Page 69 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

That is the crux of what Riley needs to know.

Tense, Kade waits for Seth’s answer.

‘N-no one.’

‘You’re lying.’

Seth struggles against his restraints. Pointless, he must know that. He helped repair them only days ago. ‘I just wanted to get rid of the freak! I hired the PMC myself. I gave them the info they needed to get inside.’

‘All true.’ Riley is standing behind Seth, pressing the point of the blade into his neck once more to draw a thin rivulet of ruby red. ‘So now tell me who helped you?’

‘No one helped me.’

‘Someone else in Iron Star is working with you.’ Riley’s voice drops into the intimate register of midnight radio. He’s so calm he almost looks bored. You have to know Riley to read him because it’s all there in the smallest of cues, but always so well hidden. ‘And you’re going to tell us who it is.’

Riley’s eyes lift to Kade. He gives him a fractional nod.

‘Seth, we need to know,’ Kade says. ‘Tell us.’

‘I am telling you!’

‘You’re lying to us.’

‘I’m not lying!’

Lachlan sighs, shaking his head. ‘Let me do it.’

Riley doesn’t lift his focus from Seth. ‘No.’

‘You’re bad at this. I’ll break him in less than five.’

‘I don’t need your skill, Tanner. Seth is going to tell us everything because he was family, and you don’t betray family.’

‘You did,’ Seth utters under his breath. ‘You betrayed us.’

‘Seth,’ Kade warns despite himself.

‘How did I betray Iron Star?’ Riley asks.

‘By letting him stay here,’ Seth tells Riley as if it should be obvious and, really, it is. ‘By feeding him and making him one of us!’

‘He’s useful to us.’

‘Bullshit. He’s useful to you,’ Seth corrects, ‘for something that’s nothing to do with Iron Star.’

‘Everything I do,’ Riley says, barely above a whisper, ‘is for Iron Star.’

‘No, everything you do is for Kade. Do you think we don’t see it?’

Kade flexes his hands, his throat thickening.

He’s known Seth for years.

They kept each other safe in the tunnels.

‘Seth, just tell us who was helping you.’

‘No one helped me.’