Bishop closed the door, then pushed past Darius. His footsteps paused in another room, and he swore quietly.
“I didn’t kill them getting in,” Darius said, sounding so normal James would be fooled if he didn’t know the man so well. “First, I got in. Then I killed her. Then I went back out and killed the guards. Can you turn the jammer off?”
“Her?” James asked.
From the other room, Bishop called, “She’s in here.”
James waited for an explanation that never came. “Fuck you,” he muttered, shoving the jammer control at Darius. “Call Kit and tell him you’re alive, you fucking asshole.”
He barely caught Darius’s wince.
James joined Bishop in a spacious living room. Tall white ceilings and coral couches and seashell accents and a dead woman on the coffee table.
Dead bodies weren’t new. James divided the world into enemies, neutral parties, andhis. As long as the dead were enemies, he didn’t give a shit.
This one interested him from a tactical perspective. She wasn’t dressed in security gear like the corpses outside. An expensive silk lounging robe and nightgown covered her frame, and her toenails were bright red. What James could see of her face was the pristine middle age only money could buy.
Two neat bullet holes pierced her forehead. One above her right temple, the other dead center. Blood congealed in her short blond hair.
Her clothing was in disarray, revealing a gun strapped to her thigh. She hadn’t had time to draw it. Black and red geometric tattoos circled her exposed forearms.
Realization struck James in bold, sharp lines. This was the unidentified woman from the scrapbook. The one who was photographed at an art gallery with James’s dad. At a museum gala with James’s mom.
Her face looked different, slack with death.
A nameless puzzle piece. An afterthought next to more pressing leads. Yet now James stood in her home, and Darius had already killed her. Darius had run off, leaving Holden to find the body, hanging up on Kit, to kill her.
Darius wasn’t the type to overreact. Unfortunately, James was.
“Hey, D,” James said, his own voice distant, the nickname a warding charm against a firestorm. “Who is this?”
Darius exhaled into his trademark relaxed readiness. “This was Felicity Carrow. The second Rat King.”
29
plenty of rage to go around
Rage seared James’s lungs. It wasn’t true. James had imagined this over and over and this wasn’t true, it didn’t end like this.
The room blurred.
Darius was wrong. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t take this from James.
Thunder slapped the nearest wall. Darius couldn’t betray him like this.
Pain burst along James’s knuckles. He punched again, and Darius’s face snapped sideways with the blow. White plaster shone like a blinding halo.
James didn’t remember shoving Darius against the wall. Wrenching his fist in Darius’s shirt. Holding him still for another punch.
“How dare you?” James snarled. “Her head wasmine.”
He spent half his life twisting grief into purpose. Lonely years chasing a singular goal, even when he was weak and finding his family’s killers seemed impossible. Finally trusting a new family.
And Darius betrayed him.
Voices echoed, incomprehensible to James’s ringing ears. He raised his fist again. Darius wasn’t fighting back, just looking straight at him with unreadable coldness.
Not fighting back.
