“So if someone approaches me with an offer, I relay that to Claude and then you guys bust him?”
Viktor shook his head. “Suspicion or names are not enough for such a prestigious case. We must go deep enough to get into the fights.”
My jaw slackened. “You want me to fight?”
“I do not want you involved in actual fighting, but we need to know who is running the operation. You must be certain of that, because the person who approaches you might not be who we want. I want locations. I want names. I want the identity of everyone involved, including customers. You must get close enough to see the fights. We cannot rely on hearsay. If we have insufficient evidence, they go free and we lose our chance. To fail would mean losing the confidence of the higher authority. We have just enough evidence to build a solid case, so it is up to us to uncover this crime ring.”
I waited for Christian’s rebuttal, but he quietly listened with everyone else.
“Shepherd, I want you in the club as a customer, but not every night. It is important that we do not reveal our cover.”
“Blow our cover,” Gem said. She was never rude about correcting Viktor, and he seemed to appreciate it since she had helped him fine-tune his English over the years.
“Talk to bystanders,” he went on. “Express interest in watching a girl fight. Portray yourself as a wealthy man, but do not wear a suit. This would make you stand out. You can use your gifts to read people and find suspects.”
Shepherd stood up, his arms hanging at his sides like dead limbs. “You want me to go into a sex club with my gloves off? Fuck that.”
“Who else can sense a liar except for Claude? He will be doing his own undercover work by talking to customers to see what their fantasies are.”
Claude shuddered.
“Touch their glasses,” Viktor instructed him. “Or the table. Whatever it is you do. We must narrow down suspects. Anyone you find curious, find out their name. Wyatt will search for a criminal record. We must be cautious. If too many of us are together in one place, someone might make a connection. We go as a group to bars.”
“Not lately,” Wyatt complained. “Seems like forever since we had a good time.”
“Niko is still recovering.” Viktor rubbed his neck as if he’d slept on it wrong. “I want him on a mandatory vacation for at least three more weeks.”
“I can help,” Niko insisted. “I can read light.”
“You only just woke up from a long coma.” Viktor walked back to the weight bench but remained standing. “It will take time for you to fully recover. Your body is still weak.”
“I don’t need muscles to read light,” he countered. “I’ve been working in the gym every day and eating twice my calories. It won’t be long.”
“That is rule,” Viktor said, putting his foot down. “I have been fair to each of you when you have had trauma. Raven, Blue, and even Gem. You will accept the time I give you. Raven will be without weapons, so I want you to work with her today.”
“Wait a second.” I got up, flustered by the idea of going in without my push daggers. “You want me unarmed?”
“That is the club policy. The owner fires anyone carrying, so if you are caught and shown preferential treatment, it will—how you say—blowour cover.”
Gem smiled approvingly.
Viktor sighed and rubbed his eyes. He must have been up all night working out the details. “Use your Mage skills to protect yourself. No bloodsucking.”
I snorted. “That takes the fun out of it. So what do you think happened to the victims?”
“It is possible they made mistakes or tried to quit. Fighters never leave, not unless it is in a body bag. A headless or charred body would draw attention from insiders working for the police, so the person behind this is very crafty indeed. Perhaps a Chitah delivered a fatal dose of venom and sealed the wounds. I think what is more likely is that a Mage killed them. There are a number of those with rare but deadly gifts. You’re a Stealer, and your kind were once executioners. Stealing someone’s light and then their life is not as messy.”
“You said the first girl had blood on her. That sounds pretty messy.”
“Da. But no injuries from what they told us. We believe after she was strangled, the culprit dumped her body in the human district in hopes that she would be misidentified as human. We can only speculate what is happening. That is why we need you to go in and gather as much information as you can.”
Blue gripped the rope with one hand. “And me? Don’t keep me home, Viktor. I’ve taken enough time off. I’m ready to work.”
Viktor gave her a reluctant smile. I’d never met a stronger woman than Blue, and she wanted to get back into the thick of things—perhaps too quickly. Since returning from our last mission in West Virginia, Blue hadn’t acknowledged the attack that left her scarred. I felt a kinship to her for that, because I had a tendency to bottle up my rage and pain. I couldn’t imagine how the hell she was dealing with those scars, ones I hadn’t seen since that fateful night. All I knew was that they covered her torso, and her days of wearing sexy low-cut tank tops had ended—not unless she was wearing a button-up over it. Now most of her shirts had high collars like the flannel shirt she wore today.
“If Raven leaves club with anyone, I want you to follow,” Viktor said, giving Blue a respectable role. “We cannot rely on a tracking device that might malfunction.”
“My equipment never malfunctions,” Wyatt grumbled.
