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Of course, even that was bullshit. His lawyer, a highly-skilled woman named Sapphire “Nora” King, also belonged to Archangel. Lara sent her to the precinct station when Nick got arrested for the multiple murder committed by his doppelgänger.

Did St. Maarten really think Nick was this stupid?

He wasn’t sure he even wanted the answer to that.

In any case, Nora King seemed confident he would walk out of this at the end. She’d spoken to him with smooth, reassuring words, her advice concise, and unambiguous.

She’d told him to deny everything. She told him to answer only what was asked, nothing more, and to say “I don’t know,” and “no,” whenever possible, with zero elaboration. Everything about Nora King’s demeanor with Nick told him he was right about the nature of this inquiry.

It was pure performance art for the official records.

The outcome had already been decided.

It was decided well before they dragged Nick out of his holding cell and chained his wrists to the vampire-proof interrogation table. It had likely been decided before those agents showed up on the mountain and murdered Walker’s girlfriend and that other vampire, and bundled the rest of them into windowless vans.

Lara St. Maarten had decided that everything would go back to normal.

She’d decided all the chaos over the past week was not good for business, and that it would end, now. Today.

Well, for everyone except Forrest Keanu Walker, perhaps. It seemed that they really had decided he was now a liability.

Nick had overheard a few H.R.A. agents talking in the corridor outside the interrogation room about how Walker would be deported.

Nick struggled to think about that, and what he might do with that information, assuming he ever got free. As much as he resented Wynter’s ex-husband in multiple, varied, mostly childish ways, he also admired him, grudgingly liked him, and, perhaps most importantly, Nick felt strongly that he owed him.

He owed Forrest Walker his life.

He owed him Wynter’s life, as well, and the lives of Malek and Tai.

There was no way in hell Nick would let them disappear Walker into an H.R.A. “interrogation center,” never to be heard from again.

He had to hope the deportation talk was real, and not a euphemism for something much darker. He had to hope that the United Kingdom’s espionage branch, Mi6, with whom Walker regularly worked, retained a strong interest in getting him out. Nick had less faith in St. Maarten herself, who likely had her own reasons for trading Walker to the H.R.A. in return for Nick, Wynter, Tai, and Malek’s lives.

Because Nick was increasingly convinced that’s exactly what she’d done.

“Have you ever visited him at his offices in the United Kingdom?” the I.S.F. agent asked him next.

“No.”

“Has the principal at Kellerman Preparatory School, Ms. Wynter Cara James, ever visited him there, to your knowledge?”

“To my knowledge? No.” Nick hesitated, considered saying more. He considered asking the agent why the I.S.F. thought he’d know dick about what the principal of Kellerman Preparatory School would be up to in her private life.

But he remembered King’s words, and kept his mouth shut.

“Why were you on that mountain, Detective Midnight?” the agent asked next.

Nick restrained his eye roll with an effort. They’d already asked him that question in about thirty different fucking ways.

“I’ve testified to that,” he said, as blandly as he could. “My superior officer, James Vincent Morley, Detective IV, and I, were following a lead related to the Upper Eastside and Long Island murders of the Tanaka family.”

“And that lead was?” the I.S.F. agent queried.

“A tip. From the murderer himself, we now think.” Nick kept his voice flat with an effort. “The vampire who did those killings seemed to feel some connection to me, likely because of our similar appearance. He found a way to hack my headset and taunt me with what he’d done, and how he believed I’d be arrested and jailed for his crimes. He told us he had hostages. Detective Morley felt, based on the pattern of the killings and the killer’s prior behavior towards me and the murder scenes, that the tip likely had merit, despite it coming from the killer. He called for backup immediately upon us receiving the tip, but felt we couldn’t wait for them to pursue the lead, since civilian lives were at stake. We took the high-speed passenger train up to the Northeastern Protected District at approximately 13:51 that afternoon, and arrived at approximately 16:12.”

He recited all of the facts Nora King, attorney at law, had supplied from Morley’s official report, practically word for word. At this point, his brain was so scrambled, he couldn’t even be certain which of those facts were true, and which weren’t.

He wanted to ask about Wynter.