Stepping over, I dropped down next to him. “What? What happened?”
The others also crowded closer. “Your discovery gave me an idea about where I’ve been going wrong in my search for information. I was going too deep, and needed to step back to the simple and old ways. There used to be this site which was almost like a notice board for the underworld. Jobs of an unscrupulous nature would be posted there, and people would apply for them. I never would have thought that this would be how Sanctum was hired. But looks like I was wrong. They tried to cover it up. They seem to have use of a technology expert with a skill-set almost as good as mine. Almost as good.” He did not sound boastful, just factual. “I’ve found encoded messages for the hit on Portland Hive, and Charlie. Tracing those back leads me to…”
He paused, his fingers flying across the keys again, and I was about to punch him in the arm when he finally continued: “Shit, traced it twice now, and both times leads back to our Hive. The hit was ordered by someone in here, someone with a high level clearance. They’re punching about twenty levels above Ryder’s security pass. And they have a lot of cash.”
Well, damn, we all knew who had the most money and clearance in this place. The Quorum. Those sneaky bastards had been behind it the entire time. But what was their end game?
Chapter 10
The silence was too much for me. I had to start talking. I needed answers. “Why would the Quorum order me to be kidnapped? Why didn’t they just take me out when I first got into the Hive? Or in the culling? It would have been easy to end me in those battles. Instead they made my run through quite smooth.”
Lucas … shit. Was he in on this too? Why warn me that they were after me then?
Ryder stepped closer to me. “I have had my suspicions for some time that the orders for Sanctum were from someone on the Quorum. I went over the log of events on that night, and the council was ferreted away very quickly, almost as if one or more of them knew in advance.”
Kyle nodded. “When you mentioned you were looking into Allistair, I figured you had suspicions on the Quorum.”
“Who is Allistair?” I asked.
“The creepy looking head of the fourth house,” Kyle said without missing a beat.
Right, fugly. I stood then because I needed to move. Of course, maybe I just needed to be closer to Ryder. The moment I stepped into him, and that familiar scent of spices and cedarwood wrapped around me, I felt better, calmer even, able to organize my jumbled thoughts. Speaking them out loud helped even more.
“So we’re saying it’s probably not all of the Quorum, which is why I’m still living in the Hive and not dead or locked away in their laboratory. Still, one of those bastards hired someone who almost killed Jayden, and tried to coerce Ryder to their side so he’d help to kidnap me. They’ve been behind the scenes this entire time, manipulating everything … playing with our lives.”
Tension filtered through our group, built on fear and pissed-off-ness.
Kyle snarled: “The thing with Tessa is starting to make much more sense. I know we were only guessing at it before, but I have no doubt now that they allowed her change because of you.”
I lurched forward as worries for her came back full throttle. I’d been trying to suppress the fact that my bestie was now part of the “nightmare club.”
“Do you think they’ll hurt her?”
If that was the case, even if she refused, I was knocking out her undead ass and dragging her out of here by her hair.
“No, they won’t,” Markus said. “She’s much more use to them alive. They’re going to try and manipulate her, use her to ferret out your secrets. You have to assume anything Tessa knows, the Quorum will now be able to access.”
Which was pretty much everything. She was my best-friend-sister, I told her everything.
“She doesn’t know about your blood, right?” Markus finished, locking me in his stare.
Everything except that.
I shook my head. “No, I never had a chance to tell her.”
In hindsight, maybe I’d held that back for a reason. I sort of knew that with her close proximity to Blake it wasn’t knowledge to just hand across.
Ryder shook his head a few times, as if trying to sort his thoughts. “This complicates things. Even if Tessa doesn’t know of her blood, I still don’t want Charlie in here one more second than necessary. If a Quorum member is after her, then she’s not safe anywhere, even with us on full-time guard duty.” He turned to Sam. “I know you need a week, but I won’t give a second more than that.”