He stopped.
Then threw out a hand, even though there was no one and nothing around to steady himself on: The figure, walking through the first floor, was a narrow-shouldered female or woman, and she was dressed in a long pale gown, her blond hair piled up high on her head—
Kane tripped. Fell.
Got back up.
In a trance, he stumbled forward, feeling as though his feet weren’t on the ground. And he only stopped when he was standing in the flower beds just outside the parlor’s French doors.
The lovely room was kitted out with furniture he recognized: Though the arrangement had changed, and there was a different Persianrug on the floor, he knew the oil paintings of landscapes and the secretary and the lamps…
… and the female who drifted through the rooms like a ghost, beautiful as a statue.
And just as cold.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Down at the Brotherhood mansion, in the great Blind King’s French blue study, Vishous rolled a map out across Wrath’s ornate desk. Even though the King couldn’t see, the other brothers who had clustered around had peepers that worked just fine.
“So I performed a search on vacant facilities. Everything from schools to malls to churches and auditoriums.” He glanced up. “You wouldn’t believe how many things fucking fail. I found upward of a hundred that fit my loose criteria in the north country.”
“Business is rough,” someone said.
“Life is rough,” somebody else muttered.
“But then I refined things.”
Wrath cut in, glaring from behind his black wraparounds. “Fuck the back chatter. I don’t care about your methodology, what’s the conclusion.”
“Three sites.” He tapped his pen on the map. “A monastery just outside of Schenectady. A junior college up by Plattsburgh.”
“And the third,” the King said while he set George in his lap.
As the golden retriever looked at the map, too, V put his pen on a location just outside of a tiny town upstate. “This abandoned tuberculosishospital, which happens to be not too far from the pharmacy break-in. All three properties have been recently purchased by someone, we’re talking in the last year, and they have the infrastructure needed to maintain a professional drug processing business, as well as a population of workers and guards.”
Tohr raised his hand, ever the rule abider. “But they could go underground, couldn’t they?”
“You want to try digging a rabbit warren of spaces under someone’s lawn in this environment where everything ends up on the Internet?”
“Maybe it was already extant.”
“Well, I’ve been monitoring YouTube—”
“Are you a MrBeast fan?” Rhage said around his Tootsie Pop. “What. I like the guy. He has chocolate and gives away money.”
V ignored the brother. “—and there are all these abandoned explorers. These three places have been visited before—and recently, a guy said that there was a new fence around the abandoned hospital. I’m suggesting we split into three groups and check these sites out. If they’re empty, fine, I’ll go back to the drawing board.”
“And if they aren’t,” the King interjected.
“Then we circle the wagons, and get in there.”
“To do what, though.” Wrath sat forward. “Where do the prisoners go. How is an evac going to be managed?”
“Saxton told me today that you did revoke the aristocracy’s charter.”
“Yeah, and that’s fucking great. But what do you do with the prisoners. You can’t just get in there and bust shit up without having an after plan.”
“Oh, so it’s better to leave them as drug mules and processers?”