The Girl Who Dared to Endure (The Girl Who Dared #6)

Lacey’s mouth tightened, but she didn’t reply other than to cross her arms and lean back in the chair. “Call me a little suspicious, then. I thought I told you I didn’t want any more face-to-face meetings until you caught Ambrose’s killers.” Her brown eyes widened theatrically as she craned her neck around, searching for people she knew for a fact weren’t there. “I don’t see them. Are they invisible?”

“Do you want to know why we requested a meeting or not?” Maddox retorted, losing her temper in the face of Lacey’s bitterness. “Because we can go and—”

“It’s fine, Maddox,” I said, interrupting her. I gave her a look that told her there was no point in getting upset, and then turned back to Lacey. “We found them.”

“Who?” Lacey asked, her eyebrows coming together. “Ambrose’s killers?”

I nodded, and a slow, predatory smile developed on her face. “Where?”

“It’s not so simple,” I told her, sitting down in a chair across from them. “It’s not just Ambrose’s killers, but the entire legacy group that you’ve been after.”

Lacey blinked at me several times, her expression wavering between disbelief and eagerness, and it was Strum who took over for her. “How do you know?” he asked.

“Because we broke into Sadie’s quarters,” I replied. “Speaking of which, I’m going to need both of you to reset your quarters using the virus on this.” I reached into a pocket on my sleeve and pulled out a data stick as I spoke, setting it on the table and sliding it toward Lacey. Strum reached out and caught it, his long fingers snapping it up.

“You reset your own quarters?” Lacey asked, and I was amused at the dumbfounded look on her face. “Wait. You broke into Sadie’s?” The alarm in her voice and eyes was only rivaled by the impressed look Strum was giving us. “Are you insane? Sadie’s assistant—”

“Was knocked offline,” I said, cutting her off. I didn’t want her to start nitpicking over the details of my plan. We didn’t have time. “The virus reset it, covering all the records of our coming and going. So you can relax; she won’t know it was me. However, it would be helpful if at least one of you would reset your own quarters, to make sure Sadie buys that the rooms resetting themselves is just an unfortunate glitch.”

“Why did you do this?” Strum asked, finally breaking his silence. “What was in Sadie’s quarters, and how does doing this relate to Ambrose’s killers?”

I took a deep breath and prepared to drop my first truth bomb. “Sadie is a legacy. I’m not sure if she’s at the top or if there is someone above her, but we uncovered evidence in her terminal that proves it. She also has a legacy net.” Lacey gave me a look that read, ‘How do you know that,’ and I shrugged and said, “I had to wear it to get access to her quarters.”

Lacey’s jaw dropped, and then quickly snapped shut. A moment later, she was up and moving, pacing back and forth across a small stretch of floor. “So Sadie’s another legacy. I thought we’d weeded them all out of the council with Devon, but… argh!” She stopped suddenly and kicked out a nearby chair, sending it flying into the next room. The violence of it surprised me, and I leaned back, studying her.

“Calm down, Lace,” Strum said. “We couldn’t have known.”

“No, you’re right, we couldn’t have known! That’s the point, Strum. We never know! We are fighting in absolute darkness! For every one of them we kill, another three move around and get their fingers into something else! When is this ever going to be over? When are we ever going to be done?”

“Soon,” I said, giving her an answer that I knew the Praetor couldn’t. That brought their attention back to me, and I rolled with it, knowing we had a lot more ground to cover. “I have a list of her entire network, including spies stationed inside the other departments. There are a few details I need to collect before I can act, but once I have them figured out, I’m going to make a move on every single one of them. But I need your help to do it.”

“Our help?” Lacey folded her arms across her chest and looked at Strum, seeming to communicate something to him nonverbally. For all I knew, they were communicating using their neural transmitters to have a private conversation while we were here. But honestly, I didn’t care. If it helped them come to some sort of consensus sooner, I was all for it. “I suppose we can assist you in executing them,” she said.

I blinked. That wasn’t exactly what I had been expecting, and it definitely wasn’t a good sign. If their first response to the problem was to kill everyone, without even considering a legal option, it meant that they weren’t going to take too kindly to the idea when I presented it. If anything, they could deny us the manpower outright, and then we’d be in a little bit of trouble.

But they were just going to have to get over it. My information, my rules. “We’re not going to execute them,” I informed them. “We’re going to arrest them, all of them, and then we’re going to hold a special council meeting to try to convict them.”

For several long seconds, no one said anything. Then Lacey said, “You’re serious?” I nodded, and she suddenly sat down, as if her knees weren’t capable of holding her up. “But… can you prove what she’s done to Scipio?”

I inhaled and exhaled slowly, and then seized upon the entrance her words had given me. “Not in the way you think, but definitely, yes. We both can.”

“We both can?” she repeated, looking confused. “What do you mean?”

“It’s simple. I let the fragment AIs I’ve managed to rescue from Sadie’s legacy group testify, and you let Kurt do the same.” I watched her closely, worried that I was pressing her too far with the demands today.

Lacey’s face paled, her eyes growing wide. “How do you know about that?” she demanded. “How could you possibly—”

I reached up and tapped the back of my neck. “You gave me the net,” I told her. “You didn’t think I would wonder why I couldn’t retain certain memories after they happened?”

“You tampered with the security lock we put on there.” Lacey exhaled with a groan. “Of course you did. I knew giving you a net was a mistake.”

“Mistake or not, it doesn’t change the fact that I know about Kurt, nor that I have Jasper and Rose. With them giving testimony about what happened to them, we can—”

“I don’t have Kurt,” she cut in abruptly, and now it was my turn to frown.

“But the memory…”

“Lacey’s great-grandfather, three generations removed, and his sister,” Strum said, his face grim. “My family was allied to Lacey’s even then, and my ancestors found their bodies thirty-three minutes after they downloaded Kurt—in that same room, where they were murdered. Kurt was never recovered. Presumably he was stolen by the murderers.”

I leaned back in my chair, my heart pounding. Lacey didn’t have Kurt? Then who did? He wasn’t on Sadie’s computer—Leo would’ve found him if he had been. But if he wasn’t there, was it possible she was keeping him somewhere else? And if so, how could we find him? If she didn’t have him… then who did?

And how were we ever going to learn what happened to him?

I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t change our course of action. Just having Rose and Jasper should be more than enough to convince Scipio that he had been tampered with, and force Sage—if he wasn’t our enemy—to support the arrest of the two council members who were.

“That’s disappointing,” I said in a gross understatement. “But it changes nothing. I still have two fragment AIs—”

“I didn’t say I didn’t have one,” Lacey interrupted coolly. “I do. It’s just not Kurt. It’s Tony.”

“Tony?” I asked, blinking. “Wait, how did you get Tony? Did you manage to steal him before someone else got him?”