She blanches, as we leave the city and head to the mountains. The sky’s become starkly white, and snow’s imminent.
“Under your command?” she snorts. “Are you mad?”
“So you’re going to do this the hard way,” I say, and have to admit I feel more than a little eager that she’s gone this route. She isn’t the type to admit straight away, I’ll give her that.
I’ll have to draw it out of her.
Perfect.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, then hisses in a breath when I reach for her knee and squeeze.
“You’ve revealed things in those books that no one should know,” I begin. “You’ve given trade secrets that no one outside of the inner Clan circle would ever know. You’ve betrayed us.”
“Let go of me,” she says, her voice tremulous. “I didn’t do anything wrong, Tate. I’m not the bloody writer?—”
“Then who fucking is!”
She starts at the thunderous sound of my voice in the small interior of the car. She swallows.
“Maybe I’ve given information to someone,” she says in a little voice. “Maybe I’m an assistant.”
“Tell me the fucking truth, Fran. I’ll find it out one way or another and if I catch you lying to me?—”
“I’m not bloody lying!”
I nod slowly, and exhale as we drive up the mountain.
“Maybe I have nothing to do with the damn books.”
I squeeze her knee, and she gasps again.
“And maybe you have everything to do with them.”
She doesn’t respond at first. I’m furious that someone we trusted, someone right under our noses, has betrayed us like this.
“Do you have any idea what my brothers want to do to you?”
She doesn’t respond at first, then says in a little voice, “You mean to… the writer of the books?”
“Right. To you.”
“I’m not?—”
“Shut it.”
I’m so angry I want to pull this car over, haul her over my lap, and whip her arse until she cries. I need her to bloody listen.
“I was ordered to find the writer.”
She’s quiet, the only sound the engine as we climb further uphill.
“I was told to find the writer so we could end them.”
She doesn’t respond, fuming at the road ahead of us.
“Do you know what that means?”
“If I were the writer of the Clan Chronicles, I’d fucking know what that meant, wouldn’t I?”
