“Anything from Bram on that phone?” Vigo asked, still focused on the video game.
“Not yet,” I said, "but he said it might take a few days.”
“Fucking frustrating,” Vigo said, pressing the video game controller forcefully like it might give him the answer he wanted. “Those fuckers tried to blow us to pieces and we don’t even know who they were.”
Jagger typed our order into his phone. “We know Kaprolov sent them.”
“Not for sure,” Hawk said. “Anna made it sound like Imperium Fratrum was loaded with guys like Kaprolov. It might have been him, but it might have been someone else who thought we were getting too close.”
“Or all of them,” Jagger said, setting down his phone.
A knot formed in my stomach when I remembered Anna’s words about Dimitri Kaprolov.
… a dangerous man surrounded by other dangerous men, all of them wealthy and influential beyond your imagining.
It had been bad enough worrying that Dimitri Kaprolov had painted a target on our backs. The possibility that Imperium Fratrum was after us chilled my blood.
“What about the tape recorder?” Hawk asked.
I bit my lip. “I… I haven’t listened to it.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “Not even once?”
I shook my head. “I wasn’t…” I took a deep breath. “I started playing it for Bram but didn’t get very far. We were in the cafeteria at the hospital. There were a lot of people around, and… well, I wasn’t ready, I guess. I just wanted him to know it was real, that our parents had been working on something big when they’d died, that someone had murdered them to keep it quiet.”
Hawk held my gaze from the other end of the couch. “You can’t run from it forever, Cass. We don’t let the darkness control us. Remember?”
I nodded. “I’ll be right back.”
I climbed the stairs to the second floor and went to my room. It felt like a relic from another time. I’d dumped my stuff there after we’d brought Hawk home from the hospital, but I hadn’t spent a single night in my bed. I slept with the Hawks in one of their beds instead. I didn’t even shower in my bathroom anymore.
I dug through one of my bags, removed the mini tape recorder we’d found in the ceiling of my dad’s old office at the paper mill, and brought it back downstairs.
My hands were shaking when I sat down on the sofa.
“I don’t… I don’t know if I can do this,” I said, looking at the tape recorder in my hands.
Hawk sat up and pulled me toward him.
“Your stomach…” Between the incision from his surgeries and the burn on his side, I was afraid to get anywhere near his torso.
“My stomach is fine,” he said, tucking me against the unburned side of his body.
I settled against him carefully, still holding the tape recorder.
Hawk kissed my forehead. “You can do this, Cass.”
“Yeah,” Vigo said, turning off the TV, "whatever is on that tape, we got you.”
I took a breath and pressed play.
16
CATHERINE
If you’ve found this,something has gone wrong.
I want to believe this tape will sit, hidden and unnecessary, but I know that may be too much to hope for.
