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TWO
Decima
After I’d finished tellingthe crew about my first conversation with my birth father, I couldn’t stop pacing the room. Which wasn’t for the best, because the hotel we were staying in was a converted factory that’d kept many industrial-style features for atmosphere. The ceiling of the large suite held bare heating ducts, two of the walls were old brick… and the lighting fixtures dangled on steel cables at random intervals, just low enough that I could bonk my head on them if I wasn’t careful.
I wasn’t so sure about that particular design choice.
“It sounds like the meeting went well,” Julius said as I dodged one of the dangling lamps.
I peeked at the leader of the Chaos Crew from the corner of my eye, not bothering to say anything. He should have looked intimidating with his substantial height and brawn and the spiky tattoo that showed around the collar and sleeves of his tight-fitting shirt, but I could tell he was hesitant to make a more definitive statement. Julius rarely showed uncertainty, but he cared about us more than he would have openly admitted. The last thing he would have wanted was to hurt me by saying the wrong thing, especially when the stakes were so high.
Garrison, on the other hand, rarely set aside his casually disaffected mask. He shrugged, his hazel eyes cool. “I don’t think you could have expected it to go much better, honestly.”
I shifted my gaze to the lightbulb that hung alone above my bed, squinting as the brightness seared into my eyes. They didn’t understand. With a sigh, I flopped onto the admittedly luxurious mattress. The Chaos Crew always picked high class, if sometimes unusual, accommodations.
“It doesn’t matter how well that first chat went,” I said. “He knows nothing about me. I could barely tell him anything. He’d never be able to accept who I really am—what I’ve been doing all this time… He’d probably want me shipped off to a maximum-security prison.”
Blaze, in his usual upbeat manner, shook his head with a swish of his pale red hair and moved to sit at the other end of my bed. “I don’t think you’re giving him enough credit. He is your dad. He’s finally got you back in his life after thinking you were dead for so long. How could he give that up?”
I turned my head and raised my eyebrows at the hacker. “You know more about his anti-crime policies than I do. He’d like to see small-time drug dealers serving 20 years in federal prison, so how do you think he’d react to an assassin who’s murdered her way around the globe?”
Garrison snorted. “Obviously you wouldn’t tell him about that part.”
“So I’ll be lying to him the whole time. And it might come out anyway. Even if I keep it hidden, how could he possibly relate to me?”
Talon, normally a solemnly quiet presence among the others, stepped forward with a flex of his square jaw. “We don’t kill innocent people. We take down the same criminals that he wants to put away for life. It’s not so different.”
I grimaced. “You don’t kill innocent people. I’ve been doing it my entire life without knowing it.”
“Which is exactly why it isn’t your fault,” Julius pointed out. “And you’ve taken up our approach since then. By killing criminals, you’re helping his agenda, exactly as Talon said. Maybe you can’t tell him that, but you can remember that in a way, you’re on the same page.”
They were trying to reassure me, but even from the short time I’d been studying Damien Malik, I felt sure he’d never see my situation that way. He’d think I was an even worse criminal than the ones I’d eliminated. If he ever realized what I was and what I’d done, any familial warmth would vanish in an instant.
I’d lose the only real family I’d ever had before I’d really gotten a chance to experience what it was like having one.
And that was if he called me back at all. What if the test he ran on my saliva got messed up and gave him a negative? What if he decided having me back in his life would be a complication his career couldn’t afford?
I groaned and flung my arm over my eyes in a way even I knew was overdramatic.
Garrison tsked his tongue at me and headed to the suite’s kitchenette with a swipe of his hand through his shaggy blond hair. “It’ll be fine. And any part of it that’s not fine, we’ll make fine. I brought a couple of tins of hot cocoa mix with me—including one of your favorites. I’ll make you a cup, and you can focus on that instead of this guy who should have jumped at the chance to have you as a daughter.”
My lips twitched with a hint of a smile at the understated compliment in his words. Garrison didn’t often give out anything resembling praise—and I didn’t think he liked sharing his treasured hot chocolate all that much either. Beneath his typical snark, I knew he cared about me too.
The thought of hot chocolate filling my mouth sent a spark of excitement through me despite the uncertainty and stress that had taken over my senses. I shook my head anyway. “I’m still a little jittery from the caffeine I drank earlier,” I admitted. “I’ll stick with water for now. Why don’t you tell me what you and Blaze found earlier? That’ll take my mind off things.”
I hadn’t been the only one at work when I’d confronted Malik. Blaze and Garrison had been continuing their own mission investigating the bombing at his office. If it’d been connected to the same people who’d run the household, we needed to know ASAP—and then we needed to deal with them before they attacked my father again.
Garrison leaned back against the counter, his mouth twisting. “I talked to a lot of people. No one saw much other than presumably those who were killed by the initial shots or the blast following it. Everyone seems to honestly believe that Malik was targeted by an extremist who disagrees with his politics, someone acting independently. But none of them had any real proof of that.”
Julius rubbed his jaw. “What are they making of Malik’s reaction to the attack?”
“If anything, it’s bolstered people’s good opinions of him,” Garrison said. “He’s been the perfect boss, accommodating and kind in all the ways that matter. He’s visited the families of those who were killed, and he’s given a substantial number of extra paid days off for the close friends of those who were lost.”
“That seems like a good sign in general,” Blaze said. “He cares about the people he works with.”
The people he worked with weren’t mass murderers, but I didn’t say that out loud. “So, you weren’t able to figure out much about the bomber from the people you talked to.”
Garrison sighed and made an apologetic expression at me. “They didn’t have much to cough up. If they’d tried to dodge my questions, I’d have gotten it out of them.”
