“Her.”
Katarina sighed. “Okay.”
Beckham moved his fingers from Reyna’s hair and gently lifted her in his arms. She snuggled against his chest and promptly fell back asleep. Her brain convincing her that it had all been a dream.
Chapter Eighteen
Days passed and Brian got no better.
Genevieve brought more and more blood. Beckham and his inner circle spent endless hours locked in the room with Brian. Reyna learned not to ask how it was going. The answer was always a grim look and a shake of the head.
“What do I do if he doesn’t recover?” Reyna asked Jodie one afternoon. They’d locked themselves in Washington’s lab. He hated having them there chatting while he was working, but he relented when it came to Brian.
“He’ll recover,” Jodie assured her.
“Washington, are you sure there’s nothing you can do?”
“I’ve already told you that this is beyond the matters of medicine. Brian has undergone a severe form of torture. It has reduced him to a wild animal. You are attempting to tame the beast within. Under normal circumstances the correct type of blood is sufficient to regain strength and mental cognition. This is not a normal case. He may never be the same again. I’m sorry, Reyna.”
“I know,” she said.
Jodie turned the computer to her. “My pictures aren’t as pretty as yours, butPerspectiveis sure to make a splash now, huh?”
“Looks good,” Reyna said.
On the computer was the website that Beckham had designed for her when he had first given her a camera. He’d wanted her to have a secure place to put the images she had taken andPerspectivehad been born.
Reyna scrolled through the images. Most of them were of the secure compounds Harrington had built. It showed the around-the-clock guards and barbed-wire fencing to keep peopleinrather thanout. Someone had gotten close enough to see the holding facility inside where it looked like any other picture-perfect apartment building office space. They’d talked to a few people about the place, and everyone made it seem like a dream. Except that the people who went in never came out.
“We’re going to need to go in there,” Reyna said, glad to have something to take her mind off Brian. “Discreetly. We need pictures of the inside.”
“Yeah. One problem.”
“I know. If we send a human in, then they won’t ever come out. I’m working on it.”
“We could see if anyone wanted to volunteer.”
Reyna groaned. “I can’t ask someone to do that.”
“You wouldn’t be asking.”
“What we need is someone who Visage doesn’t know, who will slip us information somehow. But I don’t know who that would be.”
“Or perhaps you could send in a vampire to feed,” Washington said from the corner.
“A vampire Harrington doesn’t know? Who the hell would that be?”
“Or one he does know like Penelope.”
Reyna cursed. “She double-crossed us.”
“What she did was horrible,” Washington agreed. “But I think given a second chance she would make a different decision. It wouldn’t hurt to send someone persuasive to ask.”
“Beckham?” Reyna asked.
“She may be petty and opportunistic, but she has a soft spot for him.”
Jodie held her hands up to prevent Reyna from venting. “Let’s put fuckface Penny on the list. A backup, last resort, if the world is burning and she’s the only double-crossing asshole left. Fair?”
