We’re back in Charlie’s apartment above the bookshop, and this is our welcome.
“May?” Badger wheels on her. “So help me. I owe your ma for letting me run operations from the back room, but I don’t owe you.” Badger holds a finger an inch from her nose. “If you took that boat even when I told you not to, I swear I’ll—”
“It was me,” Bree says. “No one would have gone against your orders if I hadn’t convinced them.”
“You stupid, idiotic—”
The second Badger’s hand pinches her chin, I knock him away.
“Don’t touch her,” I snap.
“I’ll do whatever I damn well need to when my team ignores my orders.”
He advances again and this time I throw my palms into his chest. He draws his gun and I draw mine and in the blink of an eye we are standing in the middle of the sitting room, staring at each other’s barrels.
“She is the only reason I’m alive,” I snap. “Her and this team.”
“It very well could have played out differently.”
“But it didn’t, and you can’t hold it against Bree—or any of them—for breaking me free and completing your damn mission in the process. Because that’s what we did. I got all the info you were after and then some. We can figure out what to do with that together, or you can get the hell out.”
Badger regards me over the sight of his gun, eyes narrowed.
“Gray, I’m sorry we didn’t come for you,” Adam says. “I really am. We couldn’t risk it.”
“It’s done, Adam,” I say. “The only thing we have control over is what happens next, and that’s what I want to focus on.”
Despite the late hour, we end up at the kitchen table, our differences temporarily discarded. I recount my time at the Compound. Every last detail, from the intel the Order was after and the interrogation I endured, to the production lab of limitless Forgeries and the way Harvey cracked and aided in my escape.
“It’s worse than we thought,” Adam says. “If Frank has those numbers, if he’s already manning his cities with them, we won’t stand a chance.”
“Actually,” Harvey says, “that’s not entirely true.” He upends his backpack on the table. A bunch of technical gear tumbles out, all secured in some sort of waterproof packaging.
“What’s on the hard drives?” Clipper asks.
“Research, backup files, possibly your salvation.” This must be the plan Harvey alluded to, and the gear he went to retrieve after leaving me partially unbound in the interrogation room. “I’ll need access to a computer, and a bit of time to dig through everything, but I’m hopeful. This idea I have . . . It just might . . . Well, I’d rather confirm it will work before I give everyone false hope.”
“Maybe Harvey can use your equipment?” Adam asks Badger.
“Sure.”
“Just like that?” Bree says, snapping her fingers. “We walk him right into our inner circle and give him access to anything he wants?”
“Come on, Bree,” Clipper says.
“I know you’re happy about this, Clip, but he’s still a Forgery. One who was awfully quick to ditch his orders. It took Jackson forever to decide to help us, and Harvey turned like a switch was flipped.”
I open my mouth to argue but no words come. Is this why the Order didn’t follow us from the Compound? Do they want Harvey to be here with us? The possibility that I have brought a spy—one of the most brilliant men I know—directly into the Expats’ inner circle makes me shiver.
“I untied Gray in the interrogation lab,” Harvey says, glaring at Bree. “I told him how to get to the docks.”
“And maybe you’ll tell the Order how to find us next,” she throws back.
“His tracker!” Adam says, jumping to his feet.
“I clipped him on the boat,” Clipper says. “Emma, too. Had to do it the old-fashioned way—knife and feel—but those chips are at the bottom of the Gulf.”
Harvey pulls the collar of his jacket aside to reveal bandages. I must have been on the deck when this happened. Throwing all my pain at Bree. Being horrible.
“See? He’s clean,” Clipper says to Bree. “I’ll keep an eye on him. I’ll shadow him every second in the labs. I promise.”
“You make one suspicious move,” Bree says, leaning toward Harvey across the table, “and I will tear your fingernail off like you did to Gray. Only I won’t stop at one. You hear me, Harvey?” Then she leans into my shoulder and whispers, “We should keep an eye on him. Something’s not right about this.”
I nod, hoping she’s wrong.
But she’s not wrong often. And this doesn’t bode well.
Beneath the blanket of night, we relocate from the bookshop to a hotel on the outskirts of town. Even though Badger took care of Gage and the few men helping him, Adam feels like the shop is no longer safe.
“I don’t get it,” I say to him as we walk. “We have Harvey. Why didn’t they come after us?”
He shrugs. “They probably think he’s dead—that we killed him and threw him overboard. That’s where his tracker would have terminated.”
“They’re too smart to not dig for confirmation. Why aren’t the docks crawling with Order members?”
“We’ve had a delicate treaty with the East for a while now. They might overstep their bounds on the water, but for the most part, they respect the borders.”
“But why do they respect the borders? I feel like Frank could overrun us in a heartbeat.”
“If you believe what you hear around campfires and after a couple drinks,” Adam says, “Frank had a child with some lowly Union Central cook ages back. She was young, and so it was kept quiet, and they never married. When Frank’s methods in AmEast became too much for the girl, she apparently took their kid and fled west. Some people think Frank’s afraid to aggressively attack because he’s still hoping for a reunion with his son, and doesn’t want to compromise the boy’s safety. Well, man by now, given all the years that have passed.”