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We’ve always known that Harlen was going to be a threat one day, but we didn’t expect him to make a move so quickly, and honestly, it’s frightening. It’s always the silent ones you have to be wary of. People like Paris are easy to read. I know what she wants. Hell, she fucking screams it from the rooftops every chance she gets, but Harlen goes about his business in secret. No one knows when he might strike, and that’s proven in the way that Grayson hasn’t said a damn word. He’s been lost inside his own mind, trying to figure out his father’s game plan but so far, he’s got nothing.
Carver passes me, walking right up to the cell that his mother was staying in up until only an hour ago and grips on to the bars as though there’s some kind of hidden message left behind in her cell, but it’s as empty as it was before she was put in there.
The guys begin pacing, everyone caught inside their own minds, and as Carver tries to assemble the puzzle pieces he doesn't have, my gaze shifts down the long hall to the destroyed cells at the end. It's been a matter of days since I stood down here talking to Ember through the bars when that military truck drove straight through here, destroying everything in its path. I didn’t know who was driving the truck, and while my gut is screaming that it was one of Paris’s guards, I can’t help but wonder if it could have also been Harlen Beckett.
I’m questioning everything that I know to be true and it’s fucking with my mind. “Come on,” I tell the guys, turning and walking out of the cells, hating being down here in the first place from the memories it brings of my own time locked up. “We’re not going to find anything in her cell. We should be barging down Harlen’s door and demanding answers.”
“No,” Grayson says, moving in beside me. “He’ll be expecting that and he’ll have some bullshit response already lined up. He’s the kind of man who doesn’t risk anything. He would have had an alibi sorted and people who could back it up. We need to catch him out and going in blind isn’t the way to do it. We wait.”
I let out a sigh and nod, hating the impatience that pulses through me. “Do you think he’s working with Paris?” I ask as Cruz and King follow us out, leaving Carver a few steps behind, dragging his feet as he comes to terms with just how fucked up his morning has been.
Grayson shakes his head. “No. No fucking way. He wouldn’t. He values himself and has always been able to see through Paris’ bullshit. If his goal is leadership, then he won’t bother with Paris. To him, that’s just an extra step to the top.”
“Shit,” I mutter, curling my hands into tight fists and getting high on the feel of my brass knuckles tightening over my skin. “I thought we’d be able to chill for a while before another fucking threat came at us. I mean, FUCK. We’re so close to taking down Paris. I can feel it in my veins, and now this. Why does life always have to be so fucked up around here? All I want to do is swim in my fucking pool without an assassin trying to drown me, get drunk with my boyfriends without someone kidnapping everyone’s siblings, and fuck in a goddamn cabin without it blowing into a million fucking pieces. Why can’t I just have that?”
“You’re thinking too much into it,” King tells me as we walk back through the long hallway. “Harlen has been making moves for months. He’s been having secret little conversations with all the heads, trying to campaign and win their trust. Even Montgomery outed him on your return, but you have the numbers on your side. Beckett has nothing without those numbers and he knows it. They won’t follow him. You’re the fucking star attraction, and besides, he doesn’t know that Ida spilled about his involvement in her freedom. We can use that to our advantage.”
“How?” Cruz mutters.
King shakes his head. “I’ve got no fucking idea. It sounded good in my head, and I bet it went a long way in making Winter feel better about it.”
I glance back over my shoulder, fighting a stupid grin as I roll my eyes. “I mean … it kinda did.”
King winks and my stomach flutters with butterflies and the thought flies through my mind that those butterflies would feel a shitload better going through my stomach than the knife felt going through Ida’s.
Shit. That was dark, even for me.
I shake the thought from my head and concentrate on getting my ass out of here.
