“Just keep reading.”
I did, and got to the last few e-mails in the sequence. The unknown correspondent seemed to be offering Cormac—or whoever he thought was writing to him—a job. Cormac replied, “I don’t know anything about you. Who are you?”
The answer came back: “I am called Roman.”
I stopped breathing. That had to be a coincidence. It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. I checked the date on the e-mails—he’d been sitting on this for almost two weeks. I could murder the guy. But he’d done it. Somehow, he’d drawn Roman out of hiding. Now what did we do?
Before I could say or do anything, either yelling at Cormac or fainting dead away, Ben said, “Shit. You’ve got to be kidding.”
That seemed like a reasonable explanation. Cormac, suddenly developing a prankster sense of humor and having one over on us. We looked at him, waiting for the punch line.
“Be nice if I was,” he said, and seemed amused. Or at least fatalistic to a dangerous degree. Not that he was ever one to freak out about something like this. “But I’m pretty sure it’s really him.”
“What did you tell him?” I demanded, breathless. Truth was, I was in awe. We’d been looking for Roman all this time, I’d had friends die trying to go after him, and all we had to do was put out bait?
Cormac leaned over, tapped a couple of keys, and brought up the reply: “My name is Amelia Parker. Let’s do meet.”
Which wasn’t a lie. But it was such a complicated truth, the mind boggled. This felt like juggling dynamite. I waited for the inevitable explosion. But there wasn’t an explosion, just the three of us leaning over the computer screen, staring in wonder.
“I have no idea what to do with this,” I murmured. “What are we going to do with this?”
“I say we set up a meeting,” Cormac said, calm and steady. Discussing a battle plan and not freaking out. “Agree to meet with him and set a trap. Stake him while his guard is down.”
“You make it sound simple,” I said. A million things could go wrong. Other people more powerful and more experienced than we were had tried setting traps for Roman, had tried staking him while his guard was down. They hadn’t succeeded. While we were setting a trap for Roman, he could just as easily be setting a trap for us. In fact, that seemed the most likely scenario. We were getting suckered into something.
“No, this could work,” Ben said, studying the computer screen as if it might reveal more secrets. “Even if he picks the location, we’ll have time to scout it out and set up an ambush. It may be our only chance to physically confront him.”
As if setting traps for two-thousand-year-old vampires was like setting up a drug bust. “Ben, you’re the one who’s supposed to be all skeptical and negative.”
“When are we ever going to get another opening like this?” he replied.
“There’s a problem,” Cormac said.
“Only one?” I shot back.
“I can’t go. Roman knows what I look like, he knows I’m with you and that I’m not anybody named Amelia Parker. The minute he sees me he’ll know it’s a trap.”
A simple problem to put an end to a simple plan. Would it be wrong to be secretly relieved that Cormac was not going to be marching straight up to Roman to put a stake in his heart? “So what do you want to do?”
“Find someone to be Amelia,” he said.
“What, throw some poor innocent woman in Roman’s path?” I said.
“Whatever it takes,” Cormac said. “Maybe someone from your pack—Becky, she’s pretty tough. Might not matter that she’s a werewolf.”
“We’re not using Becky as bait.” I wanted to get up and pace.
“Kitty, calm down,” Ben said, touching my hand. “I thought this was what we’ve been waiting for. Why so worked up?” From anyone else, the question would have sounded condescending, but his expression held only concern.
I shivered, trying to work out the tension. “I just have a bad feeling about this. It can’t be that easy.”
“I don’t expect it to be easy,” Cormac said. “But it’s a chance.”
The front door opened, letting in a taste of the night air outside. Usually I ignored it—the scents that came with the breath of air were generic, anonymous, strangers coming and going, or familiar smells of people I knew and expected to be here.
But I caught this scent and looked up, because I recognized it, and it was totally unexpected. My hand closed on Ben’s arm and I stood.
“Tina!”