Chapter 29 Helena
HELENA
Six days.
That was how long I lasted before my mind became too loud for me to ignore.
The abandoned flat I’d ended up in while I figured out my next move sat above a laundromat that seemed to be perpetually fucking busy, the place smelling faintly of damp plaster and detergent no matter how many times I opened the windows.
The mattress had a broken spring that jabbed me squarely in the spine every time I tried to sleep, which, as it turned out, wasn’t particularly often anyway.
Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in Erryn’s office, and it made me hurt. A deep hurt in the soft parts of me that I didn’t know how to fix.
If I see you again, I’ll fucking shoot.
The threat itself didn’t bother me nearly as much as it probably should have. What kept replaying in my head was the look on her face when she said it. The pain and anger in her eyes had nearly ended me on the spot.
I rolled onto my back and stared at the cracked ceiling above the bed for a long time before pushing myself upright with a quiet curse, the necklace that had been wrapped around my wrist falling to the floor, Erryn’s perfume wafting from it.
I snatched it up, anxiety rearing at the thought of losing this last piece of her, slipping the chain back over my head and tucking it in my top.
I had done what she’d asked and left. But I’d spent every minute since fighting the urge to return to her.
The Triarchy was not safe. She had Artemis’s support, but she was not set to take over Paris for a while now with Boucher back in his seat, and that is if Vanguard didn’t manipulate Maxim and Boucher to have her removed to weaken Erryn further.
Maxim was firmly tied to Vanguard, and Boucher was an unknown.
Erryn still held the respect of the London faction, but she would lose that very soon with the transfer, and then she would be building from scratch again, with only the agents who would choose to follow her.
And that’s where my mind kept going.
Theo.
Theo would follow her. She would have no choice but to keep her close, needing the eye on her back.
If she wasn’t the only support Erryn had, I would have murdered her just for the unsolicited—unwanted images my mind was conjuring up every fucking second of the day, intent on torturing me past what I already endured.
But something about the last week had been sitting wrong under my skin in a way I couldn’t explain, and I wasn’t sure if it was crippling jealousy or something else.
Theo had vanished after the explosion. Not the few days she had been injured, it was more. I’d watched this woman throughout my career; I knew how she worked, how she moved within the faction, because I wanted her success.
She lived off-site, but checked in regularly, keeping her finger on the pulse and always moving—but she had barely left her base since the explosion.
It didn’t sit right.
Theo Lancaster was many things, and I’d happily drown her in battery acid, but I’d seen that woman roll into headquarters covered in blood with a broken leg, using a makeshift crutch because she could not stop.
I no longer had access to the Triarchy systems, which meant the neat little digital eyes I had grown used to leaning on were gone, leaving me with nothing but a slightly manic spell and gut instinct.
Turns out those two worked exceptionally well together.
Hyperfocus, activated. Operation Theoisadodgybitchandiwillproveit, is all systems go.
I might need a new code name.
But after two days of some incredibly uncomfortable nights parked outside her little industrial Fort Knox and tailing her on the rare moments she appeared, I had come to a very uncomfortable conclusion.
Theo wasn’t just keeping a low profile; she was actively avoiding headquarters.
Which meant one of two things. Either she was a lot more injured than she let on, or she was doing something she didn’t want Erryn to see.
If my instincts were wrong, I would quietly disappear and chalk the whole thing up to a bruised ego and too much time alone with my thoughts.
But if they weren’t…Then I intended to find out exactly what Theo Lancaster was hiding.
The night before Octavia’s funeral, Theo switched up her normal movements.
Just when I had almost convinced myself that I was losing my mind and this entire exercise was nothing more than a spectacularly embarrassing spiral brought on by feelings that had no business being so ridiculously… well…moving on.
The industrial unit had been quiet all afternoon, the heavy steel garage door staring back at me from across the street while I sat in the car I’d, uh, procured, pretending to read the same page of the newspaper for the better part of an hour.
Theo suddenly emerged through a small access door, pausing just long enough to sweep the street with those sharp grey eyes before locking the door behind her and setting off on foot.
I gave her a head start, counting slowly in my head while she disappeared around the corner before sliding out of the car and following at a distance that would have looked accidental to anyone who didn’t know exactly what they were doing.
She took the underground, slipping into the crowd of commuters with the kind of ease that came from years of practice, and I stayed three carriages back as the train rattled its way east through the city.
She stepped off two stops earlier than I expected and continued the rest of the journey on foot.
The further she walked, the worse the neighborhood became.
The shops grew smaller, the streets narrower, the air taking on the stale smell of places that existed just far enough outside polite society that public urination was rife, while the police only bothered to visit when someone died badly enough to make the evening news.
She disappeared down a narrow stairwell tucked between a pawn shop and a tattoo studio, the cracked neon sign flickering faintly above the door as I leaned casually against the wall across the street and waited.
Five minutes passed.
Then ten.
By the time fifteen minutes had crawled by, I started running through a list of increasingly creative ways this entire situation could end badly, when the door finally opened again, and Theo stepped out into the fading evening light.
She didn’t carry anything.
No envelope, no bag, nothing obvious that suggested she had just completed the kind of errand that took you into a basement like that, but the set of her shoulders had changed slightly, that faint tightening across her back that told me she was thinking very carefully about something.
Then she turned and walked away, disappearing into the steady movement of traffic as if she had never been there at all.
I waited another thirty seconds before crossing the street and slipping down the stairs she had just climbed.
The room at the bottom smelled like stale cigarettes, dust, and cheap electronics, and a man sat behind a battered desk surrounded by half-assembled laptops and stacks of documents, barely glancing up when I walked in.
“We are closed,” he muttered. “Make an appointment.”
I slid the bolt on the door behind me. The sound made him look up properly this time, and his eyes found the knife in my hand a second later.
His expression changed quickly after that as he very helpfully froze in place.
“Relax,” I said mildly, stepping around the desk and resting the tip of the blade lightly under his chin while he went very still. “I just want to know what the woman who was here before me bought.”
He swallowed hard, his gaze flicking between my face and the knife nervously, his stubbled face going a sickly shade of grey.
“Vomit on me, and I will cut your tongue out and make you use it to mop it up,” I warned. “Speak before you can’t.”
“I don’t keep records,” he said quickly.
“No?” I murmured, glancing down at the computer sitting open beside him. “Bet that machine does.”
I pressed the knife a little harder in encouragement, but he still shook his head.
“You d-don’t know what the p-people I work for will do. They p-pay for silence.”
I sighed, reached past him, and pulled the entire laptop off the desk.
“Fine,” I said pleasantly, tucking it under my arm while he stared at me in horrified disbelief. “Silence it is.”
I left him bleeding out on his desk, just in case he decided to warn Lancaster. In hindsight, and I say this with maximum irritation, I should have gotten the password before I killed the guy.
My bad.
Blame it on the lesbian breakup.
They are fucking rough, and my mind just isn’t pin tack sharp at the moment, okay?
Without the damn Triarchy software, cracking it was proving difficult, and I could not ask Mattia for help.
I checked my new phone for the millionth time. I’d sent Erryn one message since I saw her last, but received no reply. Not that I had anticipated one. But it still hurt, my message sitting forlornly on a blank screen.
My number, if you ever need me. I’m sorry.
My gaze slid back to the computer plugged into mine as I used every iota of knowledge I had to try to crack the password, sighing when it still sat there mocking me with its “running systems” screen.
I flipped it the finger, mouthing fuck you before getting up to check the bare freezer yet again in case anything had miraculously spawned into it.
It hadn’t, and I resigned myself to curling back up on the threadbare couch with a cup of tea, watching the computer run through the system until my eyes began to droop.
I woke to a soft electronic chirp, the sound cutting through the fog of sleep just enough to drag me back to consciousness as the weak morning sun spilled through the filthy window above the desk, catching the dust in the air and making the whole room glow in that pale, washed-out way that meant I had definitely slept far longer than I’d intended.
“Coming,” I muttered thickly to absolutely no one, dragging a hand through my hair as I pushed myself upright in the chair, the movement sending a sharp protest up the back of my neck where it had been bent at an angle all night.
I winced, rolling my shoulders as the stiffness worked its way out, then shuffled back toward the desk where the laptop sat waiting, its screen dim and patiently blinking.
The new machine woke with a tap of the space bar, the screen lighting up to reveal the main screen. For a moment, I just stared at it, my brain still reluctantly dragging itself into gear as I clicked into the most recent directory the system had logged.
The first few files were for other jobs he had completed.
Scans of forged birth certificates, driver’s licenses from three different countries, and a handful of offshore banking credentials that would help someone vanish very comfortably if they knew how to use them.
I clicked past them one by one, my focus sharpening as the remnants of sleep finally burned away, until the next folder halfway down the list caught my eye.
I opened it and a passport filled the screen. I leaned closer, my breath catching as the image resolved.
Theo Lancaster stared back at me from the screen, her expression as neutral and controlled as it always was, though the name printed beneath the photograph wasn’t one I recognized.
I sat back slowly in the chair. “What the fuck,” I murmured, my pulse starting to pick up. My gaze dropped to the file list again. There was another document directly beneath it, and I clicked it open without really thinking.
The second passport appeared on the screen.
My brain simply refused to process what I was seeing.
Then the photograph loaded fully.
It was Octavia Vanguard, with lighter hair than I remembered, but her eyes were unmistakable. The small biometric image sat neatly beside a name printed in crisp black type.
Elvira Lancaster.
I went very still, staring at the screen as the last few pieces of the puzzle slid into place.
Theo hadn’t been hiding. She had been preparing to disappear.
And she hadn’t planned to do it alone.