posture tensing. I kept my own senses on the alert while we approached, watching for any indication that I needed to go on the attack.
The guy stayed rigid in his seat when we sat down across from him. He considered each of us in turn, his gaze settling on Julius. “It’s been a long time,” he said.
“It has,” Julius agreed. “And our initial reunion didn’t exactly go how I’d have preferred.”
Petrov’s mouth curved into a grimace. “That’s why you wanted to speak to me. I figured.”
Julius folded his arms over his chest. “Someone’s been working against us for a while now. It seems you’ve gotten caught up in their agenda. I’m hoping you have enough respect for me and the work we once did together to tell me what you can about your employer and what the hell is going on. Unless you went into this knowing you’d be trying to take me down.”
Petrov shook his head in a jerky motion. “I had no idea I’d be seeing you until I was, well, seeing you. And it wasn’t a happy sight. That’s why I’m here. But I’m not sure I can tell you anything all that useful. I don’t know shit about the man who gave us that mission.”
“Tell us everything you do know,” I said firmly.
Petrov blinked at me but turned back to Julius at the other man’s nod. “Technically I’m still working for the army. A bunch of us got assigned to this special squad, and every now and then we get sent on missions that aren’t what we’d typically do. I don’t think those orders are coming from within the military. My best guess is that someone’s been buying off or otherwise getting some of the higher-ups under their sway.”
“What makes you sure it’s not internal?” Julius asked.
“Well, we never get any indication of the reason for the missions from the commanding officer who passes on the orders. I don’t think he knows either. And like I said, they’re not things we’d typically be doing—not within the army’s purview.”
“Like what?”
“Like what happened the other day,” Petrov said. “We’ve had two other missions like that—we’re sent in locally to attack small groups of what appear to be skilled criminals. With you, we were told to go in for the kill if possible, but with the others, they only wanted us to draw blood and then retreat. We were supposed to do that with your crew as well if we couldn’t manage to take you down completely.”
Julius’s deep blue eyes hardened. “And you did. Your guys cut up a couple of ours pretty badly. Why would they want that? Why would they want only that when it came to the other groups?”
Good question. I studied Petrov as he formed his answer. His forehead creased with what looked like honest confusion. I wished Garrison had joined us for this meeting too—he was the expert at reading people.
“I don’t know that either,” Petrov said. “We were instructed to keep all the blood on our blades and turn them in to our command for processing. They put the weapons in lab bags, but I have no idea where they took things from there.”
A prickle of apprehension ran down my spine. I rubbed my arm, remembering the scientist we’d had take a sample of my blood. That’d been for our own purposes, at least. She’d sequenced my DNA, and we’d then been able to match it to Damien Malik’s so I could find my birth family.
“Could they be testing it for something?” I said. “Or—if they planted it at crime scenes, they could frame people for things they didn’t do.”
“Either of those is possible,” Julius agreed, his frown deepening. “I don’t like the sounds of it.”
Neither did I. We knew the Blood Hunter was behind most of the attacks on the Chaos Crew. Probably he was the figure behind this one too, manipulating the army by whatever means he had at his disposal, which were clearly a lot. It would fit his name to be collecting criminals’ blood, wouldn’t it? And he always managed to stay several steps ahead of us. It didn’t seem like this situation was any different.
What did he have in store for us next now that I’d officially refused his invitation? His two-day deadline had passed last night.
I cleared my throat and focused my attention on Petrov again. “From the missions you’ve been given with this special group, have you gotten any idea what the person behind them might want other than blood? What their larger agenda could be?” Surely the Blood Hunter hadn’t bought or blackmailed his way into control over part of the army just so he could do a little DNA sampling. There had to be easier ways if that was his only goal.
“All I can tell you is that he’s got to be someone with a lot of power,” Petrov said. “Not anyone I’d want to go head-to-head with, so I wish you luck there.”
“Are there other squads like yours that might have been given different missions?” Talon asked.
Petrov splayed his hands in a helpless gesture. “I don’t know about that either. They keep us mostly in the dark.”
“Why the hell do you go along with all this, then?” I demanded. “Strange secret missions, attacking people you used to work with now… Why don’t you walk away? Or expose them?”
Julius shot me a cautioning glance, but Petrov simply hung his head. “It’s a reasonable question,” he said, and ran his fingers over his thinning hair. “It’s been made clear to me by various methods that my family would be ‘punished’ if I go against my orders. If it was just me, I’d say fuck it. But when I have no idea how much they’d hurt my wife or my son…”
My stomach twisted with sudden understanding. Of course he wouldn’t want to provoke a threat to his family. I should know better than anyone here how hard it was to face the possibility of losing your family—it’d been hell for me even when that family had been made up of psychotic child-torturing lunatics.
I relaxed a little in my chair, letting my hand drift farther from my gun. This guy wasn’t the enemy, not really. He was only protecting the people he cared about from an impossible situation. He hadn’t wanted to attack us. It said a lot that he’d come here to talk to us at all with the threat to his family hanging over his head.
“I’m sorry for coming at you the other day,” Petrov went on, looking at Julius. “I don’t think any of us on the squad really likes the position we’re in. If we saw a way to get out of it safely, we would.”
Julius inclined his head and stretched his arm across the table to shake his former colleague’s hand. “I understand. The powers we’re up against have put us all in difficult situations. I appreciate you coming to share what you do know with us—I know even that was a risk.”
“It was.” Petrov shook his hand quickly and stood up. “Which is why I’d better get going. I hope the little I could tell you helps you figure this out. We’d all be grateful to be out from under this asshole’s thumb, whoever it is.”
He strode off down the street, and I walked with Julius and Talon back to our car. I stayed silent until I’d dropped into my seat.
“Do you believe what he said?” I asked Julius. He’d known the man the longest, so I trusted his judgment over my own.
Julius started the engine and pulled away from the curb. “Considering we didn’t have anyone shooting at us, I’d say his story was pretty believable. It wasn’t a trap—he really did want to talk to us. He wouldn’t have come to meet us if he didn’t want to help us, especially when his family’s safety is on the line.”
“He sounded like he was being honest to me,” Talon put in. “But he didn’t know a hell of a lot.”
“True.” I rubbed my hand over my mouth. “Collecting blood from criminals. Manipulating army commanders. It’s got to be the Blood Hunter behind all that, right? Everything else we’ve been dealing with has come back to him.”
“From what we’ve seen, he definitely has the resources to pull off something like that,” Julius said. “The real question is, what’s his master plan? Where is he going with this?”
Silence filled the car, undeniably ominous. Whatever the Blood Hunter was up to, it now felt way bigger than just a complicated revenge scheme against a single family. And knowing about his other activities and the global influence he’d claimed to wield, I had trouble imagining it could be anything good.
The ring of Julius’s phone broke the quiet. He quickly tapped it, putting it on speaker phone. “What’s up?”
Blaze’s voice filled the car, and I knew something was wrong the second I heard his tone.
“You need to get back. You won’t believe what’s on the news now.”
