The Axe Falls: A Steamy Urban Fantasy (Dark the Night Book 4) by Ian Snow

Author:Ian Snow [Snow, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-14T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

“Let me handle the house,” she told me the next morning. It wasn’t often I made Eliana walk funny after we fucked. She didn’t heal quite so fast as me now that she was semi-human but it was pretty damn close. But she was ginger that day. I thought she’d be pissed about that and wrecking the house. Instead, she looked well and truly loony, grinning wide, her eyes a little starstruck. It was the kind of look every guy hopes to get out of his girl, and I’d sure as hell made her do it that time.

On my drive to Chestnut Grove, I got a call from one of Regis’s people, Ivan. With a thick eastern European accent, he said, “Hardt is bringing his suitcase and bags out to his rental car.”

“I’m on the road but he knows my car. Do you have another team on the Interstate?”

“Of course. Hang on,” he said, sounding almost offended by the suggestion they wouldn’t. Regis and his people weren’t fighters or violent types, but their skills at surveillance and countersurveillance were so good I hadn’t noticed them when they followed me around Vineport for a few months while Eliana was researching me. “There is a car park off the Interstate ten miles from Chestnut. You know this place?”

“I do.”

“Good. A white Prius will pick you up at the western entrance.”

I drove five miles over the speed limit to the suburban community where the car park was, found parking relatively close to the entrance in question, grabbed my gear, and jogged towards the waiting Prius. A Black woman with frizzy hair pulled back into a ponytail and wearing unremarkable aviators waited inside with a baseball cap on one finger, twirling it. She slapped it against my chest when I got in. “I’m Mary.”

“Ionas.”

“I know. I’m meeting a myth. You want to fool around some while we’re waiting?” At my expression, she bellowed laughter and I liked her already.

I donned the baseball cap and was told to dig in the back for a backpack. It was stuffed with more hats and sunglasses cases. In one of those was a pair of dark-rimmed glasses with no prescription. Between those and the baseball cap, Hardt would have to give me more than a cursory glance on the road to recognize me, though for about the thousandth time, I made a mental note to talk to an illusionist about a few disguise fetishes for situations like this. Would I do it? No. I’d forget about it until the next stakeout, but I liked to pretend someday I’d be competent at my job.

Ivan and another team of Regis’s people told us over radios that Hardt made two stops. The first was to a grocery store, where he spent so much time we thought we lost him until one of Regis’s people swept the store and found him dumping frozen pizzas, chicken nuggets, and French fries into an already overstuffed shopping cart.

Twenty minutes later he came out, shoved the groceries into the back of his rental car, and headed for a gas station.

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