Читать книгу Bound By The Night: Dark Heat / Dark Dreams / Dark Fantasy - Меган Харт - Страница 12

Chapter 4

Vadim’s face was a little blurry for a moment on the computer screen before the picture cleared. He was sitting, as he almost always was when they video-chatted, behind his oversize mahogany desk. Behind him, bookshelves overflowed with textbooks and papers. He adjusted his glasses and leaned forward to look at her.

“Strong enough to drag a tiger over a wall but now picking a lock instead?” he asked.

Monica sipped some more of DiNero’s excellent whiskey and nodded. “Yes. Maybe whatever it was got tired of the heavy lifting. It looks like it figured out how to get through one of the gates along the perimeter wall, then let itself into the mountain-lion cage. Both were missing. Some blood, some hair, but nothing else. No bones, even. If it’s actually eating the animals, it’s consuming them entirely.”

“DiNero’s man thinks it’s human, eh? An inside job? Does he have a grudge against his boss?” Vadim sat back in his chair.

Monica shrugged. “It’s possible. DiNero is kind of a dick. But Jordan seems to really care about the animals. If he was somehow working with an outside source to steal the animals away from DiNero, he couldn’t hurt them.”

“He could be making it look as though they’re hurt,” Vadim pointed out.

“He could, I guess. Seems pretty elaborate to me. And he seems genuinely upset by what’s going on. He runs a clean house here. The habitats are expensive and well maintained, not just cages. There’s a wide variety of animals, but they’re all really taken care of.” She paused, sipping. “He’s a little odd. The zookeeper.”

Vadim grinned. “Handsome?”

“Ugh, stop.” She made a face. Vadim was always trying to set her up with some Crew member or other. Then she laughed a little. “Very.”

“I have Ted ready to head down to you once you think you might know what’s going on. I’d send someone sooner, but...”

“I know. Too many investigations, not enough Crew. I got it. I’ll be careful,” she put in before Vadim could lecture her.

Crew rules stated that no investigator try to hunt something alone. They worked at the minimum in pairs. Her role here was to assess the situation and try to get a handle on what they were looking for. No use coming loaded for bear, as Vadim said, if they were really hunting rabbit.

Something told Monica this was no bunny.

“Have they added any security measures?” Vadim asked. “I warned DiNero that your safety was my priority. Not that of his collection. You’re not to go off on your own, do you understand?”

He was nowhere near old enough to be her father, though he tried to act as much as a patriarch to the Crew as a leader. Sometimes Vadim’s protective nature warmed her. Other times, like now, it left her with the urge to roll her eyes and stamp her feet like a teenager reminded over and over again to “drive carefully.” Monica kept her expression bland.

“Don’t give me that look,” he said.

She raised both brows, innocence personified. Vadim sighed. Monica raised her whiskey glass. After a moment, he shook his head.

“Something that can haul away a tiger could certainly do a lot of damage to you, Monica.”

She had, for a period after losing Carl, done many reckless things. But time had passed and her life had gone on, whether she liked it or not, because that was what life did. “I know. And believe me, I’m not... I’m not trying to get myself killed. I’m here to study and assess, and then the team will come in and we’ll catch this thing.”

“If we’re lucky,” Vadim said.

They both knew how infrequently the Crew got lucky. There was a reason why people kept repeating that monsters weren’t real, after all, and it mostly had to do with how hard it was to find proof. Monica raised her glass again, draining it, and this time, Vadim signed off.