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We waited, both of us staring at the phone. The short delay seemed endless but was actually only a couple of minutes. The screen lit with the reply.
Don’t know. But P3 took out Étan.
“P3 is Rafe?” When she nodded, I said, “Rafe sent that bastard Étan to his final grave?”
“Guess so.” Ridley didn’t seem concerned. Apparently she hadn’t liked the Tremblay lieutenant any more than me.
“Good.” My lips peeled in a smile.
Étan had been sent to his final grave—and by my own brother? Another so-called “weak dhampir”? Talk about poetic justice. The only thing better would’ve been if I’d skewered the prick myself.
I focused on the first part of the text. “So either Twilight doesn’t know who’s the informer—or they’re not saying. Fuck, Ridley. We have to know. Tell them that.”
She shook her head. “Won’t do any good. Twilight won’t know. Intel is on a need-to-know basis only. That way if we’re captured, they can’t torture it out of us.”
Gods. Ridley sounded so matter of fact about the possibility she could be captured and tortured.
It made my stomach clench and my heart burn. I shouldn’t care about her. But I did.
I brought my brain back to Rafe. “We have to do something.”
Ridley texted back a TY and returned the phone to her backpack. “At least Rafael took out that prick Étan before he was captured.”
“I thought you two were working together.”
“I told you, that wasn’t my choice.” She hesitated. “Slayers, Inc., has changed in the last few years. I’m not sure whose side we’re on sometimes.”
I felt a stirring of hope. “What do you mean?”
“Just…I don’t know why SI took the contract on you and your brothers. Your father’s another story. But I don’t care how much Victorine is paying us to take you three out, too, that’s not how we work.” She grimaced. “Especially the contract on you. Now that I know you, it makes even less sense. Before I met you, I figured you must be doing something undercover for your father’s syndicate—maybe recruiting blood slaves while pretending to help those poor displaced people. But that’s not true, is it? You really do all those things—those good things—that they say you do. You’re for real.”
“I don’t know how ‘for real’ I am, but yeah, I was in Aleppo because I was trying to help. And the Kral Syndicate doesn’t keep blood slaves, not these days. My father banned the practice years ago. And if we did, we could find displaced humans right here in New York or Baltimore or Atlanta or New Orleans.” I named the cities where the syndicate had a large presence, adding, “I’m not even a made man in the syndicate. Yeah, I work for my father from time to time, but I wouldn’t recruit blood slaves for anyone.”
“I see that now.” Her lips pressed together and to the side in an ashamed expression. “I wanted to think the worst of you, so I did. I can be too single-minded. It’s a fault, and I know it.”
Her immediate, obviously sincere apology defused my anger somewhat. I jerked my chin in acknowledgment.
Ridley pulled at her lip, thinking. “Whoever informed on Rafe is someone high up. Your father wouldn’t have told many people that he was sending him to Montreal. And apparently, they knew he’d gone to Paris with Princess Zoe.”
I sank onto the mattress. “So again, we’re down to my father, his lieutenant, and maybe a few other people. Gabriel probably knew, for instance. And he could’ve told Camila, although I doubt it.”
I was still tired and my joints ached. Even my fucking eyes burned. The side effects from the silver poisoning seemed to ebb and flow, and right now I was pretty sure I was spiking a fever again.
But what did that matter compared to what Rafe was going through?
I pressed the heels of my palms to my burning eyes.
Desperate to do something. Right. Now.
But that could play into their hands. Whoever the hell “they” were.
While I was in Manhattan, I’d heard something I was still trying to make sense of. Andre Redbone, a Kral kapitán, had been slain by one of our own men. His elimination, along with my disappearance, had sent shock waves through the Kral Syndicate.
“Zaq?” Reaper’s concerned voice made me lower my hands.
“Yeah.” My mind was spinning five different directions like a juggler rotating a plate on his right index finger, his left index finger, a foot, his knee and his nose. “We need a plan.”
“They can’t know I’m helping you.” Her brows were lowered, her mouth pulled into a distressed, sideways oval.
