“Maybe that will make Rutledge think twice before pushing further. Before taking a shot at the Veil.”
“Or he’ll just come with more firepower next time. A man like that doesn’t just abandon his plans. He tweaks them.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “We’re taking the Dupres to Gavin’s. He’s a less obvious target than Gunnar. And Gunnar’s house is too big, with too many people. That assumes his father would even let us in anyway.”
“Okay,” I said.
He glanced at me. “But I want you to tell Gunnar what happened here, about everything. He needs to get Tadji and her family under protection, warn the Commandant about Rutledge.”
My heart hiccupped. “But you, Moses, Eleanor—that would put everybody at risk.” And me, I thought.
Liam glanced at me. “There’s no help for it now. Rutledge has seen us, and he’s alive. Our asses are already on the line.”
Once again, being imprisoned in Devil’s Isle became a very real possibility.
I folded my arms, suddenly freezing. “He may not be able to do anything.”
“We have to try.” He winced as the truck hit a pothole, bounced. “We don’t have a better option at this point. I just hope to God he’s worthy of the trust you’ve put in him.”
“He is,” I said without hesitation. I believed it. I just hoped I was right.
“I notice you did not get into the car and drive away. What happened to ‘no heroics’?”
“Recklessly brave?” I offered with a small smile.
Liam chuckled. “Jesus, Claire. You are absolutely terrifying.”
I decided that was a compliment.
? ? ?
Pain in the ass or not, when we got Tadji, Phaedra, and Zana settled at Gavin’s, Liam drove me back to the Cabildo.
War or not, the Cabildo was still beautiful, if lonely without its neighbors. Two long stories of arches and windows, another row of windows below a mansard roof. And at the very top, a cupola that still gleamed white and silver.
I walked inside to the security desk, waved at the guard. She shopped at the store, knew me, and knew that Gunnar and I were friends.
She probably wouldn’t have appreciated the irony that she’d just waved a Sensitive through the front door of Containment HQ.
I took the staircase to the second story, where the floors were gleaming dark oak and the walls were crisp white. The Commandant’s staff had desks in the long hallway in front of a bank of windows that faced the Square. The desks and chairs were mismatched, pulled from the remains of the Presbytère.
There weren’t many agents left at this late hour. But Gunnar sat at his desk in the row, next to the doors that led to the Commandant’s office. He was back in his dark fatigues, head down as he flipped through a binder of notes. At the sound of my footsteps, he glanced up, his eyes widening with concern.
He got one look at me at the end of the hallway, came toward me at a run. “What the hell happened to you?”
“It’s a long story that you don’t want to hear in this particular location.”
He glowered.
“I swear, Gunnar, I’ll tell you as soon as we step foot out of this building.” I caught other agents rising from their desks, watching us with suspicion.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
We walked downstairs, climbed into the truck, sat there for five minutes while I told Gunnar the truth about everything. About being a Sensitive, the wraiths, Devil’s Isle, the Veil opening, all of it.
By the end of it, he was fuming. “I want to talk to Tadji.”
“We don’t have time for that,” I insisted. “Rutledge could be trying something else right now.”
Gunnar ignored me, looked past me to Liam. “I verify before I report. Gavin’s place.”
? ? ?
Liam didn’t argue, and Gunnar didn’t talk at all for the rest of the trip.
“Stay here,” he said as soon as Liam had given directions to Gavin’s unit but before Liam had pulled the truck to a complete stop. He climbed out of the truck and slammed the door closed before I could object.
He stayed in the building, a warehouse turned condo building, for fifteen minutes. We waited in silence. Our situation was precarious, so we skipped discussion for staying inconspicuous and keeping an eye on the streets around us.
When Gunnar climbed back into the truck and shut the door, it was a solid minute before he spoke.
“Richard Rutledge is the CEO of ComTac,” he finally said. He must have been familiar with the organization. “It’s privately held, and he’s the principal shareholder. He has a lot of money.”
“So all that talk about protecting humans?”
“Some of it could be true,” Gunnar said. “Right now he doesn’t have an army of his own nearly big enough to fight the Paranormals. At least, not that your tax dollars have funded. But if the Veil opens again, if we have to wage a war again, the feds would probably give him plenty of money to build one.”
“So he wants the cash?” Liam asked.
“And the power,” Gunnar agreed. “I’m going to get guards on Gavin’s apartment, just in case.”