Thomas made a small, doubting noise and cocked his head to the side as he waited.
Alex grimaced. “She can be difficult. You’ll see.” He let the promise hang between them. Her last salvo had been right on target, using what he’d shared with her. So, you’re the damn fool who let her get under your skin.
“Soon, I hope. When do you think she’ll be ready to be interviewed?”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t try interrogating her yet, Thom. She’s not happy.”
“I don’t plan to interrogate her, Alex.” Irritation tinged his voice.
“I know you don’t. But that’s not how she’s going to see it right now.” Alex ran his hands through his hair and turned to yank a chair forward. He sat back. “We knew she spent her childhood locked up because her father wanted to hide her from the bad people. We just didn’t know it was us.”
Thomas frowned at him. “Us? What did we ever do to the man?”
Alex nodded. “Good question. The answer? Nothing. Yet, we got here, and she saw the Ward School crest and froze. Demanded to leave. And when it didn’t happen, she decided I am now her despised jailer.” It bothered him a lot. It bothered him more than he’d ever admit to Thomas.
He’d gotten rid of the last woman who’d become this distracting. She’d been an agent. Only rarely did a mid-range manage to work their way out of mere Zone Security and into the Council Defense Agency and go toe-to-toe with the best of the Ward School. It was rarer still for a woman to do it. She had been exceptional. Alex had vetted and recruited her to join their movement himself. And as soon as he’d realized that she’d become more than a partner with benefits, he’d staged a crisis and had her reassigned to another zone. Erika had been the one who’d left that book of poetry in the safe house, the lines she’d underlined in the poem her way of telling him she wasn’t fooled. Lena was very like Erika, but more. More strength. More independence. More power.
More trouble.
The sound of Thomas’s fingers drumming a staccato beat on the surface of his desk brought Alex out of his head. After several long moments, Alex added, “This on top of the trauma of the last forty-eight hours does not bode well for her wanting to cooperate with me ever again.”
Thomas’s blue eyes sharpened. “Trauma?”
“Yeah. I was getting there.” He sighed so deep his shoulders lifted. He spent the next twenty minutes outlining everything—Lucas’s interference, Alex’s own role in bringing Lena down in an attempt to control the situation, and how her inquisition had resulted in the death of her mother and the subsequent destruction of the side of the Council building in Azcon.
Thomas leaned forward and cupped his chin with the palms of both hands. “She did what?”
“She brought it down. Sent out some kind of energy shockwave that mangled the room and fried the circuits in the entire building, locks, lights, the works. Did it again a few minutes later after I woke up and got her pointed at the wall. I had her take out the wall to escape. Three’s security director was killed in the collapse.”
The other man grimaced, the expression pinching his already narrow face. “Good riddance.”
Alex nodded his agreement. “I chased her down. We met up at her friend Ace’s place. I sent her to a safe house to cool while I put out fires.” He took a breath and pursed his lips, swerving his mind away from the safe house and the memory of how she’d moved the Dust within him when she touched him. Both times. Focus. “A few of those fires will require more long-term attention. Lucas is Four’s grandson.”
Thomas clearly hadn’t known. He wasn’t happy. “That explains a lot.”
“It does,” he agreed. “But it begs the question, why didn’t we know about it already? We should have known. He came in as my partner. Was it deliberate or an unhappy coincidence? Who in Dust do we have up in Zone Four anyway?”
“No one, anymore,” Thomas said. “There have been several incidents with the younger agents we’ve sent. Four is a cagey bastard, and he’s always been paranoid with that damned Reintegration Program for Spark agents, but this is new. There’s something else going on up there now.”