Quinn sighed. “She’s alive because they need her.” He exchanged a look with his wife. “I think we should go to headquarters. They’re bringing Ronny in for interrogation. We’ll get more details then.”
Lilo nodded. She couldn’t wait to be face-to-face with Ronny, and tell him what she thought of him.
By the time they reached Scanguards’ office building in the Mission district, a bustling working class neighborhood with predominantly Latino influences, Quinn had already gotten word that Blake and his team had arrived with their captive in tow.
“They’re just starting the interrogation,” Quinn said, and led her and Rose down a long corridor, before opening a door with his ID card. “We can watch everything from up here.”
He motioned for her to enter, and Lilo walked into the room. It looked like a control booth from which a sound engineer monitored a recording studio. Only, the recording studio was a two-story room with nothing but a chair and a table in it. A large window allowed the occupants of the control booth to watch the goings-on in the room below, where several men were milling about. Microphones and loudspeakers ensured that the sound was transmitted into the booth.
Lilo heard the door close behind her.
Quinn now addressed the man sitting at the controls. “Thomas, you know Lilo, don’t you?”
The blond man in leather pants and a black T-shirt nodded and smiled at her. She remembered him now as Eddie’s blood-bonded mate. “I saw you at the meeting last night. Take a seat. They’re just starting.” He turned up the volume.
Lilo took the seat next to Thomas, while Quinn and Rose remained standing behind her.
She looked down into the room. Ronny was sitting in the only chair, while John hovered over him together with another man she’d seen at the meeting, but hadn’t been introduced to.
“Who’s that?”
Rose bent to her. “That’s Oliver. Our son.”
Quinn squeezed Rose’s hand, giving her a ravishing smile. “Well, he’s actually my protégé. I turned him, which makes me his sire, his father, whatever you want to call it. And Rose has graciously accepted him as her son. He and Ursula, his wife, and their son live with us.”
“Oh, I’ve met Ursula and Sebastian.”
“Aren’t they wonderful? You know, they were talking about getting their own house. Oliver sure can afford it, but I would miss Sebastian so much if they moved out. He’s such a sweet kid. And our house is too big for just the two of us anyway,” Rose said.
Lilo suppressed a laugh. A sweet kid who got into trouble the moment he was hanging out with his pals. “He is.”
The door to the interrogation room suddenly opened and Blake, followed by Samson, marched in, joining their colleagues. She couldn’t help but let her eyes roam over Blake. He was all male, all power, all confidence. He appeared almost unapproachable the way he now strode into the room and approached Ronny. Superior was the word that came to mind.
John and Oliver stepped aside to make space for Blake. He now faced Ronny, turning his back to the window from which Lilo was watching with the others.
“Let’s talk, Ronny, man to man.”
Ronny glared at him. “If she dies because you’re holding me here, I’ll rip your heart out!”
“Then you’d better answer all our questions truthfully, and maybe—”
Ronny scoffed. “Maybe what? We’ve already wasted too much time. If I don’t have the next batch ready by the time they call me, Hannah is as good as dead.”
“Then why don’t you start talking? From the beginning.” Blake leaned in. “I want to know every fucking detail, do you hear me? Or I’ll be the one ripping your heart out.” As if to underscore his threat, Blake lifted his hand.
Lilo sucked in a breath. His fingers had turned into claws, and she had no doubt that, should he really want to rip the guy’s heart out, it would be an easy task with those razor-sharp instruments.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Ronny grunted, his eyes wild when he glared at Blake.
Blake moved back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Wasn’t it?”
“No! I wanted to get out.”
“Get out of what?”
“Making the stuff. I’m into chemistry. At the beginning, I was just experimenting. You know, making the stuff to get high.”
Lilo turned to Rose. “Why didn’t he just do coke?”
“Conventional human drugs don’t work on a vampire. Alcohol, nicotine, and any other prescription or non-prescription drugs have no effect on us.”
Surprised, she focused her attention back on the interrogation.
“What happened then?”
“Well, it didn’t work,” Ronny barked. “None of the stuff I brewed was getting me high. I wanted to toss it all out, because there was no way I could sell this to a vampire when it didn’t work.”
“So you wanted to make a drug that worked on vampires and sell it on the street to make money?”
Ronny shrugged. “A guy’s gotta live. It’s not like I have a lot of job opportunities.”
Lilo rolled her eyes. There it was again: Ronny was full of excuses.
“But you didn’t destroy the drug,” Blake prompted.