Page 237

I was worried about Dubai… another of my “hunches.”

I was scared as fuck I’d get more of our people killed.

I was scared I might get Revik killed.

I was scared I might get Lily killed.

Closing my eyes, I fought the fear out of my light.

I wasn’t smart enough for this. My vision wasn’t good enough.

Too many things could go wrong.

Behind me, Revik shifted his body to follow the curve of mine. He wrapped his arm around me from behind. He rested his face on my neck. He pulled me against him, his palm flat on the middle of my breastplate, as if to hold in my heart… but something about the softness of his light only made that pain worse.

He trusted me. They all trusted me.

I so badly wanted to believe that trust was warranted.

Chapter42

Impolite

“Nothing?” Declan asked, frowning. “We’ve had people on her for weeks now. Can’t she at least tell us something about this network of theirs?” He aimed his frown at Balidor. “What about you, Adhipan? I thought you were heading up that project?”

Yarli’s eyes and frown swiveled to Balidor along with Declan’s.

I saw her quirk an eyebrow at her boyfriend in the silence that followed, asking a question I strongly suspected I was glad I couldn’t hear.

We were talking about Cass.

It was a conversation I hadn’t been looking forward to.

It was one that needed to happen, though.

No one on our team had managed to get any useable intel off Cass to help us with the Dubai op. No one had been able to get any useable intel off Cass at all, as far as I could tell, over the entire three or four months we’d held her in custody.

Balidor and his team tried.

Tarsi tried. Yumi and Neela tried. Loki tried.

Even Varlan tried, interrogating her on at least four separate occasions with backup from ‘Dori and a few others in the Adhipan who stayed outside in the booth.

I considered going in there myself, but Revik was dead set against it.

Truthfully, I couldn’t stomach the idea, either.

Anyway, from what Revik told us, the likelihood of Cass still knowing anything useful was slim at best. Menlim would have cut her out of the network the instant we took her hostage, likely hours before we managed to put her in the tank. Anything Cass knew would be changed enough that her intel was useless. Worse, it might even be used to set traps.

The things they couldn’t change––the structure of the network, the seers acting as network pillars, and so on––those things, Cass likely never knew in the first place.

The others discussed putting her on wires.

I vetoed it.

The infiltration team discussed doing something like what I’d done with Revik, where someone went in there and tried to get at the person underneath, using a number of Barrier taps to boost the signal. We talked about who would even be able to pull that off.

Me. Jon. Revik. Chandre. Yumi. Balidor.