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“It might have been a better move to keep him with us than hand him back to Central and Winter Halo,” I said, once we’d cleared the vegetation and were scooting along some sort of track.
Jonas snorted. “If Williams lives any longer than the time it takes to get him back to Central and debrief him, I’ll be very surprised.”
“Hence my statement. He could have helped us understand—and maybe even reverse—whatever has been done to the children we’ve rescued.”
“There is no reversal. Williams was lying when he said that.” His gaze met mine. “He was in charge of the program but had no direct input. He wasn’t involved in the actual creation of the drugs being used.”
“Yes, but he’d know—”
“Undoubtedly. But sometimes to take an enemy down, you have to make a sacrifice. In this case, it’s whatever help Williams might have given us.”
I raised an eyebrow. Obviously, there was a lot more to this rescue plan than I’d been told. “What did you do?”
“I wasn’t actually throttling him, as tempting as it was. I was injecting a microtransmitter under his skin. We’ll have people close enough to listen in when he’s questioned, and hopefully we’ll gain some information about who else might be working with Sal?
?s partners.” His expression was grim as he glanced at me. “Because you can bet they’ll be involved in the debrief.”
“Great plan, but one that presumes he’ll be taken back to Central. What if he’s not?”
“Then we’re in trouble. But he will be. The rangers would balk at sending him anywhere else.”
“But if they’re ordered—”
“Such orders would risk questions being raised, and I doubt Sal’s partners would chance outing themselves that way.”
Not until they were ready to take over, anyway, and it didn’t appear they were near that point yet. “Then we’re heading back to the bunker?”
“Yeah, though it’ll be via a long and rather circular route to avoid any possibility of detection. Nuri needs to get back into Chaos before sunset.”
And I needed to get back into Central just in case Charles decided to take a break from the paperwork and legalities, and visit the woman he knew as Cat. I shifted in the seat to study Jonas. In the bright afternoon light, his profile was sharp and strong. “Any particular reason?”
He shrugged. “Just a general uneasiness. You know how it is, being a seeker yourself.”
“She’s a whole lot more than just a seeker.”
“That she is.” He glanced at me and raised an eyebrow. “Whatever the question is, just ask it.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “Why were you and Nuri caught in that rift together? The tensions between humans and shifters were very high for months after—”
“Not just months, but years,” he cut in. “Even now there are pockets of resistance within both societies, despite everyone knowing we can only defeat the Others by offering a united front.”
“So why were you both together?”
“Because Nuri is, as I said, an Albright.”
“And this is important because . . . ?”
“Because the Albrights were instrumental in paving the way for peace after the bombs were dropped. The other surviving houses wanted to fight until the bitter end, but the Albrights convinced them that peace was the only way our world was going to survive what was to come.”
“So she and her family foresaw the rifts and the coming of the Others?”
He hesitated. “She’s never really said, but I get the impression they saw the latter if not the former.”
“All of which is interesting, but doesn’t do much to answer the initial question.”
“No.” A smile made a brief appearance, then fell away. “She was sent as an envoy to broker a deal with my kin in the mountains. Central wanted to use the lands at the foot of the mountains for farming purposes, but were well aware those lands were traditionally ours. Given that forced acquisition of shifter land by humans was the cause of the war, the ruling families in Central—new and old—sent Nuri out as an envoy to seek permission and broker a deal. I was assigned to accompany her.”
“Why did the shifters allow humans to remain in positions of power after the war?”
