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“She betrayed us, Star. Don’t you worry—” D drawled as she cracked her knuckles. “—I will.”
68
CONOR
The journey down to the Keys required a second pit stop for gas. That was when Star asked Savannah where Dagger’s estate was so she could land the helicopter there.
Which, of course, was when we had our confirmation that the Daniels’ neighbors were, in fact, Sparrows because that was the address Reinier had smeared onto the wall before his death.
During the flight, and wired, I got to work.
Firstly, I sent the worm Star had gifted me crawling through several top-secret databases, wanting to make sure that the case files on Smythe, Reinier, and Foundry were all slowly edging out of detectives’ interests.
They were.
Secondly, I reasoned that if Anton wanted to frame us with their murders, he would have used his Pauks to store the intel, so I hacked into one of their known online playgrounds and set some Trojan horses as traps so that one of the team would let me in. Hopefully before doomsday.
Finally, I crashed into Reinier’s security system before we even crossed into his estate, and we ‘borrowed’ one of the Daniels’ SUVs to tear down a hole in a border fence.
When we made it over to the main house, it was dark and the lights weren’t on—nobody was home.
The building was surrounded by a pool which was still well-maintained as was the rest of the property.
“We need to lay low with the flashlights,” I told her. “The gated community has security patrols.”
Though she nodded her understanding, she was quiet as she picked the locks on the back door.
Hell, she’d been quiet ever since takeoff in the Catskills.
Whether she wanted to admit it or not, she liked Anton.
It wasn’t as if I could blame her—I’d come to like him too.
It was weird to think that a tyrant could be pleasant.
Having lived with one for so long, it was dichotomous to what I knew of them, but Anton was clearly a better actor than Da.
As we moved throughout the massive edifice, quietly scanning each room for signs of an office, she eventually said, “Do you know what hurts the most?”
She’d been silent for so long that her words startled me.
“It all hurts, Star,” I tried to reassure her. “You were starting to trust him.”
“Maybe I was to a certain extent. I wouldn’t have introduced him to Lyra if I didn’t think he was on our side, but when you’re undercover in the CIA, you pick up different levels of trust. He breached a few of those levels, sure, but I was always wary.”
“Sure you were,” I scoffed.
“No, I mean it,” she stated, not even a hint to her tone that she was being argumentative. “There’s a reason he hasn’t met Kat yet. So much didn’t add up but this does.” She sucked in a breath. “What hurts the most is that I’ll probably never find out what happened to my mom. Why did she have to die? Why didn’t he save her?”
“Why didn’t he save Aleks too?” I tacked on gently.
“Heirs usually matter,” she muttered, bewilderment coating the words. “I don’t understand his logic.”
“We don’t have to. We just need to take him down.”
I wanted to comfort her, but I knew in this there was no comfort to be found. The only thing that would make any of this better for her were answers. That was always her cure-all.
We were birds of a feather in that.
