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Iris: a contact inside the speare estate
I stare at my phone, incensed by this cagey response. Iris might be a private person, but she’s never kept important information from me. Is she really saying that all this time, she had someone inside Morgan’s estate who could report on Clara’s status?! Someone she apparently considers ‘hers’ and who calls her ‘love’? How many times during the last three days could she have told me this, and chose not to?
It takes a huge amount of effort not to send a short and sweet WTF in response. Instead, I focus on something much more important.
Me: WHEN did you get this?
She doesn’t answer. Instead my phone buzzes again, again, again, as Iris sends a flurry of texts to our group chat with the rest of the raid leaders. She resends the picture of Derrick Lindman, then:
Iris: smthg not right
Iris: cops not with us
Iris: watch your
That last message is clearly incomplete. Something cut her off, or startled her, making her send it too soon. Every nerve ending in my body feels like it’s woken up. Instinct puts a gun in my hand before I even raise my head from my phone, not caring if I look suspicious now as I scan the intersection around me.
The undercover couple is getting up across the street. Graham turns, confused- they’re breaking character too soon. One of them reaches into their jacket. Pulls a gun.
The window of the shop Graham is standing in front of explodes.
Before his body hits the ground, the entire intersection erupts into chaos. Guns fire from rooftops, putting half a dozen holes into the cop that shot Graham. Graham himself is clutching his stomach and trying to drag himself around the corner of the building. The second cop, already aiming at me, gets off a shot before diving behind a car for cover. My bullet hits her right between the eyes, and hers hits-
Pain explodes in my torso, doubling me over for a helpless second.
Without my body armor, the bullet would have gone straight through my liver. With my body armor, I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut by a hammer, and it’s a struggle not to throw up.
Behind me, I hear the scrape of a shoe on the pavement. I fling myself to the side, trying to dodge whatever’s coming, but a bullet tears through the meat of my right arm and another hits me in the back, just missing my spine. I slam into the brick wall of the bar, something white hot hits me in the head, and-
CHAPTER 35
Clara
After Paul takes the picture, he wordlessly holds out a hand, his face set in a grim line. I tear the portrait of Derrick Lindman out and stuff the pieces down the drain, then hand the sketchbook and pencil over without protest. Paul doesn’t give me a chance to thank him- or apologize, or ask if he really is going to send the picture to his friend- before he leaves my cell and locks the door behind him.
Hours pass. I pace back and forth across the tiny floor until I’m dizzy, willing Paul to return with news every time I turn back toward the door.
He doesn’t.
Finally, I have to sit back down and sleep. I don’t know how long it’s been since I last slept. I’ve had three meals since I was put in here, and I’d like to delude myself into thinking this means I’ve been in here for one day. But the growling pain in my stomach and the fogginess in my head says that each meal was my only meal per twenty-four hour period. Most likely, I’ve been in here for three days at least.
Was I too late? Did Paul even send the picture?
He had to understand what I was trying to do, and the implications of going along with it. But he brought me my art supplies, and he took the picture. Maybe he could talk himself into believing that texting the picture to his friend wasn’t traitorous unless his friend understood what the picture was saying, which was out of his own hands. Or maybe he realized that maintaining a conversation with a Warwick over all these years, no matter how innocent, had always been a betrayal of my uncle, and so it was pointless to cling to loyalty that had already been broken.
Or maybe… he had just been humoring me to ease the boredom of my captivity, and he never meant to send the picture at all.
The worst part of all of this is that there’s nothing I can do but wait for Paul to come back.
At some point, I must have started dozing in the corner, because when the door bangs open, I startle awake. The room spins strangely, but there’s no mistaking the figure in the doorway for anyone but Uncle Morgan.
My heart is beating too hard. I struggle to my feet as my uncle comes into the room, and another man appears behind him. I have to stifle a gasp. It’s Paul, and one of his eyes is a black, puffy mess.
Did he go to my uncle and confess my plan, only to be punished himself? Is he here to torture me under my uncle’s supervision?
But when Uncle Morgan opens his mouth, it’s not to accuse me of sedition. Instead, he puts his hands on his hips and says,
“You’ve run my dog in enough circles, girl. You’re going to tell me whatever you told Warwick while you were warming his bed, and you’re going to do it before I start removing fingers.”
