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

Plain-Face. I had been wondering how he fit into this. “Do we know where he is?”

“Yes,” Quess replied. “I fed the pictures into central command’s mainframe, and was able to match everyone but the undocs, except for one person. I looked him up, and it’s him. His name is Eustice Crowley.” He tapped on his pad, and the lights on the holographic table coalesced into a profile, complete with pictures of a creepily plain-looking man whose eyes seemed to be watching me even now. I recognized him instantly, and my hand balled into a fist. “And he’s never had any plastic surgery?”

“Not once. But what’s more, his file shows that he was Medica-born and bred. He even got into medical school, but transferred out in his third year to go into IT. And he’s definitely related to the others. Blood was collected at the scene that matched the other samples taken from the bridge and the legacy house in the Attic.”

My lips thinned. He might be placed in IT, but it was only so he could perform the plastic surgery in an environment that Sadie could control. But that also meant we couldn’t grab him without alerting Sadie. It was going to take careful planning to get to him and the other legacies she had in IT, but we were one step closer now. “Good work,” I told Quess. “That’s one down, only a few more to—”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Jasper cut in smoothly, and I looked up and over my shoulder at the screen on which his face had appeared. “But you’re getting an incoming call from Eric and Zoe. Should I patch them through the speakers?”

I blinked and looked down at my wrist. Sure enough, my indicator was blinking that I had a net call, but now that I had Cornelius, he fielded my calls for me. Which meant Jasper had taken over the job. “Yes,” I said. “Go ahead.”

There was a burst of static, followed by, “Liana, Dreyfuss just met with someone who I think you fought in the qualifiers of the Tourney.” Eric spoke in a low voice, and I blinked in surprise.

“Wait, what? How could you know that?” I asked. We had the pictures of those individuals thanks to the initial investigation conducted by Astrid Felix, but they used plastic surgery to re-disguise people after their cover had been blown, making it impossible for them to be recognized.

“I obsessed over those vid files for days,” he replied.

“He did,” Zoe confirmed a moment later. “He’s been looking for a way to make himself more useful to the group and started by practically memorizing everything Astrid gave us, including the vid files from the Tourney, so he might know what he is talking about.”

“I do,” he said insistently. “I figured plastic surgery was all about modifying faces, but there are identifying marks all over people that make them stand out, including birthmarks and mannerisms. Anyway, one of the guys in your fight had a birthmark shaped like a bee right under his hairline on the back of his neck. Huge purple thing—hard to miss. I was watching Dreyfuss when a guy in a Knight’s uniform showed up at his stall, the same damn mark on his neck.”

A Knight’s uniform? We knew Sadie had legacies in the Knights Department, but had they actually had the audacity to put him back inside after he had already committed a crime there? I looked over at Maddox. “Do you have the files on the Knights who were missing after Ambrose’s attack?”

She nodded, and quickly tapped a few buttons on her pad. A moment later, several pictures began to form over the table, projected holographically for us all to see. “I’ll eliminate the woman, but I can’t see their necks. Eric, which one was he?”

“Thompson, I believe,” Eric said, and Maddox quickly pulled up his picture, revealing a young man with dark blond hair and muddled hazel eyes. I vaguely remembered him in the fight. I thought Leo had taken him out.

“Did you catch the name he’s using?” I asked Eric, hoping he managed to at least get the last name from where it was sewn into our uniforms.

“I did. It’s Andrews now.”

I looked over at Quess. “Tell me that name matches the one from Sadie’s list.”

Quess nodded and managed to look even more smug. “And, his name matches one of five aliases and faces he’s used, according to Dr. Smiley’s pictures. Look.” He swiped the screen and four more faces floated up next to the one Maddox had pulled up.

Side by side, I could see the resemblance between each man—the changes that were made to his jaw, lips, eyes, mouth, ears, and nose—growing more and more pronounced with each figure. “Five faces,” I said, appalled. “That’s horrific.”

“He’s only twenty-three,” Quess added, and I wasn’t sure why he had thought to mention it. It certainly didn’t help calm the queasy twist of my stomach as I realized just what lengths these people would go to in order to accomplish their goals.

“Eric, when they met—”

“They made an exchange,” he said, cutting me off. “I’m not sure of what, but I think it was a net. He left, but I couldn’t follow him and leave Dreyfuss alone. Dylan’s with Plancett on another level, and I wasn’t going to let Zoe follow him without backup.”

She snorted, the sound causing a loud static pop in the speakers, but held her tongue, giving me a moment to think.

I considered what he was saying, but realized it probably wasn’t a good idea to follow anyone we knew for sure was a legacy, lest they figure out what we were up to. Besides, we were planning to move on them as soon as Lacey finished up the DNA tests. “Let him go,” I told Eric. “We know where he’s going to be.”

Eric was quiet for a moment. “Okay. Any word on the tests?”

“Actually, you’ve just received a message from Lacey Green, marked priority,” Jasper informed us. “Do you want me to read it?”

I looked around the table to where everyone was watching me, their eyes reflecting different degrees of curiosity. “Yup,” I told him. “Go ahead and read it.”

There was a pause, followed by, “So, it seems that of the three samples you gave her, the hair tested positive as having a paternal relationship with all thirty-four original samples. She informs you that she can have her people ready to mobilize within an hour, followed by what could be construed as a backhanded compliment.”

“That sounds like Lacey,” Zoe said lightly through the speakers. “So that means Dreyfuss is the father?”

It did. I couldn’t help but feel a grim sense of satisfaction that I’d been right. Dreyfuss was the man who had escalated the legacies’ plans twenty-five years ago, when the Patrians unexpectedly showed up at the Tower. The legacies must not have wanted to establish diplomatic relations until they had control over the Tower, and they knew that they only had a limited amount of time before other explorers came. Maybe Sparks had been the head then, but I was betting Dreyfuss played a part in the decision and was now helping Sadie carry it through. It made sense. I wasn’t sure yet why they were working together as partners exactly, but maybe he just controlled the undoc side of things, while she helped him from the inside. Either way, hiding him under the guise of a retired Knight was the perfect cover for a leader of a terrorist cell.

“Yes,” I said. “So that’s one of two problems down.”

“Hold up,” Maddox interjected, waving a hand in the air. “So Sage is what in all this? The guy who got away? If you’re right, then this Dreyfuss guy had Roark’s wife and a whole lot of people killed, but somehow missed Sage, who also knew about the whole thing? What’s up with that?”