That she was working for someone else—and had been this whole time.
Surprise flashed through me, burning the cobwebs out of my mind. And I realized that not only was Deirdre handcuffed, but she looked far worse for wear than I did.
Her gray coveralls were gone, although she still wore the same purple pantsuit and black boots she’d sported during the bank robbery. But her appearance was anything but elegant. Her jacket and pants were covered in blood and grime and torn in more than a dozen places. I didn’t know how long she’d been chained to that chair, but it must have been a while, given the stench of urine that surrounded her and the puddles of liquid on the floor.
Her blond hair was a sweaty, frizzy mess, and her blue eyes were dull and glassy with pain. Cuts, burns, and bruises covered her face and exposed skin, along with several puncture wounds, as though a vampire had taken a bite or two out of her. She’d been thoroughly tortured, the same way she’d tortured Finn.
Good.
Deirdre realized that I was staring at her. She snarled and jerked forward, although the silverstone cuffs on her wrists kept her as securely shackled to her chair as I was with the ones on my wrists. Her ankles had also been chained down, and all she could do was rock her chair back and forth, since it was on rollers. My chair also had rollers, but my feet were free and not tied down.
I ignored her hissy fit and studied my surroundings. Bare bulbs hanging down from the ceiling. Stacks of crates and shrink-wrapped boxes everywhere. Concrete floor and walls. The metal cage in one corner where I’d woken up the last time I was here. I was back in Dimitri Barkov’s warehouse.
And I was surrounded.
Several giants stood in a loose circle around Deirdre and me. They were all carrying guns under their suits, and one of them was holding a metal bucket with a leaky water hose curled up at his feet like a snake dripping venom. Nothing unusual there, but the longer I looked at them, the more worried I got. I didn’t recognize any of their faces, not a single one. This wasn’t Barkov’s crew—it was someone else’s.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding,” I said, turning my attention back to Deirdre. “What charming accommodations. Bet you wish you were back in your penthouse right now, honey.”
“You bitch!” Deirdre hissed, spittle flying out of her bloody, swollen lips. “This is all your fault! I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
“Oh, yeah. You absolutely should have. I’m just sorry that I wasn’t the one who got to work you over. They did a half-assed job, if you ask me. Considering that you’re still breathing.”
Deirdre snarled at me again, and I bared my teeth right back at her.
“Now, ladies,” that same voice I’d first heard called out again, a voice that I now realized wasn’t Deirdre’s. “There’s no need to be so nasty.”
Footsteps scuffed on the concrete, and Deirdre stopped snarling at me. A mulish look settled over her face, but she couldn’t quite hide the fear flickering in her eyes. She’d failed to rob the bank for her employers, whoever they were, and now there was to be a reckoning. One that included me, since I was the reason her scheme had gone sideways. Lucky me.
The footsteps grew louder and closer, until they stopped right behind me. Whoever was standing there wanted me to turn around, to strain and struggle to try to see him, but I stayed still and faced front. He’d step into the light. Every cockroach did, eventually.
I started counting off the seconds in my head. One . . . two . . . three . . . five . . . ten . . . fifteen . . .
I hadn’t even made it to thirty before a man walked past me, stepping into the space between Deirdre and me.
Black hair, black eyes, trimmed goatee, snazzy suit. He looked the same as always, except for the fact that he wasn’t obsessively checking his phone. Instead, for once, he looked straight at me.
“Hello, Ms. Blanco,” Hugh Tucker said. “So nice of you to join us.”
*
I looked at Tucker, then at Deirdre, then back at Tucker.
“So you’re the man behind the curtain,” I said. “Hiding in plain sight all along.”
He shrugged. “Something like that.”
I’d wondered why he didn’t act like a typical assistant, and now I knew. Deirdre had been working for Tucker this whole time, not the other way around like they’d led everyone to believe. But even more interesting was Deirdre’s reaction to her boss. Her body trembled, her fingers curled tightly around the arms of her chair, and her tongue darted out to wet her lips. Whoever Tucker really was, Deirdre was practically shaking in her boots at the sight of him. Then again, he’d been torturing her for the last few days. Prolonged pain was enough to break just about anyone.