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My father nodded, but there was still guilt in his eyes that I wanted to wash away. Violence so rarely affected only the victim; its effects spread like ripples in a damnable pond.
“I reviewed my notes. Voss had been adamant Cadogan was the right House for him,” Dad said, “went on and on about its qualifications. How he’d selected it from all the others. How he deserved it. But there was nothing about the skills, the passion, the ethic he’d bring to the House. I had a bad feeling about him, and asked the guards to search his history. They found a sealed juvenile file, but we weren’t able to obtain the details. We presumed it involved violence, given the size of the file.”
“It would be in character,” I said, cold sweat beading when I recalled the hot flash of his anger.
Connor reached out, squeezed my hand. I squeezed back, collected myself. “So you rejected him?” I asked.
Dad nodded. “He applied again the next time we were open for submission, was denied again. Didn’t try a third time.”
“How did he take the rejection?” Connor asked.
My father reached out for a tablet on the coffee table. “Not well.” He swiped it, then offered the tablet to me.
He’d pulled up a list of communications, each dated about a week after the other and running for nearly four months after the last rejection.
“He sent you letters,” I murmured and opened one at random. With Connor reading over my shoulder, I found the same tone of faux intimacy in the notes he’d sent me. The excitement. Opened another, then another, and found the same escalation, from bafflement to fury to declarations of war. The mania was obvious, and so was the pattern. More evidence we’d use to keep him from hurting anyone else—if we could find him before that happened.
“This is the entire set of communications?” I asked.
Dad nodded. “There was silence after those. I assumed he’dmoved on. Joined another House, affiliated with a Rogue community. Apparently not.”
“Those were reasonable assumptions,” I said, and I handed back the tablet. “Can you send these to Theo and Petra? They’ll need to review and send them to the CPD.”
“Maybe there’s something in the letters we can use to pinpoint his location,” Connor said. “To find him, to stop him.”
Dad nodded. “Do you think his stalking has something to do with the House?”
“I suspect that’s how he learned about me—following House news—but it evolved into something else. He said in his first note he was glad I’d decided not to go back to Paris; he mentioned Paris in the loft, too. I get the sense that kickstarted this new stage.”
That seemed to loosen something in the set of my father’s shoulders. “All right.”
“What about Nicole?” I asked.
“Luc found her, as suspected, deep in meetings and with no idea what was happening here. She can’t leave New York until tomorrow—apparently there’s alleged financial fraud, and federal investigators are involved. But when she’s reached a stopping point, she’s coming here to deal with these issues.”
“What does ‘deal with’ mean?” Connor asked, moving incrementally closer to me, as if his nearness was a shield.
Dad looked at me. “The Bureau botched its handling, and she’ll deal with them directly along with members of her own guard. But she’s also insistent rules be equally applied in this, shall we say, new era. She wants to speak with you directly.”
“Interrogate?” Connor asked.
My father kept his gaze on me, strong and steady. “She hasn’t called it that. We’ve requested the meeting take place here, which is at least a minimal advantage. She agreed.”
“When?” I asked.
“Tomorrow. Midnight.”
Damn it. I’d guessed this was a possibility given Clive’s temporary arrest, but I thought I’d have more time to prepare for it. Well, it couldn’t be helped. I’d have to figure out a way through it. And, if possible, a way to use it to my advantage.
I sighed, looked at my parents. “Is the AAM truly better than the Greenwich Presidium?”
“Yes,” my parents said together, and looked at each other in a way that spoke of shared experiences. Shared fears and triumphs in the years before I’d been born.
“That’s it, then,” I said. “We’ll deal with this tomorrow. In the meantime, can I use the library?”
“Of course,” my father said with some surprise, then his gaze settled on Connor. “While you’re there, I’d like to speak with Connor.”
They looked at each other for a moment, two strong men, both important to me.
