She blinks, looking at the paper, then back at me.
“You killed a blackmailer?”
“I killed a man I thought was a terrorist,” I say grimly. “Turns out, I was misinformed.”
“By who?”
“By the broker who sold me the job.”
“Who?”
“The hit came through a channel that answers to power like your father’s,” I say.
She exhales, a long, shaky breath. She accepts the half-truth. Because she wants to. Because the alternative is unthinkable.
“So...” She wraps her arms around herself. “If he wasn’t a bomber... then I wasn’t in danger.”
“No,” I say. “Not from that device.”
“And you killed him for nothing.”
“Yes,” I say. Grabbing the blueprints, I roll them up, my grip tight enough to crinkle the paper. “But now I know where to aim.”
Walking around the table, I stop in front of her. The fear is still there, but the confusion is gone.
“What are we going to do?” she asks.
“We?”
“I’m not going back in the box, Cassian,” she says. “I solved the puzzle. You wouldn’t have known about the vent without me.”
She’s right. I would have stared at those Xs for another week. I would have missed the clues because I didn’t know the building. She isn’t leverage anymore. She’s with me now.
“No,” I say. “You’re not going back in the box.”
I reach out. I hesitate for a second, then I tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Her skin is warm. She leans into my touch, just slightly. An instinctive movement that tells me I’m not the only one struggling with the gravity of last night.
“We need to find out what Elias knew,” I say. “We need to find out why a blackmailer was worth sending a death squad to my front door.”
“And then?”
“And then,” I say, “we burn the people who sent them.”
I drop my hand.
“Get dressed,” I say. “Real clothes. We have work to do.”
I walk out of the dining room, leaving her in the shaft of gray sunlight. She’s safe for now.
But the Judge...
The Judge thinks he erased his mistake. He thinks he buried the truth along with Elias Vane.
He’s wrong. He didn’t bury the truth. He handed me the shovel.
16
IRIS
