I leaned against him, my head on his shoulder. "I'm starting to think Jules was right."
"I'm always right," he called out from the other side of the room. At some point, he'd started to wipe down the legs of the chairs and stack them carefully against the wall.
I rolled my eyes. At his response, not his cleaning efforts. If he wasn't so arrogant, I'd offer him a gold star.
Boner turned me around to face him. "Right about what?" Over his shoulder he called out to Jules, "Don't say ‘everything.’"
He focused his attention back on me, giving me a tired, worried smile. He looked as exhausted as I felt. He'd moved around a lot of tables, and at one point I saw him on the floor scrubbing. Humming something to himself under his breath, his customary optimism still firmly in place. The man was unshakeable, I had to give him that.
Or should I say, he was good at covering his frustration or fear? No doubt he felt it, right along with the rest of us.
"I couldn't protect her," I said. "He said I should have focused on hunting them down, not opening a restaurant. If I had, she might still be alive."
My eyes prickled with tears. I'd let her down. I'd failed her. She'd trusted me and she shouldn't have.
"What were you supposed to do?" Boner asked. "Put a collar around her neck and lead her around everywhere? She wouldn't have let you." He held up a finger when I started to respond.
"You gave her a job here. You took care of her. If you went after them instead of opening this place, where would she be? Would anyone else have given her a chance? They wouldn't.Youdid. Okay, maybe you would have found them all by now and they'd be dead, but she might also be gone either way. If not by these assholes, then by someone else."
"She would have found a way out," I argued weakly. "What about anyone else they've hurt? Like Cass and Jules' brother. Who knows how many more?"
He wiped tears off my cheek with the pad of his thumb.
"You're many things, but may I remind you you'renota superhero. What happened to Titmus the youngest wasn't your fault. What happened to Erin? Also not your fault. Didn't you once tell me you give the proceeds of the restaurant to shelters around here? How many people have you helped by running this place? Probably hundreds. Maybe thousands."
He was exaggerating, but I appreciated the sentiment. And the heart behind them. Biological and otherwise.
"We need to find them before they do anything else," I said. "They know who we are. Who I am."
"Do they?" He cocked his head. "Targeting her might be nothing more than a coincidence."
"Did Erin know what you get up to?" Jules asked. When we all turned to look at him, he shrugged. "Just saying, is it possible she was working with them? Then they turned on her."
I opened my mouth to argue, but Cass came out of the office, carrying his laptop.
"I found something on the video footage you should see." His one visible eye was laced with regret. The other was covered with hair that looked like it needed a good wash.
We gathered around the table where he placed the device and started the playback.
The footage was dark and grainy, but clear enough to make out Erin walking up the alley.
Heart in my throat, I watched her stop outside the restaurant door. Someone approached from the other direction, their face obscured.
They stopped in front of her. I expected to see a struggle, but she spoke to them, laughing at something they said. She pulledout her key and unlocked the door, gesturing for them to follow her in.
"He left about twenty-seven minutes later," Cass said. "His face turned from the camera."
"Looks like I was right," Jules said without any hint of triumph. Of course not; he'd seen what this person did. There was nothing to be triumphant about.
I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand. "Why would she be working for anyone else?" My head spun with the implications. Had she taken those photos on purpose, hoping we'd find them? If she had, what else had she done?
"Money?" Archer suggested. "Bribery? Power? The usual driving forces behind people's manipulation."
"They know what they did to your sister," Boner said. "If I was a betting man, and I am, I'd bet they've been keeping an eye on Harlow. Seeing if you'll retaliate. They know someone killed three of their number. Four now." He nodded toward the tattoos on my arm, an indicator of those deaths.
"They might be keeping an eye on Cassius and me as well." Jules looked more pissed off than usual. Slightly. The bar was high.
"They don't know we've done anything," I said. "If they did, we'd be dead right now."
