Justice for Francesca (Six Paths to Justice #1)

23. A Friendly Dinner with Deadly Desserts

23

A FRIENDLY DINNER WITH DEADLY DESSERTS

Francesca

F rancesca, clad in one of Tripoli’s Navy sweatshirts and a pair of well-worn jeans, sat at the dining room table, her bare feet up on the chair he had abandoned a few moments earlier. She was groaning and hiding her face in her hands as he passed his phone to Mickie and Cruz. Somehow, he had pictures of her from when she’d been undercover at The Library. Several of them. She’d forgotten he’d taken the group shots—shots she’d tried to avoid being seen in for obvious reasons—and now Cruz got to see her club gear.

A wolf whistle came from Cruz. “Holy shit, Frankie, you’ve got some nice legs,” he teased.

“Yes. Yes, she does,” Tripoli agreed.

“I was more distracted by the cleavage,” Mickie said.

“The glory of a push-up bra,” Francesca mumbled.

“Yeah. I wouldn’t know anything about those,” Mickie admitted. She glanced at Cruz, a knowing look in her eye. “Well. I wore one once. Unfortunately, these babies can’t be contained by those tiny little things.”

“They were contained just right, which is to say, I thoroughly enjoyed putting you back together when you popped out of it.” Cruz kissed his girlfriend’s cheek, then scrolled to the next picture, which was Fleur and Tilly doing some sort of body shots off of each other. It had been a rare night where she’d forgotten herself for a while and was just Fleur, the friend, not the undercover FBI agent. He flashed the screen at Francesca. “You really liked her, didn’t you? I mean, as a friend.”

Sadly, she nodded. “Yeah, I did. Everyone liked Tilly. She was young and immature, sometimes shallow, but she was barely legal. Everything was so new to her at the club, and she embraced everything.”

Cruz swiped to the next picture, this one of Francesca sitting side by side with Tripoli in a booth. Someone else had taken the picture—she had no idea who—and sent it to him. They were immersed in some sort of conversation where their heads were close together, and they were smiling about something. They looked like a real couple who were in love.

“Okay, enough drooling over your coffee-wife,” Mickie admonished. She snatched the phone from Cruz’s hands and handed it back to Tripoli. “I’ll help clear the table. You can talk to Francesca, but no drooling!”

Francesca shook her head and rolled her eyes. “She knows you have eyes only for her, I hope.”

“Yep. I make sure she knows it. However, she brought up the cleavage, not me. I was too distracted by the legs. Those are safe to notice.”

They both chuckled again and lapsed into silence.

“How’s Michael?” She knew she shouldn’t ask because it would put Cruz in a tough spot. Technically, he couldn’t discuss the case with someone not on the investigative team, even though she knew ninety-five percent of the details.

“He’s hanging in there. Still refusing to talk to the lawyer Tripoli hired for him. Lawyer’s working his ass off to help Michael, but there’s no way the judge is going to set bail for the man, given the circumstances.”

Francesca played with her dessert fork, pushing the last crumbs of the banana cake around on her plate. “He didn’t do it,” she murmured. Sneaking a look at Cruz, she saw only a blank expression. A sigh escaped her. “Sorry. I don’t mean to put you in this position. I broke a single rule, and now it seems like I can’t stop breaking them.”

“Freeing, isn’t it?” He chuckled. “C’mon, you don’t think I would have thought of this situation before coming over here tonight?” Cruz looked behind him to where Mickie and Tripoli were, working together to rinse dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. “Why do you think Tripoli let Mickie in the kitchen to help? He knew you’d ask questions. He knew I’d answer them. Plausible deniability for them.”

“You still think this is the work of my brothers? It just seems so far-fetched.”

“Well, we still haven’t pinpointed where they are, which is highly suspect, wouldn’t you say? All three McCabe brothers out of the precinct at the same time? No other suspects match. With the exception of Michael, who has no alibi for the times of any of the murders, and Triumph, who has no alibi for Tilly’s murder and Tilly as his alibi for the first two, none of our searches are coming up with suspects.”

“It’s just…” She shook her head, eyes wide. “It’s difficult to believe that my family would do this.”

“So… the odd searches traced to your computer and the file saved to the hard drive labeled ‘The Four Horseman’ is nothing they would be concerned about?”

Through her eyelashes, Francesca stared at him. Fuck. They knew. Of course they knew. They were the FBI. “Am I under investigation?”

Smiling apologetically, he folded his napkin and laid it on the table. “I was dropping off your suitcase in the bedroom, and the search running caught my eye. Sorry. Nosey. FBI.” He shrugged. “Could all of this be happening because you’ve been looking into something that your family is mixed up in, and now they feel threatened?”

“I’ve been very careful.”

“Maybe not careful enough. Earlier this afternoon, I asked Triumph to do some hunting for me.”

“Not the FBI techs?”

“You want me to turn the FBI loose on this? You won’t just be off the case; you’ll be suspended at the very least.”

“For looking into cold cases? We’re allowed to do that.”

“Not shit that involves your own family.”

“If the FBI doesn’t know I’m looking into them, how would they?”

“Because criminals are paranoid, and the FBI is overworked. Unless someone tells a tech to look into something, they’re focused on whatever emergency is on top of the pile.” Cruz glanced over his shoulder at the kitchen to make sure Mickie and Tripoli were still busy. Confident they wouldn’t be returning to the table in the next few minutes, he continued, “As I was saying, I had Triumph do some digging to trace your family’s movements. While you were undercover in the mafia case in Dallas? Your father was in the same fucking city. The day you made contact with the Sequeira don? He had your brothers gearing up, and then over the next six days, one brother left the city every other day. No one has heard so much as a sniffle out of any of them since.”

Arms crossed in front of him, he leaned onto the table’s surface. “When did you learn your father was working for Sequeira?” he whispered.

Sucking on her lower lip, Francesca considered her options. “I was just gathering information. I wasn’t doing anything with what I found, so I really didn’t think it was anything all that dangerous. Then, one night, I’m getting ready to go out and make first contact with Santiago, and who the hell is sitting across from the man in the restaurant? My fucking father and some big bodyguard type in a suit. I’ve just been poking around to see what the exact connection is.”

“Yeah, well, it looks like your poking around woke a sleeping dragon. Did he see you?”

“At the time, I didn’t think so. I nixed my plan for the night. Dad wasn’t with him any of the other times he’d been in the restaurant, so I was caught by surprise. Nothing in our workups suggested that the two men knew each other. That’s why I was digging.”

Francesca groaned. The searches really had been cursory. Her undercover assignment had her posing as a restaurateur who needed backing for a location in Dallas. It had taken months to establish her cover and make surface-level contact, then slowly gain more than just “Good evening” and “How’s your food?” and other superfluous chitchat as she circulated tables. Two months before the operation eventually ended, she’d seen her father and begun her searches. She’d had to wait a week to make sure her father was back home and then try again to get an audience with Sequeira. It had taken two additional weeks, but she finally got a series of sit-down dinner meetings with the don to discuss business and financial backing and another month of proving herself before they were able to rope him in.

“So what’s the connection?”

“As far as I can tell, it has something to do with the purchase and sale of artwork. Seems awfully high society for my father, but he always did have aspirations of moving up in the New York social world. Not himself, per se. Just within his territory so that he could make more money. He was pissed when I became a cop because he couldn’t shop me out to single men in the political world of the city as a bargaining chip for a foot in the door.”

“Aren’t arranged marriages out the door in this day and age?”

“No, unfortunately. However, he really didn’t have much hope of it working. I’m strong-willed, but there’s only one thing I might have caved in over.”

Cruz stared intently. “Michael.”

“Exactly. Because we were so close in age, though, Michael wasn’t vulnerable long enough for my father to make his plan stick.”

“So how does all of this connect to the Sequeiras?”

“You told me yourself that there is a Sequeira brother in New York City who launders money for the family through a gallery there. It’s the only connection I could find, but my father’s name is never mentioned in connection with anyone from the Sequeiras, the gallery employees, or the gallery itself. That’s why I’ve been running these computer searches.”

“What about your brothers? How do they fit into this?”

“They weren’t at the restaurant that night, but where Oisin McCabe goes, the triplets go, as far as crime. The four of them are bound by more than blood.” Shaking her head, she let out a puff of frustration. “That’s why this all seems so crazy to me. I have no proof. All I know is that I saw my father eating dinner one night in a restaurant with the Sequeira don. I didn’t even tell anyone I saw my father there.”

“People aren’t rational in their decision-making paradigm a lot of times. They lead with their emotions. If he saw you, which seems the most likely option, and he knows you work for the FBI, he might get twitchy. You know you’re steering clear of your family, but it’s even possible your file searches tripped a booby trap alerting him that someone was looking into him, and he finds out it’s you, so now he thinks you’re a threat. You’d be able to turn evidence on him in a heartbeat.”

“I just wanted to know what he was doing. I had no intention of doing anything with the information if I found any.”

“No, but you could! They have no clue what you’re thinking or why you’re doing it. I get it. Information is power, and forewarned is forearmed, so to speak. If anyone at the bureau comes at you about his actions, you’ve got a clue what’s going on, and you’re not ambushed. But this has backfired in the craziest of ways, and now we need to take care of it.”

She bit her lip, eyes studying the destroyed cake on her plate.

“Ask, Frankie. You know I’ll tell you. The only reason you’re off this case is because you took yourself off it.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe I should have let Ortiz keep me inside. Maybe I could have helped Michael somehow indirectly. Something’s so wrong about the whole confession procuring.”

Cruz scoffed at her statement. “Well, he confessed to nothing. He’s just not talking, which makes me wonder why he even showed up to surrender himself. As for Ortiz, she spouts the party line when it suits her and plays fast and loose when it doesn’t. It’s a demand of the job, which is why you and I have no designs on a job like that. We prefer being agents, so we don’t have those headaches. There’s enough bureaucracy in the bureau without us having to get involved.”

“Try saying that five times fast,” she joked.

“I don’t want to sprain my tongue. I might need it later.”

“Eww.” Francesca laughed and threw her napkin at him. “I did not need that mental image.”

“What can I say? I’m a giver.”

“I’m going to let that comment pass.”

“I’ll let you off the hook this time. So… ask. What do you want to know?”

“What did Michael say in his interview?”

“Nothing about you looking into family history. All he did was confirm what he told you on the phone. He got a message from Tilly; he went home to find her in tears because she’d had an argument with Triumph, and they talked. He wouldn’t say what about. When he left, he told her she was welcome to stay in his apartment as long as she liked because he was going to be gone for a week or so, and when he left, he took a black crate with him. He took it into the club around five a.m. and was out ten minutes later. He wouldn’t say what was in the crate or where he went. Unfortunately, while the video feed shows him coming into the club, there’s no outgoing footage. Someone worked their magic on the cameras again.”

Cruz, sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up, tie still knotted but loose and hanging around his neck, leaned back in his chair. “I’ll tell you one thing. He’s scared. He’s hiding it well, but something has him terrified. I’m pretty sure he wants to talk, but something’s holding him back, and whatever it is? I’d bet my job it has something to do with you.”

“You think he knows something, and he’s protecting me.”

The agent nodded. “Yup.”

Tripoli’s phone rang, and Francesca heard him pick it up. The conversation was quiet, but she saw Mickie in profile, looking at him with concern, and Tripoli giving her a head tilt toward the dining room. When she arrived in the room, her hand touched Cruz’s shoulder, her eyes wide. “Something’s happening.”

Cruz looked at Francesca, and both of them rose from the table. He glanced toward Tripoli at the breakfast bar. Something in Tripoli’s gaze had Cruz heading for his jacket where he left his gun. Francesca went to the bedroom to get hers. When she came back out, Cruz had his holster on. She checked to make sure she had a round in the chamber of her own weapon and the safety on.

Tripoli disconnected from his call and crossed to the wall between the kitchen and the elevator. He pushed on it, and a small door opened, revealing four small black-and-white television screens. “That was Cosmos. Looks like your flight from the FBI was passed on. We’ve got movement. Three men in black. Two coming from the rear and one from the front. Looks like you were right, Cruz.” He looked at Francesca. “The McCabe welcome wagon has arrived.”

Stepping up to the screens, she swore. “Yep. It’s them. Those frickin’ idiots. Why couldn’t they just stay in New York City? I’m no threat to them.”

Cruz looked at Tripoli. “I figured they’d come for her quickly, but not tonight. Something pushed their timetable up. Where can we stash Mickie?”

“My bathroom should be safe enough. There’s a small panic room through the shower. You claustrophobic?” he asked Mickie.

Her mouth opened and closed like a fish before she managed to squeak out, “Maybe?”

Cruz kissed Mickie’s forehead. “Go. Close your eyes. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. I’ll be there as soon as this is done.”

“Be careful,” she whispered.

Frankie saw the worry in the woman’s eyes, but she also saw the love they had for each other communicated between them as well. The pixie-haired woman pressed a desperate kiss against his mouth, then followed Tripoli into his bedroom and then the bathroom.

Cruz shared a look with Frankie. “Who’s who out there?”

Squinting at the screens, she determined who was who of the triplets. “Rory and Fionn are coming from the back. I don’t see Mannix. My father is the one coming from the front,” she replied. “And he’s more deadly than the other three combined. Be careful, Cruz. He’ll shoot first and ask no questions. He has no moral compass, and he definitely has no compassion or empathy.”

Francesca turned and went into the bedroom to find Tripoli in his walk-in closet, opening his safe. “Ethan?”

He pulled out his gun, loaded the magazine into it, checked the safety, and put one in the chamber. “Can’t protect you without a weapon, Francesca.”

“You don’t need to be involved in this.”

He crossed to her. “Yes, I do. I was asked to protect you for a reason.”

“You were a medic. I mean, obviously, you can use a gun, but?—”

“But nothing, Francesca. There’s a reason this medic was with the Raiders. C’mon.”

They jogged out to the living room only to find Cruz in front of the security panel that Tripoli had opened. “Where are your guys, Tripoli?”

“Cosmos and Triumph will be inside. Cameras are on and recording both sound and visual. Cosmos’ crew is across the street with his sniper on the roof. Hubble has a no-miss record. They’ll watch and follow them in, but unless gunfire starts on the McCabe side or I give them the distress code, they will not engage.”

“Understood.” Cruz looked at Francesca. “Crash course in the family. What can we expect?”

“They’re hunters.”

She watched Tripoli look back at the security camera footage and process that information. “So your brothers flush out their prey toward your father, who makes the kill.”

“Exactly. And they’re wicked smart. Be prepared for them to fake you out. No matter how many contingency plans you have, they’ll have at least five more.”

“Good thing the Raiders always had ten more.”

“He’s got jokes,” she muttered. “I’m telling you, nobody hunts like they do.”

The elevator dinged. All three of them looked at the screen with surprise. Her father was heading straight for them. The McCabe brothers had split up and either had already entered the building or were about to from separate exits.

Suddenly, the lights went out, and all the electronics in the building died.

“That was fast. The generator will kick in shortly,” Tripoli advised them.

The lights flickered back on, and the hum of the refrigerator and the ambient noise of the lighting returned for about fifteen seconds, and then everything went black again, including the security screens. The elevator showed it was holding on floor three.

“I take it they got to the generator,” Cruz said.

“It would appear so.”

“Mickie?”

“She’s going to be stuck until we can get the power back up,” Tripoli admitted. “She can’t get out, but no one can get in either. Don’t worry. She’ll have plenty of air. I made sure it had hidden ventilation, just in case.”

“That backfired on them. Dear old dad is stuck in the elevator.”

“Doubtful,” Francesca told him. “Red herring. He probably exited through the topside panels as soon as he got into that elevator.”

All three took the safety off their weapons.

“How long do you think we have before he makes a move?” Tripoli asked.

“They’re incredibly patient, so your guess is as good as mine.” Francesca gave them the details on her brothers. “Rory’s a climber. He’ll likely come at us from above, and he loves his knives. Gut you like a fish if he has an opportunity, but much slower. He enjoys watching people suffer. Mannix is the best at hand-to-hand fighting. Sneaky as shit. A human blunt instrument. If he shows up, whatever you do, stay out of range of his fists and feet. Fionn is the best shot, but he will not hesitate to shoot you in the back. Watch behind you at all costs.”

“Your father?”

“Oisin McCabe is plain poison. He’ll come guns blazing, and I mean plural. You’ll see two or three, but there are more. Trust nothing he says. Everything is a lie, and don’t count on things being opposite of what he says. Just know it’s a lie.”

“I hate to ask what your mother was like,” Cruz muttered.

“Nicest woman on the planet until you bad-mouthed one of her boys. Well, except Michael. She found him to be useless, tainted by me. You don’t want to know what she thought of her daughter.”

“The holidays had to be a real treat.”

“You have no idea.”

All of a sudden, the elevator doors opened, and they brought their weapons up, ready to shoot. The black maw of the shaft was empty other than the machinery.

“What the fuck?” Cruz whispered.

Francesca held a finger up to her lips and pointed upward. He nodded.

An alarm began to sound. One of her brothers had likely tripped it on purpose as a decoy, just like hot-wiring the elevator doors. They must have been hoping one of them would duck their head into the elevator shaft so they could surprise them from above, maybe even below. The last thing they needed was for one of them to become a hostage, especially Francesca since she appeared to be their target.

Tripoli’s head whipped around, his hand going out to halt either Francesca or Cruz from moving. She frowned, confused as to what she had heard. Tripoli looked at her and mouthed “window” to clue her in.

Inside her head, Francesca was swearing. They should have split up rather than gathered together at the elevator. With four of them working together, she should have known better. Now they were essentially trapped. There was very little chance of them getting out of this unscathed.

Tripoli signaled he was going to go check it out. He pointed to Cruz, then to Francesca, then pointed to the sliding patio windows. Cruz had just been assigned to protect her and get her out of the building.

“Please,” he mouthed.

With a silent huff, she glared at him. She realized that out there must have been a way for him to get back into Elysium unseen on the day Jessa’s murder was discovered. Probably a hidden fire ladder. Hopefully, Rory was the one sneaking in the window. If Tripoli could incapacitate him, it might give them all a head start to get to it and get down to the ground. It went against everything within Francesca to run, but she recognized that there was prudence in running today, fighting tomorrow. She also knew it was risky, but it might be their only chance to get out of the building.

Francesca motioned to Cruz to go back-to-back with her, which would have him covering the elevator shaft and her covering the patio doors. Luckily, they had not closed the curtains for the night. It didn’t mean someone wasn’t out there lying in wait. With the power out, they had no lights, and it was near impossible to see anything beyond the doors, but it also had anyone outside at a disadvantage for the same reasons. It was a chance they were going to have to take as it was doubtful her family would be aware of the hidden escape ladder.

Tripoli flashed her a quick, final look. “Be careful,” he mouthed. “Love you.”

Her smile was tense, but the nod she gave him let him know she felt the same.

He moved down the hallway toward the bedrooms, where the noise they’d heard had been a window opening. That, too, could be a decoy to lure them out to the patio, but again, it was a chance they’d have to take.

She tapped Cruz’s thigh to signal they were on the move, and as one unit, the two of them moved in the direction of the patio door. She tapped Cruz on the thigh one more time, her fingers forming the letter “U” in ASL and moved them to the left. She then did the letters “M” and “E” and moved her fingers to the right. Hopefully, he understood that she wanted him to go out the door and cover the left side.

He reached behind to give her a thumbs-up. Good. He’d understood. Francesca slid the lock to the open position as quietly as she could, then the door. In the quiet, anyone on the patio would hear it, but it couldn’t be helped. They popped through the doorway in the appropriate directions, then both turned upward to make sure Rory wasn’t above them hiding. No one.

Now that they were outside, it was easier to see in the shadows. No one was there either.

She led Cruz to the shrubbery. Both positioned themselves, and on his count of three, they pushed through the underside to clear the wall of the building. No one clung to the side of the building, and no one waited below on the ground.

“We’re going to have to move fast,” Francesca whispered. “The ladder will make a shit ton of noise, which will bring people running. Hope you’re good at sliding on the rails because there won’t be time to climb down. You go first. I’ll wait three seconds, then follow, so when you get to the bottom, get out of the way and cover me.”

“We’re not waiting for Tripoli?”

She shook her head. “By now he’s cleared the rooms and should be on his way to us. If someone were inside, we’d have heard a scuffle by now.”

Cruz pushed himself through the shrubbery and gripped the concrete with his arms. Before he slid down, he warned her, “No sneaking back in there. He hung with the Raiders. He’s fine.”

The man knew her too well. If Tripoli didn’t show up by the time she was to go down the ladder, she would have done exactly as Cruz ordered her not to. Probably still would.

Francesca released the ladder, and the screeching metal and whistle of the sections extending rang through the air. Everyone in the near vicinity would hear it, including her family. Cruz grabbed the outside of the ladder and hugged it with his knees, sliding down the outer rails.

A series of crashing noises came from inside. Tripoli had found someone. Likely Rory. Cruz was going to be pissed as hell, but there was no way she was leaving Tripoli alone with one of her brothers. There was a single retort of a rifle shot coming from the building across the street. Hubble, Cosmos’ sniper, had targeted someone. Turning on her heel, Francesca slowly sidestepped her way back to the patio door. She wasn’t going to leave Tripoli, but she wasn’t going to make the mistake of rushing and potentially being ambushed.

When she reached the door, she heard a plopping noise and looked to her feet. A coil of rope. At the same time, the air filled with what sounded like the sound of a zipper being pulled. She barely had time to register that someone was arriving from the old smokestack above before an arm wrapped around her mouth to quell any sound, and another wrapped around her waist, pinning her arms to her side.

Rory’s voice husked in her ear. “Don’t say anything, Frankie. Climb on my back. It’s going to be a fast plummet to the alley.”

Francesca screamed behind his hand, then bit at his glove. She couldn’t tear through the leather with her teeth, but she could grip. Like a Rottweiler, she shook her head left and right as fast as she could to where she caused him to lose his hold. In his surprise, she stomped down on his instep, then curled her leg around his. While she didn’t flip him—his sheer mass prevented that—she did manage to get him off balance, so he stumbled and had to let go of her.

“What the feck, Frankie?! For once in your life, just do what I tell you to do. You’re in a shitload of trouble right now.”

A voice from the patio door behind her agreed. “Yes, Rory, she is.”

Francesca whirled around to see her father standing in the blowing curtains, a gun aimed at her forehead.

“Tch. Tch. Tch.” He shook his head. “Typical stubborn Irish. Just like when she was a child, she never does what you tell her to do.” He smirked. “You’re looking lovely, girl. You’ve gotten better with your approach, but I think your time as a captive has caused you to rush and become sloppy. Or is that why you were caught in the first place?”

“What do you want?” Francesca ground out.

“It’s time for you to come home, girl.”

“Not fucking likely.”

“Well, you see, I can’t have you out here, wandering around, with all of the McCabe secrets in your head.”

“I don’t have any McCabe secrets. I left the police force so I wouldn’t be tainted by your bad decisions, and when that didn’t work, I crossed the fucking country to get away from all of you. There were a million times I could have given the FBI information on you, but I haven’t. Why would I start now?”

Rory came up behind her, his hands grabbing her biceps. In her ear, he whispered, “Don’t antagonize him.”

“To hell with you, Rory!” she hissed. “You’re just as bad.”

“Well, now that hurts little sister. I would have thought you’d know me better than that.”

“My apologies,” she snarked. “You’re worse. You follow this piece of shit.”

“I follow no one, Frankie,” he murmured. “Neither do your other brothers. For once, I’m begging you, trust us and do what we say. This will end so much faster and cleaner.”

From the shadows, another figure emerged. Mannix. His face was a blank mask as he approached, and he took Francesca’s gun from her hand. “Hello, little sister.”

She said nothing and only glared at the middle triplet.

“Where’s Fionn?” their father barked.

“Ran into some trouble in the alley. Said he’d meet us.”

“Cruz…” She hadn’t meant to let the name fly from her mouth.

Her father’s stare never let up. “And the other one?”

Her eyes flew to Mannix, who raised a hand to his jaw, rolling it until it clicked. A bruise was already forming. His black gaze bore into Francesca’s. “He won’t be interfering.”

Tripoli. They were talking about Tripoli. Her heart felt like it was being ripped out of her chest. He couldn’t be gone. “You bastards! I wasn’t bothering you! Why couldn’t you just leave me alone? Leave me out of it!”

Sweet Jesus… if Cruz and Tripoli were both dead, no one would know where to find Mickie. What did she do? Did she tell them where she was? Did she beg for them to let someone know? They wouldn’t be able to free her without power to the building, and even then, who else knew the combination to the safe room? She hoped that when it was discovered that Mickie was missing, someone would remember that she’d been at dinner with them and go looking for her. Maybe Cosmos or Triumph would think to look in the panic room.

“Time to leave, little girl. And just so it’s a smooth exit… Rory?”

Francesca felt a prick in her neck. “Relax, little sister. Just a little ketamine,” Rory whispered. “I’ve got you.”