Chapter Twenty-eight #2
Ben snorts. “I love the way you just take it in stride. Anyone else would get an injunction against me.”
“You’re a comfort more than a menace. I kind of like knowing you’re probably there…somewhere,” I admit.
“You really trust me, then?”
I nod. “So far, you’ve proven to be trustworthy, yes. If that changes, I’ll call exterminators to smoke you out of the walls.”
He laughs again, a quick burst of sound he smothers before propping the door open and inviting me inside the cottage. I find Cas’s number easily enough in his contacts list and hit the call button. There are three sharp rings before he picks up.
“Ben? It’s three in the morning…what—” Cas pauses, shuffles and then sounds a hell of a lot clearer. “What’s wrong?”
“Cas, it’s Jules. I’m with Ben. Someone just came into the apartment. Ben got me out, but the intruder entered my room, looking for me.” Ben holds up his hand, warning me to stop there.
“Are you secure?”
“For now, yes.”
“Was the man a stranger or one of us?”
Ben nods. I answer, “One of yours.”
“There are two men in the security office. I’ll call them both now for an update. I’ll call you back in five minutes.” He disconnects.
“Don’t tell him too much,” Ben instructs, pulling out a laptop from a shelf under the sofa.
“You don’t trust him?” That wasn’t how things had looked earlier. Cas and Ben seemed close.
“I don’t trust anyone,” Ben admits, “but Cas is okay. It’s his line that I can’t be sure about. Plus, we want this to unfold as if he knows nothing is going on. Plausible deniability.”
The phone rings in my hand. I hold it out for Ben, but he taps the speaker icon and allows us both to listen in, while he boots up his laptop and starts signing in to software.
“No answer from Conroy,” Cas reports. “Kellan answered, but he wasn’t in the office. Kellan said Conroy was in a mood, so he went out to run patrol and cool his head. He reported that everything was fine.”
“Did he say where he was?” I ask.
“The apartment. Said he thought he heard a bang through the ceiling when he came back inside and wanted to check everything was okay.”
“And your thoughts on that?” Ben asks.
“Kellan is our mole. He doesn’t have permission to enter the apartment. Other than myself and Aiden, none of them do.”
“Agreed, but he’s working with someone else.
Give me two minutes to check the cameras,” Ben commands.
I watch as he flicks through each of the cameras relating to the apartment.
No one appears within range, but even I know there are black spots.
He scans the main house, hovering an extra second in the empty foyer.
We both breathe a sigh of relief. My phone isn’t tapped.
Ben then flicks to the exterior cams. I see us moving further and further away from the compound and am both horrified and reassured that the cameras extend far down the main road leading to the house.
Ben stops flicking. There on the screen is a small, black car with two people waiting out front.
It’s tucked into the hedgerows to be as inconspicuous as possible, but from the camera’s angle I can see them clear as day.
The man leans on the hood. The woman paces back and forth.
The light on her phone illuminates in sporadic bursts of blue light.
“Do you recognise either of them?” Ben asks. The sad part is that I do. I recognise both of them.
“Yes. The man’s name is Turner. He works for Franz. He came after me before at the hospital.” His grin. His haggard suit jacket. The stench of cologne in the cramped elevator. ‘What’s your name, pretty girl?…I can definitely make you scream.’ Yeah, I remember him.
Ben jerks around to look at me. His eyes are wide with horror, and his lips drawn into a tight, pinched line. “When?”
I don’t need to tell him. From the way his expression crumbles, I can see he already knows.
His guilt is clear as he wonders if the one time he ran off to find Sylvie was the one time he wasn’t there to help me.
Still, if I don’t hold it against him, I’m not going to let him hold it against himself.
“Doesn’t matter. The woman’s name is Lafferty. She’s—”
“UACT. She’s one of us,” Cas growls down the line. “Fucking traitorous bitch! She bunks with Ashlyn.”
My head’s spinning. Lafferty. Was that why she asked so many questions about where I was staying? Or is this a direct result of my fucking with her job that day?
Ben rolls straight into command mode. “Send in a team to detain Kellan. Get his phone immediately. He made a call to an accomplice that I doubt is either of the two at the car. Send a second team to collect them. Make sure team two go out before you grab Kellan. I don’t want to risk his warning them. ”
I can’t help but think Cas’s call will already have put the jitters up Kellan. He’s likely already warning them. Turner will probably get away but at least Lafferty has nowhere to hide.
Ben continues, his voice unwavering. “Notify Aiden, but not Dax.”
Cas grunts a sound of agreement. “I’ll not reach him up there, anyway. Reception is spotty at best.”
“Actually, don’t report this officially until we’re sure. Jules and I will come and confirm he’s the man we heard in the apartment.”
“He got that close?” Cas’s question climbs in pitch like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. If not for Ben, they’d have grabbed me.
How many times have I already said that? How many more before this is done?
“He was an inch and a half away from finding us,” Ben admits but doesn’t offer details.
“Give it an hour or so. I’ll call when we have him in lock-up,” Cas confirms.
“Thanks, man. Be safe,” Ben replies. I tap the end call button and put the phone beside his laptop.
I look at this man. He is no mouse. That is as much a front as anything.
The way he just took charge tells me he’s so much more, to Trevainne and to Dax.
He spoke with the voice of a man born to lead.
The question is, does he know, or is he fooling himself into believing he’s less?
Ben offers me his bed, but there’s no way I’ll be able to sleep now.
Tucker. Lafferty. Kellan. Their names roll around in my head, only to be followed by the names of everyone I’ve come into contact with since that night in the Tower.
Who can I trust? Who will rat me out? A shopping list of whys and why nots form under each name.
If we discount me from the problem, then surely, we have to discount Dax and Aiden?
If they wanted me captured or handed over, they had so many better opportunities.
The idea of it being them is ludicrous. Ben too, for that matter.
Why would he show up repeatedly to save me if he only planned on handing me over himself?
Tonight was Franz’s most opportune chance of grabbing me. Alone in the compound, if Kellan had come into my room and said there was an emergency, I’d have believed him the same way I believe Cas or Aiden. These men are part of a team. I’d have just assumed their loyalty to Aiden and UACT.
Which leaves Tom, Frank, and Sylvie as the mole’s informant. Damn. Not just an informant—a co-conspirator.
Tom is a wildcard. I don’t know him beyond his flirty front.
He’s also pretty much incapacitated. The question that lingers with him is, why was he there in the Tower that night?
Why did he bring an envelope full of names to the Vale?
Was he handing it over to someone or collecting it?
If he collected it, then was it from whoever extracted the information from the Secret Keeper and killed him or from the Secret Keeper himself?
Did that make him the one who killed the Secret Keeper?
If he was handing it over, then to whom?
Franz? Is that who shot him? One of Franz’s people?
Or did Franz just find out about the envelope by chance?
That seems unlikely. He knew it was in the Tower that night, and he knew there was a chance I had it.
He was as much a part of that night as Tom.
Which puts Tom high up in the could-be pile, and from the conversation Ben was having with him on the stairs that night, he was in on it, too.
My grandmother would warn me to be careful of whom I trust. Arsenic and flour look the same until you taste it, and by then it is already too late. I seem to be learning that regularly around here, and yet my gut tells me Ben is safe.
I slide my gaze down from the ceiling beams and find Ben watching me.
“What conclusion have you come to?” he asks, exhaustion dragging the words from his mouth. I see resignation mixed right alongside curiosity.
“You and Tom both knew what was in that envelope. You argued about it. Whether it was a good or bad idea to do what you were doing.”
Ben sighs but nods.
“Were you there to hand it over to Franz?”
Ben stares at me for longer than is polite. Within the intensity of his gaze is a question I know well. Can I trust her? I await both answers without flinching.
He sinks into his seat. “We were there to see who would come to pick it up. We knew what was in the envelope. We knew people wanted it.” His answers remain blunt and somewhat cagey. He is protecting someone or something.
“Did you or Tom take it from the Secret Keeper?”
Ben raises a brow at my question, whether because I asked so directly or because he didn’t know I knew so much about the origins of that envelope.
“No.”
“Then how did you come across it?”
“Tom wouldn’t tell me. He asked me to be his backup that night.
Told me what was in the envelope and that we needed to see who showed up.
When we saw you on the stairs, we both assumed you were the contact we were waiting for.
We thought you ran because you saw us and realised we weren’t who you were supposed to meet.
I took off after you. I scanned six entire floors before realising I’d lost you.
As I came back down, Tom was fronting up to someone in a hoodie—I thought it was you.
Then there was a bang. Tom hit the floor, and the person ran off.
I figured they had the envelope. I flew right past Tom without even checking on him.
Not that it did me much good, the little shit got away, and by the time I made it back, you were calling Dax, so I slipped away like a coward. ”
“That’s everything?”
“Other than thinking it was the worst idea in the history of ideas, yes.”
“Do you have suspicions about who gave Tom the envelope or of who shot him?”
“There are very few people Tom would protect, and fewer he would protect from me.”
“You think that’s what he was doing by not telling you? Protecting someone from you?”
“Yes. Both with the envelope and with the shooter. I don’t doubt he saw their face and heard their voice. I mean, they got close enough to press that gun right up against him and shoot.”
“You sound like you think they’re the same person.”
“I do.”
“Who?”
“For now, it might be safer if you don’t know that. Plus, what’s happening with you is now so much bigger than one person.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’ve already told me who you think it is.”
“I know you’re smart enough to have figured it out, but don’t go all-out with accusations yet. Tom is still protecting whoever it is. He wouldn’t do that unless he thought they were innocent in some way. There’s a bigger picture here that I just haven’t figured out yet.”
“I’ll stay quiet for now, but if this can all be solved by calling them out, you better believe I’m going to do it.”
“If it were that easy, I’d have done it myself already. I swear.”
I nod. “I’ll take your bed. I could do with some sleep,” I lie, knowing Ben sees it for what it is. I can’t look at him right now. I need some space to think things over, to plan how I’m going to watch out for these threats I’m promising not to reveal.
“Okay.”
Leaving him on the couch, staring at the floorboards between his feet, I escape to the tiny bedroom.
The dawn ignites the day. Though the labyrinth hedges still bathe everything in shadows, I can see the softer arcs of blue and gold creeping into the sky.
The world is beautiful when you put aside your daily bullshit and just take it for what it is.
I watch the colours transform as I think over Ben’s confession.
In the end, there are only two possibilities for who the traitor might be.
Frank Hanlon or Sylvie Trevainne