He scoffs. “Heard you coming down here and anything that tears you away from the sofa this late in the evening lately must be important.”
I pull up Edgar’s email on one of my screens, and my encryption decoding program quickly gets to work. “He said he had some interesting information on a lead I gave him.”
Pierre pulls up his usual chair and sits beside me. “A lead on a woman, or...”
“Not quite. A lead on a Rook.”
“A Rook?” His excitement is palpable.
Not wanting to get his hopes up before I see what it is Edgar has sent me, I say, “Maybe. I need to check. It was just a hunch.”
He waits impatiently, drumming his fingers on his thigh.“A Rook, a Rook, my kingdom for a Rook,” he murmurs to himself.
I stare at the screen, waiting for the text to be deciphered. I spent a lot of time here in the early days teaching Edgar everything I know about computers, coding, encryptions, hacking, and he’s put it all to good use over the years. His encryptions are as complex as my own. When the text finally forms on the screen, I read through it quickly.
“Well? Anything yet? Don’t keep an old blind man in suspense.”
I peer at the screen, making sure I have all the information before I relay it to Pierre. “You’re not old, you just like to act it.”
He huffs.
I see the name I’ve been hoping to read—a man I assumed was dead until recently. Adrenaline thunders through my veins and I feel the smile spreading across my face. Finally, after all these years. “I think we’ve got one, Pierre.”
He grabs hold of my forearm, squeezing tightly. “Lincoln?”
I pat his hand, my own excitement bubbling over as my eyes still scan over the text.
“Who?” he demands.
“Fraser Lane.”
Pierre shakes his head. “Don’t recognize his name.”
“He’s a Knight. At least he was eighteen years ago. But he’s obviously risen through the ranks since I last saw him.”
“You knew him? But I thought you already dispensed with all of the Knights you remembered?”
I did. Methodically and ruthlessly, over the course of eighteen years, I hunted down and killed every single Knight I knew. Some were already dead by the time I got around to them, no doubt a few would have been killed at the hands of the Brotherhood themselves, but the rest met with unfortunate, untraceable-to-me ends. Heart attacks. Car wrecks. A few suicides. It tooka lot of willpower to do it that way, because for those where I can get up close and personal, there’s nothing like the recognition on their face when they realize who’s responsible for taking their lives.
I have many names within the Brotherhood. The Freak. The Ghost. Traitor. But whatever one they knew me by, they always know my real name at the very end.
Killian Wolfe—the man the Brotherhood couldn’t kill.
“Did this one slip under your radar?” Pierre asks.
“I thought he was dead. I even went to his funeral.” I stood amidst the trees on a rainy day, in a gray cemetery just outside London, and watched as they lowered a casket into the ground. It seems Fraser Lane wasn’t inside it. “It looks like the Brotherhood gave him a new identity along with his promotion. Now he’s Francis Davies. And he lives in Surrey.”
“Surrey, England?”
I murmur my agreement, doing an internet search on Francis Davies. A Conservative MP with a questionable voting record on human rights issues and the ability to come through numerous scandals unscathed while still holding on to his position.
I send a quick text to Edgar.
Contact my broker and have him set up a meeting in London. Tell him I’m looking for a UK company to invest in. Lincoln Knight needs a legitimate reason to fly to the UK.
He replies immediately.
You’ll need the jet?
