Read Online Thicker Than Blood by Annie Bellet - Free Book Online

acronyms,” Salazar said. He blew on his cup of coffee.
    “So you’ll help us break in?” I said. Ideas were already whirling around in my head. “You have codes or clearance or whatever?”
    “Ooh, maybe he could take you in as a prisoner!” Alma said.
    “Or pretend you are some kind of government inspector,” Cora chimed in.
    “I do have clearance, but stop whatever you are thinking,” he said. “You all have seen too many spy movies. Spy movies always forget one thing.”
    “Paperwork,” Jaq said with a chagrined smile.
    “Paperwork,” Salazar confirmed. “It would take weeks to process a new prisoner in. There are holding facilities all over the States where people and such are evaluated before transfer. Almost no one is sent directly to Custer. And before you ask, no, I can’t fake the paperwork.”
    “Before you ask me, neither can I,” Noah said from the other end of the table. He’d been so still I had forgotten he was there for a moment. Pesky vampires and their lack of breathing and noise-making.
    “So we can’t walk in the front door,” Kira said. “Obviously, or we wouldn’t be needed.”
    The twins made faces at her. I felt a pang of longing. These people were friends, Kira had her crew with her. I was alone, in a room of near strangers. No history, no camaraderie.
    Whose fault is that, exactly ? the traitorous voice of reason whispered in my head. I mentally slapped tape over her mouth.
    “I can get in myself,” Salazar said. “Though it will likely come back on me and I’ll have to burn this identity.”
    “You mean your name isn’t Salazar?” I asked. I cracked an egg against the table and started peeling it onto my plate. I was hungrier than I had felt in days. Maybe because I knew that my friends were safe, for the moment, and that if I could get my magic back, I might even have a chance at saving Harper, too. Hope can really work up an appetite.
    “It is, but I was placed in the NOS by the Council of Nine. The government doesn’t like to hire shifters and supernaturals directly. Only on a contract basis. The Council pulled some powerful strings so I could keep track of Custer and the NOS. I reported to them.” His shrug was careful, belying the tension in his body.
    “To them, and to the Archivist,” Kira said. She had her ice-blue lazer beam gaze focused on him.
    “The Council knows, I’m sure,” Salazar said, returning her look with bland acceptance. “As long as I reported to them too, they didn’t care.”
    “Why do you keep using the past tense?” Alma asked.
    “After I help you, I’m out. It’s complicated.”
    “Need-to-know-basis?” I asked, though I had a pretty good guess why he wasn’t going to report to the Nine anymore. Alek’s words about the Council being dissolved ghosted through my brain.
    “That’s right,” he said, throwing me a small smile that told me he’d guessed that I knew.
    It was like a word puzzle. He knew that I knew and now I knew that he knew that I knew… Fuck it. I preferred puzzles that gave me levels.
    “Why do you need us, then?” Kira asked, directing her question down the table to Noah. “Can’t secret agent man here walk in, open the cell that has the guy we want, and then walk him out again?”
    “He could, though getting out with a prisoner would be complicated, I imagine. But we are not breaking Ash out. We must get Jade inside,” Noah said. “Her father is in there voluntarily.”
    “Well, he’s locked up,” Salazar said in a mildly defensive tone. “But he doesn’t wake up much. Just eats and sleeps, and occasionally binge-watches television before passing out for another few months. Nobody knows what he is. He just walked in about forty years ago, or so the stories go, anyway. Asked for a room. Killed a guard when they told him it was a prison and he couldn’t have one. So they locked him right up. He’s never been a problem since, not in all the years I’ve been in NOS.”
    “What does he