Opal’s voice on the speaker cut through his spiral, the sound slightly amused and almost filled with…
Awe.
“I think she swallowed it.”
Every head turned toward the phone Con held.
A smile echoed in Opal’s voice. “The tracker. Before she left, she swallowed it.”
The silence lasted about two seconds.
“That’s—” Sinner started.
“Brilliant,” Opal finished his sentence. “It’s fucking brilliant.”
Ash closed his eyes for one second. Just one.
That was all he’d allow himself to lose his grip.
He opened his eyes and gave the order. “Follow that signal.”
* * * * *
“What kind of plan?” The voice was hoarse, and it sent a chill through her to think that it might be so rough because he’d been screaming.
Possibly tortured.
A shiver ripped down her spine and settled in the pit of her stomach like a black stone. Without her sense of sight, Ellory’s hearing seemed amplified. She turned her head in the person’s direction.
“We move our chairs together and help each other get out of these…are they zip ties?”
He huffed a breath, weighted with a thousand things he wasn’t saying. “Yours might be. Mine are handcuffs.”
She rattled her wrists to check her own and sure enough, there was a metallic clink.
“Dammit.”
“You must be The Accountant.”
She snapped her head toward him. “How do you know that?”
“Because I heard him say it. Before he put you in that chair.”
Her blood iced over. Desperation took hold. “How do we get out of these handcuffs?”
“We’d need to dislocate our thumbs to slip out of them.”
Despair made her dizzy, and she struggled through three revolutions in the darkness of her hood before she surfaced. “Do you know how to do that?”
“I’ve escaped them before.”
She sucked in a breath. “How many times?” she whispered.
“Nine. There’s no point.”
A sob rose into her throat and lodged there.
“It’s not just getting free. It’s also getting out. Then getting away. I’m not making another move until I have afullplan.”
