He turns his head, glancing at me over his shoulder. “There’s one more thing.”
“What?”
“If the alarms go off,” he says, “you run to me. You don’t hide. You don’t try to be a hero. You find me.”
“Why?”
“Because if they take you again,” he says, “I’ll have to burn the city down to get you back. And I’m tired of cleaning up ashes.”
“Now go eat,” he commands. “I have work to do.”
I watch him for a second longer before turning and walking out of the gym.
The mezzanine hallway outside is silent and cold. At the far end are floor-to-ceiling windows. I walk to them and stare out at the grounds. Even from here, I can make out the deep gouges inthe earth near the service road where the crash happened, and the black scorch marks on the asphalt where the cars burned.
They wanted to see if your father would pay the bill,Cassian had said.
I press my forehead against the glass. He lied.
If the Syndicate wanted me for ransom, they wouldn’t have sent a heavily armed hit squad to idle outside a fortified compound. You don’t bring a private army to a fortress to wait for a hostage to walk out. You bring an army to wipe out the king.
And Elias.
Cassian said Elias was a blackmailer. But why would a blackmailer mark the acoustic vents? Why would he care about listening to the archives? If you want digital files, you hack the server. You don’t plant bugs in the walls.
He was trying to catch someone on tape.That’s what Cassian said in the dining room. My father, the Senator, or another VIP.
Taking a bribe? Giving an order? That was his excuse. But why is he protecting the identity of the target?
I close my eyes. The pieces are there, floating in the dark, but they don’t fit the picture he is painting. He’s hiding something. He’s protecting a secret that’s bigger than me
I’m a pawn in a war I don’t understand.
“Fine,” I whisper to the empty room. “You want to play games, Cassian? Let’s play.”
He gave me the run of the house. He saidDon’t touch the comms.
He didn’t sayDon’t touch the files.
The blueprints on the dining room table only told mehowElias broke in, notwhy. But a man like Cassian doesn’t kill someone without doing background checks. He has to have a dossier.
I head back toward the stairs. If I’m going to survive the wolves, I need to know what they are hunting.
First stop, the library. I’m going to find Cassian’s paper trail on the dead man.
17
CASSIAN
I’m standing at the window of my office, watching the tree line.
The tree line is pitch black. The thermal cameras sweep the perimeter, tracking every falling branch and wind gust in the heavy drizzle.
It’s a nightmare. A blind spot the size of the entire estate.
The lights in the office flicker. They dim, buzz, then flare back to full brightness.
“Generator transfer switch,” Varro says from the doorway, without looking up from the tablet in his hand. “The grid is unstable. If the main line goes down, there’s a ten-second delay before the backups kick in.”
