“No. I told you, I can't see our kind's fate.”
“Then trust me when I tell you, I don't want this gig.”
He grabbed me by the shoulders and pressed me against the side of the building by the door. “This isn't a game that if you lose you just move on. You join and betray us, you die. Not move on, you're just gone. Are you prepared for that?”
The intensity I felt from him was overwhelming, but I didn’t have that much time left, anyway. Did it really matter? And I wanted Suit. I didn’t care if I wouldn’t remember after I moved on. He needed to die.
“Yes.” He said I couldn't repeat the secrets. He said nothing about taking out the mass murderer before I left.
“So be it.” He took a step back and then paused by the door, waiting for me to follow. We walked back into the room together.
They all looked at Fate and then me.
“Put him below,” Fate said. There was a pause and then two of the guys left with Suit in tow, leaving Fate, Lars, another guy I didn’t know, and I alone.
Lars spoke first. “Why is she here?”
“She got a memo.”
I saw from their faces, they found it as strange as Fate had, perhaps even alarming.
But neither of them asked what a memo was.
“If you bring her in, you're the one that has to kill her. I've got enough blood on my hands.” The one left who I didn’t know said to Fate.
“I'll handle it, Cutty,” Fate said.
“It's too late, anyway,” Lars added. “She's already seen us here together. It's all or nothing, now.”
“I have to agree,” one of the returning men said.
The two guys came back from downstairs, while I was pondering my latest decision and Cutty was eyeing me up.
“I think we should skip introductions,” one of the returning pair said.
“It's little late for me.” Lars stepped closer. “We’ve already been introduced.”
Cutty, the larger one with a shaved head, spoke. “So how much we telling her, then?”
Fate answered, “She already knows about Suit, and I’m guessing she’s figured out that no one here is human.”
They all looked at me. Even if I’d had my doubts, he’d just confirmed it anyway.
“I'm the only one still on the inside.” He looked at me again with a stare that said I hope you realize what you agreed to. “About twenty years ago, Lars disappeared. A week or so after he went missing, he reached out to me. He'd always been into tattoos and he accidentally stumbled onto a way to drop off the grid completely. To Harold and the universe, it just appeared like he died. But as you can see, he didn't. No one here did.
“That man downstairs is like us, and I suspect is working with others like us, but none of us ever met him at the agency. We don’t know how he came to be, what he’s up to or who else he is involved with. The only thing we do know is he's actively recruiting.”
The ramifications of more of us out there, playing with the outcomes of people’s lives with no upper authority, chilled me. It robbed me of words. I wasn’t sure I liked how things were running but at least there were parameters. We didn’t know what type of capabilities these people had but the idea was unsettling.
Lars walked over and sat in the metal folding seat Suit had occupied. “I don’t think she understands.”
“She gets it,” Fate said.
“How do you know there’s more?”
“That part is a hunch.”
“I want to talk to him.” No one spoke or said anything. “If I'm in, I'm in.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
There was a storage basement below the ground level of the factory where they had Suit handcuffed and locked in a metal cage.
“What are you?” I asked as I approached him.
“Like I told them, I'm just an average Joe. I have no idea what you people are talking about,” is what he said, but his stare was saying something altogether different. With his eyes, he was greeting me as a long lost friend.
I needed to get this guy alone. If I didn’t and he talked, I might be the one that ended up dead. The looming gang of bandits hovering at my back could be deadly for both of us.
I motioned Fate over to the far end of the very long room.
“I want to talk to him alone.”
“Why?”
“Because he's more likely to talk to me without you guys hovering, looking like you're going to strike him dead at any moment. I’m a single woman, I might be able to get him to let his guard down.”
“No.” He crossed his arms and it didn’t look good but I’d known it would be a fight.
“Do you want to get this guy or not?”
“I saw the way he looked at you.”
I started to swallow but I forced myself to keep a calm demeanor. I imagined that Fate was an angry judge and I was in the courtroom trying a losing case.
“If you can read Suit that well, you know he won’t talk. He’ll die first. But he’ll talk to me.” Calm, keep your calm.
“Five minutes. And you tell me everything.”
“Fine.”
“And he stays in the cage.”
I nodded.
He turned and ushered everyone out. They were disgruntled but they followed him up the stairs.
As soon as I heard the door close, I turned back to Suit. I got too close to the cage but I didn’t want to chance anybody overhearing our conversation.
“Who are you? And before you answer, know that I'm your only shot at living, because if you haven't figured it out, there isn't a single person upstairs that doesn't have blood on their hands and none of them seem to mind.” It was all lies, except for the blood on their hands, which might have been true.
It didn’t bother me a bit, though. This was the person who robbed me of my life, and left my parents childless. He was better off being fed to the guys who just left than with me.
“If you want to live, you'll let me out.” His voice was so low I barely heard it.
“And why is that?” I couldn’t wait to hear his explanation.
“Because you belong with us, Camilla.” His lips turned up just slightly at the corners.
“Were you always a bullshitter? Or did you put a lot of practice into this?” My words didn't match the hitch I felt in my throat. I needed to find out why he’d been stalking me before anyone else did.
“That train wreck? That was all for you.”
He clearly wanted to tell me everything so I’d let him, but I had a sinking horrible feeling I wasn’t going to be happy once I knew.
“Go ahead, let’s hear the rest.” I wished my feelings matched my bravado. Inside I was a panicked mess. What was this guy talking about?
“I know all about you, but you already know that, don’t you? You remember me. I can see it in your eyes, you know something’s wrong. And if you don't get me out of here, so will they.” He glanced at the door and then back at me to make sure I knew exactly who he meant.
“You're off your rocker, buddy, because there's nothing to know about me.”
“What about Edgar Radbury?”
I grabbed the cage bar in front of me as I remembered Edgar. He’d been one of the first cases that I’d really made a name as an up and comer with.
Edgar had been charged with assault with a deadly weapon. The case had been a slam-dunk. Edgar had been guilty as sin.
“I didn’t do anything. I just tried his case. I did my job.” Even as I spoke, I wasn’t sure I believed it myself, not with what I knew now. I remembered the jury selection for his trial. I’d always been able to sense the people that I could twist to my needs. I knew the buttons to push, and even if it walked the line a bit, I always did it.
I thought back to Charlie. I’d done it with him. Somehow, molding his will to mine. He would’ve married me, even though he was in love with that other woman, simply because I’d wanted it and I would’ve somehow dragged him down the path with me.
“Edgar was your first, but wasn’t your last. I wasn't trying to murder you, I was trying to recruit you. I wonder what your friends will think about that? Do you imagine they'll still be so welcoming?”