“Gavin won’t like that,” Liam said.
“I’ve already convinced him.” Gunnar’s tone was dry. “Will you take me back to the Cabildo? I need to talk to the Commandant.”
Liam gestured toward me. “And her?”
“She goes back to the store, where she’ll stay until further notice.”
I hated his presumptiveness, but I’d rather be in the store than anywhere else, so I didn’t bother to argue.
He had a right to be miffed at me. Better, I thought, to let him power through it. He ran as hot as Tadji ran cold. I ran somewhere right down the middle. Probably one of the reasons we were such good friends. Or had been until one man’s greed tore us apart.
? ? ?
By the time we got back to the store, it was past midnight and my body ached all over. I wanted to crawl into bed and hibernate for a month or two, but that wasn’t in the cards.
Liam and I sat at the table in the store’s backroom, waiting for Gunnar to arrive.
He’d crossed his arms, crossed his ankles on top of it, staring out the front door. I sat in the chair beside him, arms on the table, head on my arms. I closed my eyes, jumped back to consciousness when Gunnar came back in.
I sat up, pushed the hair from my eyes.
“You shouldn’t have let me fall asleep,” I said as Gunnar crossed the room.
“You looked exhausted,” Liam said.
I looked at him. The bruise on his cheekbone was darker, and he looked tired, too. “I think we could both use a nap.”
He half smiled. “Soon as we save the world.”
“What happened?” I asked.
Gunnar pulled out a chair, which squeaked in objection across the floor. “The Commandant approved the Chenal operation. He thought Rutledge was planning to bring in a rogue Paranormal. Rutledge is already back, had already talked to him. He told the Commandant the operation was sabotaged.”
Ice water ran down my spine. “He gave the Commandant our names?”
Gunnar shook his head. “No. According to the Commandant, Rutledge didn’t give any names. He stuck to his ‘rogue Paranormal’ story.”
Liam frowned. “Why not give us up? He had to know we’d go to Containment.”
“Why would he?” Gunnar asked. “He doesn’t know that Claire has a connection to the Commandant through me, or that I knew about Tadji’s family, the missing Sensitives, the entire deal. And I didn’t at the time. He’d have thought it would be too risky.”
Liam held up a hand. “So if he didn’t tell the Commandant about us, who’d he blame for the operation going bad?”
“He said there was a conspiracy against Containment that originated in Devil’s Isle—and a Para with a lot of computer equipment.”
His words were soft, full of regret. But they echoed through me like a gunshot.
My heart sank like a stone. “Moses,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “He got to Moses.”
We hit the street running.
? ? ?
Liam got us through the gate, and we ran without stopping toward Moses’s store in clothes still streaked with dirt and sweat from the last battle.
A fire truck was parked in the middle of the street, firefighters still pouring water onto the smoldering ruins of what had once been “Moses Mech.”
The store was gone. There was nothing left but a heap of bricks and twisted bits of metal and wire in a pile. Shards of electronics were everywhere, plastic snapping underfoot or melted into big globs and piles. Water ran in little rivers through the debris, collected in the gutter and poured down the street.
“Oh, Liam.” It was all I could think so say. Nothing else seemed appropriate. And even that didn’t come close to being enough.
I didn’t know what had happened, what had turned Moses’s store into rubble, but he couldn’t have survived this. Not if he was inside.
I knelt down, picked up an “M” key from an old gray keyboard, rubbed my thumb over the faded letter, and put it in my pocket. It would be my memory of him, this man I hadn’t known very long, but who’d been nicer to me than a human deserved.
“They did this because of us,” I said, rising again. “Because he helped us.”
“They didn’t do anything,” Liam said. “Rutledge did this. Rutledge arranged this. That piece of shit must have found out Moses accessed their file, decided he was the easiest person to hit. He’s in Devil’s Isle, after all. Less than human.” He swallowed hard. “I will see that asshole in the ground if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Containment wouldn’t have blown up the building, would they?” I asked quietly. “Not when it would have endangered the neighborhood, the grid, whatever.”
“Containment didn’t.”
We turned back. Hawkins stood behind us, hands stuffed into his pockets.
He seemed shorter than I remembered, probably because he wasn’t standing in his security station.
“They didn’t?” Liam asked.
“Agents came for him—but it was ones who work for ComTac.”
Liam frowned. “Did they take him out of the building?”