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“Enough. We all agreed to hear Nat out,” Stryker starts. “So, King, sit the fuck down, and let her finish.” King pulls out his chair dramatically, making a lot of noise and huffing as he sits down. He extends his arm in a gesture to let me know I’m now allowed to proceed.
“Look, I know I deceived everyone here, and I will do what I have to in order to make it up to you. I truly do not know why I was told to join this team. Andrei told me to apply for this team and that I shouldn’t have a problem getting on it.” Conrad and Stryker’s eyes shoot to each other.
“How would they know you wouldn’t have trouble getting a spot?” Stryker asks.
“I was never told that. When it comes to me, the less I knew, the better chances I had of surviving another day,” I explain to Stryker. Conrad opens his laptop again and starts typing away.
“It all looks legit,” Conrad confirms. “It’s just a basic application.” He pauses, and his eyes narrow on the screen. “Well, hold on a second. The job opening was posted about two minutes before Nat applied and then shut down shortly after she submitted it. She’s the only application that came through.”
“Can you see who put up and shut down the job listing?” Stryker asks.
“No,” Conrad answers. “But we never post job listings. This team is supposed to be more under the radar, with everyone being recruited and not actually having to apply. I’m not sure why they would have someone apply at all.” He looks back up to Stryker. “Whoever did this was trying to make it seem legit to anyone that might check on this team.”
“I’m not sure this information helps, but I also never interviewed. I received a call telling me I had a position and to meet Walter Ingram. The number was unknown, though,” I offer, looking at Conrad, and he nods his head to me.
“I have your phone, so I’ll go through it to see if anything can be traced,” Conrad says.
“I honestly don’t know why they sent me to Chicago. I’ve never even been here before,” I comment, unsure what else to tell them.
Alexie clears his throat next to me. “I can answer that. I saw a guy following me one day, but I was able to lose him. You told me my dad sent you to find me. If he was told I’d been seen here, it would make sense to send you to where I was last seen as well.” Alexie pauses for a few moments, but I don’t interject because I can tell he has more to say. “To come completely clean, I knew you were here for about two weeks before you saw me. I was trying to gather information about why you were here. Using any and all contacts I could. I was working on a plan to pull you out and for us to go get Katia and disappear.”
I’m out of my chair in seconds. “You knew I was here, and you even saw me!” I shout furiously. “Why didn’t you just come to me? I could have helped you.”
“There was no way,Malyshka. I didn’t know who my dad’s inside man was. I actually suspected someone at this table might be it.” He looks towards King. “Sorry, man.”
“Why, King?” I ask.
“I saw him talking to a man I knew was getting information for my dad. His name was Martin or Martian, or…”
“Marvin?” BJ asks loudly.
“That’s it!” he agrees, snapping his fingers at her before he continues to speak. “I still have a lot of contacts. Guys that don’t really want to work for my dad and guys who owe me some favors. One of them let me know that this Marvin character was keeping an eye out. He’s not the inside man handling everything, though, because Marvin’s involvement was only more recent. He was really looking into you, though.” Alexie gestures to me. “He got busted digging and was blackmailed to relay information.”
“Why was he digging into me?” I look over to King because I already know the answer.
“Yeah. I told Marvin to look into you a little bit. I didn’t trust you, and clearly, I was right. Conrad wouldn’t do anything, and Stryker would have told me to stop,” King says it all so confidently as if he has no regrets about it.
“King, you asshole!” BJ shouts out. “You got Marvin involved in all of this, and that’s why he’s dead. You realize this, right? He asked me to meet him at Red’s that day. I could have been killed because you couldn’t back off!”
King’s face drops a little, looking as though some regret is sneaking past his walls. “I’m sorry, BJ, but Marvin is the one that sent me the video of Nat. Without him, we may have never known what she did.”
“Use your head, King,” Conrad takes over his verbal lashing, blowing me away with the fact that he’s standing up to King. “How the fuck do you think Marvin acquired that video? I guaranteed she wasn’t doing what they wanted her to, and so they turned her in. Marvin didn’t get the video, it was given to him.”
“Stop!” I yell at both of them. “King wasn’t wrong about me. He’s not to blame. The ones we need to be looking at are Andrei and Ivan.” Goosebumps form on my arm as I say his name. “You’re right too, Conrad. Andrei kept giving me warnings to hurry up. He threatened all of you, and I just couldn’t bring myself to turn my back on you, even if that’s how this all started. So, maybe…I’m the one that really should be to blame here.” I end my rant with no steam and a big ol’ pile of shame.
“I think we all agree on that one,” Marcela sneers.
“Stop,” King says quietly yet sternly to her. “This whole situation is fucked. Something still seems off. Luci, how exactly did Andrei propose finding Alexie using our team?”
“I didn’t know at first either, but it now makes sense if Alexie was in Chicago the whole time. I did sneak onto Conrad’s computer once to get information, but nothing turned up,” I reveal, looking at Conrad. I mouthsorryto him. “Honestly, I’m starting to think I was sent here as bait to lure Alexie out. And it worked. I never had any new information to give Andrei when he checked in, and no matter how hard I tried to tell him that there was nothing here, it was like he already knew that. So he just kept threatening to send Ivan, and I continued to dig, hoping to find something. But now he’s here. I know Ivan’s the one responsible for the bombing at Reds. He’s always loved a good fire.”
“Okay, let me get this straight. Because you said that, even though it started as you were infiltrating the team to get information on this guy,” he says, pointing to Alexie before continuing. “It somehow changed to you not wanting to turn your back on us, but that’s exactly what you did. What changed? Why?”
“In the beginning, it was just a job to find Alexie. I was to use your team’s resources to gather what I could on his location. But then I started to feel things, and well, somewhere along the line, it changed. I wanted to make this my real life, my future. I should have come clean and told you everything from the moment Katherine’s picture showed up on that screen. I will always regret the choices I made regarding you all. I am truly sorry. I never wanted anything bad to happen to any of you. But Andrei just kept threatening to send Ivan if I didn’t comply,” I plea.
“Can we focus on who exactly this Ivan person is? I seriously can’t find a thing on that name or Umbra. No stories or rumors either,” Conrad interjects.
“He’s a monster,” I tell them. “He is the enforcer for Andrei. He leaves no one alive, only leaving destruction behind him. They call him Umbra, or shadow, because no one knows him or what he looks like outside the inner circle.”
