Many might die.
Not just Scales.
It could be Fangs.
It could be Claws.
It could even be my Roar.
A band cinched across my chest, quiet and mean, one notch tighter with every name I might have to bury. My breaths came out short. I rolled my shoulders like I could shrug the pressure off my lungs. It stayed.
Today the war room had been packed. In the days to come, there might be tons of empty chairs and villas full of mourning families.
I swallowed hard.
It can’t be too many casualties on my side. It can’t. . .I just have to figure out where he and my brother, Akiro are hiding. If I can kill them. . .there may not need to be a huge battle.
Once I got to the exit, the pressure within my chest was now this unmovable thing. This dark passenger that would never leave me.
Reo appeared to my left. Silent, as always. His expression unreadable but eyes alert.
I thought of how my Tiger had whispered to him before departing, and how whatever she had said, triggered him to put Scales in action.
We left the room.
I looked at him. “What did my Tiger whisper to you?”
“Two things.”
I eyed him.
Reo’s expression barely shifted. “She thinks one of the new guards at the door is suspicious.”
I stopped and fully turned to him. “Who?”
“Oguri.”
The name hit me like a quiet bullet.
Two hours before the bombs went off, two different people had attempted to message the Fox from burner phones. One had been made in this hallway. Another was on the eastern side of the island.
Thankfully, my hackers had intercepted both and cut the lines before the messages went through.
And then the signals were gone.
Phones powered down.
Both vanished like they had never existed.
Phantom signals from ghost hands.
We’d been trying to trace the Fox’s remaining two spies ever since.
That was why I hadn’t gone to sleep last night. I was too anxious to close my eyes.
I studied my Roar. “Could Oguri be the one that made the phone call from this hallway?”
Reo gave a single nod. “For me, he was in the top three on the list. Had the time to make the call. He even took a quick smoke break. Afterwards, he slowly walked back to his post at the door. But for his journey. . .the last time. . .he did something different. . .he had walked within the shadows of the hallways hitting some of the cameras’ blind spots.”
