The old man knew her too well. He knew that by saying don’t go out she was going to go out. Annja wasn’t the kind of woman you could tell what to do. He’d known she was going to dive head-on into the investigation the moment she’d called simply because there was something strange going on. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know what it was. That only ensured she’d chase down every possibility until she did know. He wasn’t worried about her well-being; she was more than capable of dealing with the threat gripping the city of Prague. That was not the issue. The issue was that he knew who the killer was. Or rather, what. And it was his job to take care of it, not hers. Maybe once upon a time, like in the fairy tales, he could and should have taken care of it, but he’d screwed up and the opportunity passed. How many people had died because of his mistake? More than the handful of most recent victims, that was for sure. That wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg. This time he was going to have to take care of it, no matter the cost to him, even if that cost was his life, which he suspected it would be.
