Page 125 of Bitter Burn
My body—used to danger after eighteen years of courting it for paychecks and revenge—summons what I need in a scatter of neural sparks. Amygdala to hypothalamus, hypothalamus to sympathetic nervous system. Epinephrine and glucose and cortisol are dumped wholesale into my blood.
“Sedge,” I say calmly, meeting his gray-blue gaze as my pulse kicks and my muscles coil.
“I could have used Andrea or Dinah to access the server room,” he says, stepping forward. His eternal iPad is tucked neatly in his hand, resting against his hip. “But then I would have been known to them, and there was no reason for them to be collateral damage afterward. Not when I like them both—yes, even Andrea—and you’re the problem anyway. You’re the one who can’t be left alive.”
The elevator doors slide closed behind me, but the car stays in place. The elevator and the fire door on the other side of the server room are the only ways out of this basement—I’m not sure how feasible either exit is right now.
“I don’t see a gun,” I say, “or a knife. So I presume you have a different way of coercing me?”
He nods, his finely worked features catching the gleam of the blue lights. High cheeks, straight jaw. There’s something underneath the blank expression, something that I can’t quite catch. “The Falstaff routine worked on me for a while, but after the saint’s death in Fez and what happened in Albany, I didn’t think risking a physical fight was in my best interest.” He flips the iPad around and holds it up to show a security feed of the grotto, of an unconscious Tristan bound and gagged next to the pool. Someone stands next to him with a long braid and a scapular.
Veronica.
She’s looking down at a phone in her hand.
“She’s been instructed to kick him into the water if you don’t do as I ask. She’s watching us now to make sure you’re cooperating.” Sedge lifts a hand, and Veronica must see it on her phone, because she lifts her own hand in response. “I felt like this was more elegant than me waving a gun at you, sir. But I am sorry.”
I give myself a beat to accept that this is inconvenient, that I won’t survive anything happening to Tristan, that I’m feeling terror like I haven’t since all those saints came pouring into the church in Albany, and then say, “Okay, Sedge. You have my compliance.”
I cling to his sir, to his sorry. To the thing under his careful neutrality that might just be reluctance or regret, either of which I can use.
Sedge’s expression doesn’t change. “We’re going to access the servers, and you’ll show me how to get the information I want.”
“And then?”
A pause. Something like unhappiness, maybe. Like a thwarted hope that this wouldn’t be necessary. “You should understand that you will die no matter what, but your beloved’s life is still in your power to save. If we’re satisfied, Tristan can live.”
“I’ll die no matter what,” I echo. “And here I thought you carried a torch for me.”
Sedge’s cheeks darken to purple in the blue glow, and he looks away. I don’t press. I have to do this right. I have to do it perfectly, because if I don’t, Tristan dies, and I can’t?—
I can’t have that. I won’t.
I walk over to the thumbprint scanner, then to the retina scanner. Once upon a time, I could have used my watch to get in, but even before the saints took it, Isolde divested it of the chip that worked as a key, so. The old-fashioned way it is, I guess.
“You must work with the saints,” I say as the retina scanner flashes. The first set of glass doors click open, and we walk through. “Has this always been the case, or did Cashel flip you?”
Sedge’s voice carries just a tinge of sadness. “I’ve always been faithful to the Church. From the beginning.”
There is a fingerprint scanner for the second set of doors, and I slide my first finger against the glass pad, considering my options, my mind flipping through bad idea after bad idea.
Fuck. Sedge.
I can’t believe I didn’t see this.
“The attack on the club, the one that prevented my going to Ireland for Isolde,” I say, careful to keep my tone wondering and casual. “Was that you? Who let Drobny’s men in via the fake background checks?”
“It was,” Sedge admits softly.
I remember the double feint. The misdirection. Sending Drobny’s men down to the server room so they could draw away enough security and more easily attack me upstairs.
“It was a good plan, Sedge.”
We’re walking through the second set of glass doors now. When I turn back and look at him, I see something conflicted in the normally level set of his mouth.
“Adam,” he says after a minute. “My real name is Adam.”
“Adam,” I repeat.
