“It’s kind of hard to walk away from something when vampire goons and their werewolf buddies seem intent on either tracking me down or beating me up.” I shook my head. “But that’s not the only reason drugging me was dangerous, Sam. I’m spirit, not flesh, and no matter how much you and your organization think they know about phoenixes, trust me, it’s little more than a drop in the ocean.”
“And I will do whatever is necessary to protect the people I work with against forces that could destroy us, Em. And if that means risking the effects of a drug on an unknown entity to prevent an attack, then so be it.”
But that entity was someone you’d once professed to love. The words echoed through me, bitter and filled with hurt. Damn it, no. I wouldn’t go there. Couldn’t go there. This man might be the love of this lifetime, but that love was now a part of my past. It needed to remain there, no matter how much pain, regret, and anger lingered in the present.
No matter how much the occasional glimpse of the old Sam fanned the embers of hope.
“You know what? This is getting us nowhere. Just stop the car and let me out. Rory can—”
“Your damn lover can wait.” The darkness within him was suddenly so close to the surface it was a living thing that crowded the car’s cabin. “You’ve got a notebook to find and hand over first.”
I somehow resisted the urge to inch away from him. In this confined space, that darkness—whatever the hell it was—was far too close, far too real, and far too dangerous. And, oddly enough, it reminded me a little of the man who’d silently watched me from the shadows.
“Rory is as vital to my life as the air I breathe in this form,” I replied, the bitterness within me evident in my voice despite my best efforts of control. “And the very least you could have done was listen. What we had deserved—”
“Enough.” It was an order and a warning, all in one. “We’ve studied your building’s security tapes. It wasn’t red cloaks who broke into your apartment, but a thief with a long history of subcontracting to the sindicati.”
I took yet another of those deep, steadying breaths, but it had as much of an effect as the rest of them. “I gather you’ve a warrant out on him?”
“Of course.”
He flicked on the blinker, and I realized with a start that we were now on the Tullamarine Freeway. Whether Sam was heading to PIT’s headquarters or my home was very much up in the air, but I suspected the latter given he wouldn’t want to risk me finding the notebook and handing it over to the sindicati.
“Unsurprisingly,” he continued, “he’s made himself scarce, but we have people checking his usual hangouts, just in case. The question, however, is why—if the sindicati have all the notebooks—do they now believe they are missing one?”
“That I can’t tell you.”
“Were there four or five on the USB you gave me?”
“Four, as I told you when I handed it over. I’d typed up the remaining one, but hadn’t gotten around to transferring it.”
I still had those notes, thanks to Rory. But I wasn’t about to tell Sam that. Not yet. I might need it as a bargaining chip for Jackson’s life.
“And you have no idea what happened to the final notebook?” Sam said.
“No. As I’ve told both you and them, as far as I was aware, all five had been stolen.”
His gaze narrowed, and just for a moment it felt as if he were trying to read my mind and unpick truth from lies. Eventually, he said, “Well, obviously not by the sindicati if they were willing to go to such lengths to secure it.”
“I think they saw me with Amanda Wilson and decided to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.” I hesitated. “You do know that the sindicati tried to kill her, don’t you?”
He shrugged. “To be honest, good riddance. But why the hell didn’t you report the attempted murder to us rather than the police?”
“Because I was—and still am—pissed off at you.”
“Yeah, well, that’s a two-way street,” he muttered. “How are you supposed to get the notebook back to the sindicati?”
I crossed my arms and looked out the side window for several seconds. It was tempting—very tempting—not to answer, but I’d already seen the lengths he was willing to go to get what he wanted, and I wasn’t about to risk another such debacle. Not with Jackson’s life on the line.
“They’ve given me a number to call.”
“What number? I’ll have it traced.”
“Why? It’ll undoubtedly be a burn phone.”
“Perhaps, but we might be able to get GPS positioning on it.”
“And how does that help, exactly? Whoever is currently holding the phone will be a subcontractor. The sindicati haven’t shown any real propensity to place themselves in the line of danger.”
“Exactly, which makes the fact that they took such a risk to grab you in broad daylight even odder.”
“As I said, I think I was merely an opportunity too good—”
“And what,” he bit back, “if you’re wrong? What if you were the target all along, and they were merely waiting for the right moment?”
“If they were going after me, they could have done it a whole lot sooner. Hell, I was next to useless for hours after you dumped us.”
“Except that they must have known we were watching you. That accident was not only very well timed, but executed in an area from which they could get away very fast—and they took our people out along with Jackson’s truck.”
Another chill ran through me. To do something like that took time and planning, and that could only mean he was right. But it also meant Amanda might not now be in the hands of the sindicati if she hadn’t insisted I uphold my end of our deal. And that, I thought grimly, was karma at its finest. “Are your people okay?”
“Yeah. The same cannot be said for Jackson’s truck, however. I’m not actually sure how Amanda Wilson survived that crash—there was a lot of blood on the seat.”
Seat. Damn, the USBs. “Where’s the truck now?”
“It was hauled away. I believe the police have been trying to contact Jackson.” He gave me a look that sat somewhere between annoyance and disgust. “Wouldn’t happen to know where he is, do you?”
“Yeah, I do. And thanks to you, he’s in the same place I was.”
Sam’s eyebrows rose. “Why in the hell would the sindicati want him?”
“As insurance. I give them the notebook, they free him.”
“Well, that ain’t going to happen.”
I stared at him for a moment, unable to believe he’d actually said that. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“What do you think it means?” His expression was grim. “You’ve seen the red cloaks. You’ve seen what they can do. The life of one Fae is not worth the lives of the millions who could be affected if this thing gets out of control. We need the cure—or at the very least, a vaccine. To get it, we need those notes.”
“If you think I’m going to let you sacrifice Jackson’s life—”
“You haven’t exactly got a choice here. You’re in this car, with me, and you’re not getting free of either anytime soon.”
“What? You’re going to chain me? Because that’s the only damn way you’ll keep me captive.”
“Well, there is the drug option. Or I could simply take you back to headquarters and lock you in one of our flameproof cells.” He half smiled, but it was a cold thing, holding little in the way of amusement. “It was designed to hold pyrokinetics, so I’m thinking it should be fine against the fires of a phoenix.”