Page 94 of Ravage
The entire walk back, he watched her like a hawk. Now that we’re all seated in the living room, he hasn’t taken his eyes off her. But now his expression is unreadable.
Jackson is perched on the back of the couch on the other side of Raegan from Kellan, a throwing star flipping between his fingers while leaning his face on his other hand. He’s scratched up and bruised as if he’d been in a scuffle, but none of us has brought it up yet.
No one has said anything yet.
To give Raegan more time, I focus on the other catastrophes of the day.
“Any ideas on how they found us?” I finally start. When no one answers right away, I turn my focus on Jackson. “What happened to you?”
He smiles and shrugs. “You know what they say. You go looking for trouble and you usually find it.”
I frown to show my complete lack of amusement, but he isn’t bothered in the slightest.
“It was a trap, actually. I was ambushed. I think to keep me busy while they attacked the Guild.” He shoots me a look that tells me he has more to say later and I give the barest of nods so he knows I understand.
“Did they want Dane?” Kell asks, tossing the washcloth on the table and leaning back into the cushions with one arm stretched above where Raegan sits.
“I don’t think they realized who I was when they tried to grab me. They may have just assumed I was another member of the Guild, is all,” Dane answers.
“So, an attack on us? Or a snatch and grab of more gifted people?” I muse aloud.
“You,” Raegan chimes in, and I practically jump to attention. The fear is gone from her eyes, but her face is guarded now instead. Her blue eyes latch on to me and my blood heats. “That was courtesy of the congressman. You remember him, Aiden? The man I was gathering information from before you kicked me out?”
I scoff at that, pleased by the flicker of annoyance she sends my way. I’ll gladly take that over her haunted look. If I have to push her and be the bad guy to snap her out of that trance she was in, so be it. “Gathering information for you, maybe. Don’t try to pretend anything you were doing was for our benefit.”
“At least having me there only puts me in danger. Apparently, you guys know a bunch of other gifted people and you just led GE straight to them.”
My jaw ticks at her brazenness, but I feed on it too. “How are you so sure it was that scum and not someone else?” I challenge back.
“Because I was in his office with him when he told me.”
There’s a pregnant pause as we absorb what she’s said.
Kellan grabs her arm. “Alone?!”
She throws her legs to the ground and tries to tug her arm away, but his grip is too tight. “Of course, alone. I’m always alone.”
“What if he—”
I interrupt Kellan, “Is he dead?” If she left him dead in his office with evidence all over the place, then we needed to be working on a clean-up now. The last person she got information from ended up with a knife in his skull.
Raegan finally yanks her arm free and then crosses them. “I left as soon as I heard he had a hit out on you from GE. He said you might be dead already, so I didn’t stick around.”
“Why?” Dane speaks up. “Why drop what you’re doing just because you hear we might be in trouble?”
I decide against pointing out that ‘dropping what she was doing’ was putting herself at risk against someone I doubt she realizes has some pull at GE and focus instead on how Dane’s eyeing her with confusion like he thinks he might figure her out in one night. It’s laughable, but I wait to see how she answers him.
She bites her lower lip as she realizes what she’s admitted to.
She cares about us. For all of the betrayal and enemies talk we’ve been throwing around at each other, there’s no other explanation for her coming to our aid and abandoning her own mission.
“I wasn’t going to let them kill you, that’s all,” she tries to brush off. The four of us watch her intently, and I know none of us are fooled by it.
Rather than let that train of thought continue, she sends her ire back my way.
“By the way, your home invasion stunt has awarded him a child chained to his desk and brainwashed to protect him.”
Shock ripples through me, followed by anger.
