The Girl Who Dared to Endure Read online

  “Talk about it later,” she said as she got off Sadie. “Quess, how is this going to work?”

  “Prop her up against me,” he said, and within moments the three of us were lifting her onto her feet, Quess’s large arm around her waist helping to brace her. Her head rolled forward as we worked, and he reached over and gently positioned it against his shoulder so that it seemed she was sleeping against him.

  “I’ve got her on a sort of loop,” he told us softly, shifting her weight a little bit. “Right after you left and Maddox got back, I gave her a quarter pill, and we staged a new arrival scene without you, saying you’d been called away, and then I guided her through things. The sedative made her dopey, but she was able to follow along and jump to the conclusions we set up for her. I gave her a half of a pill forty minutes later, and every thirty minutes after that, restarting the loop in her mind so that there was still a ten-minute sequence of her arriving and interacting with us. Hopefully, this next one won’t eat too much into that time, so she has at least some memory of being here.”

  I nodded in wordless agreement. Our entire plan hung on this one thing, and if it didn’t work, Sadie might remember too much and figure out that something was up. If she put everything together and realized that we had pulled one over on her to raid her quarters… then nowhere in the Tower would be safe for us. Summoning up a deep calm, I took a few steps back and waited for her to wake up. Maddox moved to join me.

  It only took a minute for Sadie to give a soft little groan, and her head shifted, nestling into the crook of Quess’s shoulder. “You smell nice,” she slurred, and I reached out and grabbed Maddox’s forearm before the statuesque woman could think to move.

  The muscles under her skin were tight, but as I glanced at her, I saw her giving me an annoyed look that told me I was overreacting. She wasn’t going to screw this up.

  “CEO Monroe?” Quess asked, and something about his tone implied that he’d said it once before and was both nervous and embarrassed to have to do it again.

  Sadie murmured something incoherent against his neck with a little snort. Quess cleared his throat and repeated, “CEO Monroe?” in a firmer voice, but there was an undercurrent of panic to it.

  Her head rolled up, and she blinked at Quess blearily. “Wha—”

  I nodded at Maddox, and we resumed our walk over. “CEO Monroe,” I said loudly, putting a note of disapproval in my voice. “Knight Commander Worthington. How is the investigation going?”

  Quess took a quick step away from Sadie, and I was surprised to see a flush forming in his cheeks. I gave him an internal nod of respect for taking his role that far, and then returned my focus to Sadie.

  She, however, was considerably less embarrassed, given the displeased curl of her lips. “You’re back,” she said haughtily. “I’m surprised you even bothered to show.”

  I kept my face expressionless but was grateful to see that she hadn’t remembered the first time she arrived—when I’d been here to greet her. “My apologies,” I replied, keeping my voice as empty as possible to tell her I wasn’t sorry at all. “I was dealing with a potential undoc situation.” It wasn’t technically a lie, which was why I probably shouldn’t have said it, but it was worth it to watch her eyes narrow into slits.

  “I see,” she said primly. “Well, Knight Commander Worthington and I are still conducting our analysis.” Her tone was dismissive, and she even went so far as to turn her back to me, but stopped mid-motion when Quess cleared his throat and gave her an apologetic look.

  “CEO Monroe… we finished the analysis, remember? Is that headache still bothering you? Or was the medicine I gave you too strong? I’m so terribly sorry…” He held out the pad, his eyes brimming with uncertainty, and I almost gagged at Sadie’s positively feline response.

  “It’s fine, Sam,” she said soothingly, but there was a greasy undercurrent that made me sick. Enough was enough.

  “Sam?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “You’re on a first-name basis with the Knight Commander I put in charge of maintaining our servers and computers?”

  “Internal server police,” Quess corrected softly, and I speared him with a look so fierce that for a second, I thought his recoil was real. It wasn’t, of course, but even if it had been, I would’ve gone for it anyway.

  “Care to correct me again, Worthington?” I growled menacingly, and he quickly shook his head.

  “No, ma’am.”

  Sadie tsked and took the pad out of Quess’s hand. “What a way you have with your people,” she remarked, condescension thick in her voice. “Especially with such a talented Knight. I’m quite surprised that our department hasn’t poached you yet, Sam.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her as Quess somehow managed another flush—I was going to ask him about that later—but this was dragging on far too long already. “I’m sorry, are you questioning my ability to run my own department?”

  “Always,” Sadie replied with another feline smile. “Anyway, it seems that Knight Commander Worthington is correct. We have finished, and the medication he gave me to combat a headache was fairly strong. I apologize for drifting off on you like that, Sam.”

  Quess widened his eyes and shook his head. “Oh, no, ma’am. It’s not your fault; it’s mine. If you’d like, I could escort you to the Medica, so we can make sure you are all right.”

  I could’ve killed him with a single look. The last thing we needed was for her to go to the Medica and get checked out. One look at her blood would definitely reveal the sedative and could even reveal Spero. I wasn’t sure if they’d be able to figure out what it was, but it wasn’t even worth the risk.

  Not to mention, we needed Quess to upload Jasper and Rose. They were waiting. They had been waiting too long already. I didn’t want them to wait a second longer, and if Quess left, it would mean that we couldn’t upload them until Leo arrived.

  But Quess seemed to have a better read on Sadie than I thought. “No,” she said, finality in her voice. “I’m truly sorry, but I just don’t have the time. I’m already behind on my schedule, and I’m sure I’ll be fine. That nap seems to already have me feeling as good as new.”

  Maddox growled as Sadie winked at Quess, and I tensed, wondering if Sadie would notice.

  She didn’t, however, and bent over to pick up her bag, tucking her pad into it. “Champion,” she said curtly.

  “Hold up,” I said before she could even take her first step. “What was the problem with my room?”

  “It seems to have been a random glitch,” she announced. “I’m sure you won’t understand the details, but suffice it to say I have fixed it, and it shouldn’t happen again.”

  I gave her a doubtful look. “Could this affect the other councilors’ quarters?”

  She shook her head, her face annoyed. “It was a random error,” she repeated slowly, and I resisted the urge to smack her. “My report will be sent to you shortly.”

  I gave her a bright and vacuous smile in response. “Thank you ever so much for your help,” I told her lightly. “And I hope that you can catch up on your schedule. Lieutenant Kerrin?”

  Maddox nodded, echoing my empty, yet chipper, smile, and began leading Sadie away toward the elevator. I started walking toward where Maddox had set the hard drives before they were even on board, but as soon as the door shut between us, I was racing toward them.

  “Call Leo!” I ordered Quess as I picked up the veritable tower of plastic boxes. “Get him and Alex down here.” I checked my watch and saw with great relief that we still had two minutes left.

  But that didn’t mean we were out of the woods. We still had Baldy to deal with, fallout to worry about, and two AIs to break apart.

  5

  I was watching the status bar showing the upload status for Jasper and Rose when Alex and Leo entered, holding Baldy mostly aloft between them. His legs dragged across the floor, and the two men eventually put him down halfway between us and the terminal. I patted Quess’s shoulder as he continued to work o
n the download and then moved to meet them.

  I gave Leo an encouraging smile as he passed but slowed to a stop in front of my brother, summoning up some courage. He was mad at me—had every right to be, really—and I owed him an apology. All he’d wanted was to be a part of the investigation I was conducting against the people who had killed our mother, and I had cut him out. It hadn’t been entirely intentional on my part, but that didn’t change the fact that I had hurt him.

  “Alex, I am truly sorry about not including you in everything,” I said softly. “I promise that from here on out—”

  “Never mind all that,” he said excitedly, a hand cutting through the air between us to emphasize the statement. “We finally have a legacy, Liana! We can find out what happened to our mom and what they are doing to Scipio!”

  I glanced at Baldy over my brother’s shoulder and then looked back to him, taken aback by his sudden change of tune. Hours ago, he’d been ready to tear me a new one. Now he was practically sparkling at the idea of having answers within reach at last. The rapid shift in his behavior confused me, but maybe Leo had talked to him, or it had hit Alex that there was a way forward with all of this insanity.

  Either way, I was all for it. I longed for answers, too—hell, it was the reason I had chosen not to kill Baldy in the first place—but that didn’t mean he was going to speak to us. If anything, he was probably going to keep quiet about what he knew and bide his time until he could make some sort of escape, or signal someone for help.

  But we had another way, and I needed to let my brother know about it so he didn’t waste his time with Baldy. “Alex, we have better than that,” I said excitedly, touching his arm. “We stole all of Sadie’s files from her computer. I’m pretty sure that the answers we need are there. Let’s tie Baldy up, do some research, and see if we can’t figure out who, exactly, is to blame for our mom’s death.”

  My brother frowned at me. “That’ll be hours,” he said, taking a slow step back. “We have this guy. We should question him now.”

  I sighed. “Alex, he’s not going to tell us anything, but we might not need him to!”

  “So then why is he here?” my brother retorted, exasperated. “Why risk bringing him here if not to question him?”

  I hesitated. I had just been asking myself the same thing. At the time, it had seemed so clear to me, but now that he was here and I had taken a beat to think about it, I realized it had been a really stupid move. Not only was he dangerous, his people were going to come looking for him. And he wouldn’t talk to us—wouldn’t do anything to reveal their plans or tell us who they were. Not to mention, we didn’t really need him if Sadie’s files provided us with the evidence we wanted. If I had really thought it through in Sadie’s apartment, I would’ve killed him and been done with it. But my desire to know the who of it all had been too compelling at the time, and I wasn’t one hundred percent certain that Sadie’s files would yield results.

  “It was a spur-of-the moment decision,” I admitted. “And I didn’t think it through. But there’s no point in questioning him. He won’t talk.”

  “Well, we have to try.” Alex raked a hand through his long hair, gathering the dark locks together so he could wrap a band around them. “Because as far as I can tell, you have currently done nothing in the search for Mom’s murderer.”

  My mouth dropped open at his remark. I was shocked that he would even say that. It wasn’t that I had forgotten about Mom’s death, but I had prioritized retrieving Jasper and Rose when I had to. Not to mention, that was really unfair, given how difficult the legacies were to track down. Still, he was right, in a way. I hadn’t gotten far in finding Mom’s killers. So I closed my mouth, guilty.

  The past three days had gotten us a lot, but not exactly an answer to the burning question in both our minds.

  I stared at Baldy’s splayed-out form, remembering the look on his face as he pointed the knife at Leo’s chest when he attacked us on the catwalk, and the feel of the knife when he cut my throat.

  And even though I knew it wouldn’t do me any good, a deep, dark part of me wanted to confront him for everything he’d done to me and my friends. And Alex seemed to be speaking directly to it, because his words were beginning to make sense. Plus, I found I couldn’t deny him this request, considering how I’d ignored him in the preceding days. He was right that we needed to know what was going on, and maybe if we could get Baldy to talk…

  “Fine,” I said, my hesitation still lingering for a few seconds. “I’ll get a chair, and we’ll tie him to it. Quess should have some smelling salts in his bag. We’ll wake him up and ask him.” My brother gave me a satisfied smile, but it froze on his face when I added, “But if he doesn’t talk, we knock him out and then figure out some other way to use him.”

  The smile twisted into a scowl. Alex crossed his arms. “We’ll see,” he retorted, and I sighed.

  He and I spent the next few minutes getting ready—I summoned a chair using the controls in the column in the middle of the room—and then we heaved him into it. I was already tired from lifting so much dead weight earlier with his five friends, but together, we managed. Alex tied him up, and I went to find Quess’s medical bag to recover a pill of smelling salts.

  Before we were finished setting up, Quess announced that the download of Jasper and Rose was completed. Leo gave me a questioning look, his brown eyes alight with indecision, and I knew he didn’t want to leave me with this if I couldn’t handle it. But that was ridiculous; Jasper and Rose needed him. And although I was tired, I felt pretty confident that I could handle this exchange with Baldy, so I told him to help Jasper and Rose and make certain they were all right.

  He sat down quickly and began typing, filling the cavernous space with the sound of keys being clicked. I found myself wanting to be standing next to him, trying to help Jasper and Rose, instead of over here, about to come face-to-face with a man who had tried to kill me three times.

  Heavy was the head that wore the crown, or some such crap, I thought to myself, mentally preparing for what I had to do.

  Still, as I crossed the room, pill in hand, a strange queasiness started to fill my stomach, and my instincts began to scream at me that this was a bad idea. But a look at my brother’s determined face as he waited for me to come over told me that expressing it to him would only make things worse. So instead, I summoned up another deep calm, handed the salts to my brother, and looked at Quess and Maddox.

  “I’ll handle the questions,” I announced softly. My brother snorted derisively but didn’t object. He snapped open the pill, then waved it under Baldy’s nose.

  The effect was almost instantaneous. Baldy’s eyes snapped open, his head jerking up and back and forth wildly. He glanced at me, my brother, and then all around him, his shoulders straining against the restraints around his wrists. He made a guttural roar that made me shut one eye against the volume of it, and, his panic mounting, he began to rock back and forth in the chair. It tipped, and I quickly planted a boot on the lower rung as he extended past the center of gravity, catching the chair and his weight before he could fall.

  He gave a startled yip as I balanced him on the two back legs of the chair, and lifted his neck to look up at me, his blue-green eyes a vicious glare. “You’re dead, bitch,” he spat. “You and your little friends are—”

  I lifted my foot and let him fall before he could say any more. I had to admit to myself that as petty as the act was, it definitely went a long way toward making me feel better—especially when I heard his head smack against the floor, followed by his inhalation of pain.

  Alex chuckled next to me, and even I couldn’t hide my smile. No, it didn’t make up for him cutting my throat, but there was something very satisfying about inflicting a little bit of pain in exchange for the wrongs he had committed against us. The power and control that I now had over him were alluring, and suddenly I wasn’t as afraid of him as I had been.

  We bent over and pulled him back up, setting the chair o
nto all fours. He glared at us the entire time, but I kept my face impassive and ignored it. I backed away as soon as I was done and folded my arms across my chest.

  “So, should I be worried that you’re stalking me?” I asked. “Because it is weird that we would keep running into each other. I mean, three times in a week is pretty excessive, and given that you attacked me two of those three times, my brother thinks that you might be part of a terrorist cell trying to destroy Scipio and trying to kill me because you know I can stop you.”

  Baldy shook his head as if I had punched him, and then his face hardened. “I should’ve left you to bleed out on the floor,” he said with a sneer. “Blood spurting out of your neck is a good look for you.”

  Beside me, I felt my brother tense, but I couldn’t focus on it. Baldy’s words had forced the awful memory of the event back into my mind, and for a second, the sensation of drowning on my own blood as it spurted through my fingers flooded my senses. I closed my eyes, trying to block the vision, but it didn’t help. The bastard noticed, too, because he gave a sharp, barking laugh.

  “That’s right, honey,” he said. “You and I have shared something more powerful than anything you can ever have with anyone else. I held your life in my hands. I left your friends the tools to save it. All I had to do was cut you and walk away, and you’d be dead, just like your stupid bitch mother.”

  “Shut up,” my brother growled next to me, and I reached out blindly for him, finding his forearm. It helped ground me, helped remind me that the sensation of blood in my throat wasn’t real, and I opened my eyes and stared at Baldy, a fire burning in my soul.

  “Did you kill her?” I demanded. “Did you give the order to the sentinel and send it in there?”

  He bared his teeth at me. “Who, me? Nah. Not me. But me and the others looooooved watching the vid file of her falling. We watched it over and over and over again, and we laughed and laughed. The way her legs and arms flailed, and the look on her face…”