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Garrett shook his head and tangled his own fingers in his short hair. He didn’t want any of this. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be true. He couldn’t take losing someone so important to him again. Not like this, not so suddenly, not again.
He rocked back and forth on the edge of the chair. “He can’t be gone, Leon.”
“Fuck, Garrett.” Leon let out a growled sigh and knelt to put his hands on Garrett’s knees. “You know he might not be.”
Garrett didn’t stop rocking, but he dropped his hands down from his hair and clenched them into fists on his thighs. “Yes, he is.”
“Then who’s in that qesh right now?” Leon waved his hand at the door.
“Not Maxwell!” Garrett sprang to his feet, no longer quivering with disbelief but vibrating with outrage. He jabbed his finger out in the direction Leon had waved. “That is not Maxwell.”
“Was there anyone else around?” Leon raised his eyebrows as he stood. “Were there any other bodies that torvar could have come out of? They can’t survive in the open air, Garrett.”
There hadn’t been.
There had been the qesh standing over Maxwell’s dead body surrounded by concrete.
Garrett bared his teeth. “That thing might have crawled out of Maxwell’s body, but it is not him.”
Leon fixed him with a pointed glare. “Garrett.”
“No!” Garrett spun away and paced to the other side of the tiny room and then pivoted and paced back. “Who knows how long that thing’s been in there. Maybe it’s one of the pirates, and it crawled in during the fight. Or one of the civilians. Or the guards.”
“Maybe.” Leon nodded as he watched Garrett pound back and forth across the room.
“Or maybe it crawled in earlier than that.” Garrett waved a hand about in the air as he walked. “Maybe it’s a spy that killed Maxwell days ago, and I—” Garrett stuttered to a stop in the middle of the room. And he what? Just hadn’t even noticed? Had lost Maxwell without even realizing it? “And I’ve been fucking a man that doesn’t even exist.”
“No, Sebastian would have noticed.” Leon shook his head. “He’d recognize a torvar.”
“Then where is he?” Garrett turned to Leon, desperate to see Sebastian for probably the first time in his life.
But Leon grimaced. “On a mission. I can’t get ahold of him.”
Garrett sneered. “A lot of fucking help he is, then.” Typical.
Leon scowled at him, and when Garrett tried to start pacing again, Leon grabbed his upper arm to stop him. “What I’m saying is to stop jumping to conclusions and assuming the worst.”
“There’s nothing else to assume.” Garrett yanked his arm away from Leon and started pacing anyway. “Either I just watched him be murdered, or he’s been a fucking spy this whole time.” Shame seared through Garrett’s chest. “And I fucking saw it too.”
“What are you talking about?” Leon’s hand twitched out to grab Garrett again as he walked past, but he seemed to think better of it at the last minute and didn’t touch him.
“I knew he was hiding something.” Garrett shook his head. “I knew he had a secret, and I knew it was bad, and like a fucking idiot, I trusted him anyway.”
Leon shook his head. “You’re not an idiot.”
“But I should have known better!” Garrett rounded on Leon and threw his arm out. “After Thule, after my father, I should have known to trust my gut, and instead, I’ve let a fucking snake infiltrate the thing I care about the most. I’ve let down the Resistance.”
“Stop that.” Leon grabbed Garrett’s shoulder roughly and shook him. “You did trust your gut, and it told you that Maxwell was not a threat.”
Garrett’s gut had told him all sorts of things. It was his heart that had led him astray. He swallowed. “I—”
“You loved him.” Leon took his other shoulder in his hand and looked seriously into Garrett’s face. Garrett tried to jerk away, but Leon held him tightly. “You loved him.”
“I never said that.”
The lack of judgment in Leon’s face made everything worse. “You didn’t need to.”
Tears stung Garrett’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”
