Chapter 19: Corvin's Price

Pru had made eggs, which was how I knew she meant to interrogate him.

Bram sat at her kitchen table in yesterday's shirt, with his big hands around a chipped mug that said *World's Okayest Paramedic.*

Pru stood at the stove with the spatula held like a weapon.

"Rules," she said. "Number one. If you make her cry, you answer to me."

"Understood."

"Number two. I'm a paramedic. I know where everything in a human body is, and I know how long it takes to get to it."

"Understood," said Bram, very gravely.

"Number three." She set a plate down in front of him, and it was burnt on one side. "Eat that, and say it's good."

He cut a piece and ate it.

"It's good," he said.

"Liar." Pru looked at me. "I like him."

I put my face in my hands, and I was laughing, and it felt like something I had forgotten how to do.

Then the phone on the counter rang.

It was Pru's cell. The number on the screen was one she did not know.

She looked at it, and the laughter went out of the room.

"Let it ring," said Bram.

"He has her number," I said. "He's had it since he took her. He'll keep calling."

I took the phone from Pru's hand and put it on speaker.

"Good morning, Sparrow," said Corvin.

His voice was as soft as ever. If the night before had cost him anything, I could not hear it.

"I thought you'd be in a very comfortable bed by now," he said. "With a Wainwright on either side."

"What do you want?"

"My money. My men. Both are on the east pier, in the old cold-storage plant, and tomorrow at midnight I pay them what they're owed."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Called Me His Weapon, So I Died and Came Back Free from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.