Page 6 of Red Dragon’s Heart

He could have had her at home in his prison cell by now.

He began to pack up his stuff. It was the end of her shift, and she’d be leaving in a couple of minutes. He had to follow her home—or at least, to a place where it was safe to snatch her and fly off.

There was no way he was letting her get away this time.

He was about to shut down his laptop when another alert came in. ‘Chrystal’ was logging into a site on the dark web. One that allowed people to send anonymous, untraceable email messages.

Too bad for you, babe, he thought. You’re not as anonymous as you think.

He watched the screen, riveted, waiting to see who she was communicating with.

Eric Chisholm.

The message read:

I’m ready to make a deal.

Bring one million in cash or bearer bonds to 83304 Bertoli Way. Second floor office. Tonight, 11 pm.

I know you won’t come alone, so I won’t bother to pretend you will. No more than six guys.

If you’re late, I walk.

If you’re early, you’ll never see me—so you can forget about setting up an ambush.

This is your one chance to get your property back.

MF

He stared at the message until it began to blur in front of his eyes. She wasn’t selling the stolen data to a foreign government after all.

She was offering it back to Chisholm.

What the actual hell?

Why would she have gone to all the trouble to take it, only to give it back? If she’d done it to extort money from Chisholm, why wait this long?

None of it made sense—but it didn’t need to. Zakerek didn’t actually care what any of their motives were. He just needed her, in his lab. Although… getting that data out of the hands of humans could potentially protect thousands of shifters. He could follow her to the meeting, and grab her and the stolen data.

After a year of hell, all his waiting and tracking and hacking had paid off. He was finally going to get his revenge—and his antidote.

Chapter 4

Keeping one eye on Madeleine Fox, Zakerek checked out the address she’d given Chisholm, using his own secure hotspot to access the database programs from his servers back at the lair. He didn’t trust the security of the café’s system—especially if she was running it.

A quick rundown showed the place was a warehouse in one of the nearby industrial districts, originally owned by a now-bankrupt real estate company; it had been partially renovated before they went under. The half-completed construction had been halted, and it had been empty for over a year.

It was in foreclosure now; there was no record of any tenant.

He drummed his fingers on the table, trying to figure out what Fox was up to. Why meet Chisholm in an abandoned warehouse, all by herself against six bad guys? There were much safer ways to do an exchange.

What made her think they wouldn’t just kill her and take the data drives?

Was she the one who had an ambush set up? If so, what did she hope to get out of it? Revenge on Chisholm? If she had a grudge against him, you’d think stealing his research would have satisfied it. Had she planned to blow him up with the lab, and failed?

Maybe she was going to blow the warehouse up too, with Chisholm and his men in it. Zakerek didn’t really have a problem with that, as long as she didn’t blow up the formula to make his antidote.

As he watched her get ready for the shift change, he still could hardly believe she was the woman in the photo on his screen, although he could see now that the underlying facial structure was the same.