They upended Luke Ryan’s stiff, unyielding body into it like a corpse into a coffin, locked it and carried it out of the room.
Mark followed them. The door clicked shut. Minutes passed, in utter silence.
The video stopped. No one moved.
Caro had no reason to be surprised by any of this. She knew only too well how violent and disturbed Mark was. But she still couldn’t move or speak. It was so horrible.
Then she saw Hannah, sobbing into her hands. Sisko paced behind the couch. Zade sat, white-faced, fists clenched so hard his knuckles were white.
Noah just looked at the blue screen, his face a blank mask.
Her neck prickled, as Mark’s words in the video floated through her mind. You and Zade and Sisko decrypted all the Midlands info before rebellion day.
Oh, God. Zade and Sisko? “What the hell is going on?” she demanded.
No one answered. The tension in the room intensified as she stood up.
“You guys are not being straight with me. Especially you.” She pointed at Noah. “I don’t know what the fuck happened in that video, or what connection Mark has to that poor guy, or why you even care. But none of it matters to me.”
Hannah’s wet eyes widened with outrage. “How can you say that?”
“Framing people for murder is what Mark does,” Caro said. “That’s all that’s relevant to me. This video will prove my innocence, or at least help me prove it. I have to take this to the police right away.”
Noah stood up, and removed the flash drive from the laptop. The TV went dark.
“No,” he said.
Caro braced herself. “Care to explain?” She knew he wouldn’t.
“I’m taking him down,” Zade said. “Nobody can stop me.”
“Zade.” Noah’s voice was flat. “Think. If what he says is true, and we have no reason not to believe him, then he has your codes. You can’t get near him. He’d take you just like he took Luke.”
“But Luke’s in the dungeon,” Zade insisted. “Mark’s hurting him now.”
Caro looked around at Zade. “So that’s why I saw you before Hannah called for me,” she said to Zade. “You guys know Luke Ryan personally. Mark Olund, too?”
Noah broke the silence. “Yes,” he admitted. “We have history with Mark.”
“So you’ve been stalking me?”
“Not exactly,” Noah said. “We’ve been stalking Mark. We only stalked you by reflex. You popped up on our radar when you made contact with Bea.”
Caro tried to wrap her mind around that, and drew a blank. As blank as Bea’s empty blue eyes. No mental flexibility was possible today. She felt fragile, brittle.
“Guess we all want to bring down Mark Olund,” she said. “Right? So why not go to the police? Why not help your friend?” She gazed around their shuttered faces, feeling the weight of their tense silence. Her heart sank.
Caro straightened her shoulders, and held out her hand for the flash drive. “Give me that,” she said. “It’s mine. I found it. I paid for it. And the price was very high.”
“I’m sorry,” Noah said. “I can’t let you take that file to the police.”
Caro drew her hand back. Her stomach roiled. So. There it was.
She’d had an awful, sinking sense that something like this might happen. Ever since Noah insisted on calling his own crew to view the footage they had found.
She’d been betrayed, fucked over, deceived and used. Again.
This time, it was incredibly personal. Noah had made an absolute fool of her. She’d opened herself to him completely. He’d made her fall into something like love with him and then betrayed her trust. She was almost too shocked to be angry. But not quite.
“You lying, treacherous prick,” she said.
Noah let out a controlled sigh. “Caro—”
“You had your own agenda from the beginning. The whole time you were just manipulating me. Jerking me around. All those things you said.”
“They were all true,” Noah broke in.
“Oh, shut up. How could you play me like that?” To her dismay, she was dissolving. This asshole didn’t deserve her tears. She barely remembered the other people in the room. She was alone with Noah. The others were wallpaper.
“I meant everything I said to you,” Noah said. “And the two of us are on the same side. But my people and I have secrets that have to be kept at all costs.”
“Secrets?” She laughed wildly. “Oh, great! All costs, huh? I’m the cost, Noah. Who the hell are you guys? What is your deal?”
The others exchanged uneasy glances and looked to Noah for their cue.
“It’s complicated,” Noah said.
“I just bet that it is.” She glared at him through a haze of furious tears. “Let’s keep it simple. Just give me the flash drive.”
“If I do that, everyone I care about will die,” he said. “Or worse.”
Something in his voice undercut her anger. An intuition of some shadowy threat that loomed over all of them. Noah was not lying.