Page 108 of The Rut in the Road

I watched the corner of Raj’s lips quirk and realized that he had successfully prodded Hart out of whatever bad mood he was in. “And?” Raj asked, almost smothering the satisfied look on his face.

Hart looked up and met Raj’s eyes. “He’s prepping them for a fucking purge,” he said, and his tone was deadly serious.

Raj frowned. “What?” Whatever he’d been expecting Hart to say, it hadn’t been that.

“A mother-fucking purge,” Hart repeated, then looked at each of the rest of us in turn. “C’mon people. That’s what this shit is setting them up for. He’s testing who’s willing to kill and who isn’t so that he knows who’s gonna come with him on the final purge.”

“Purge of… what?” Cass asked, her voice worried.

“Who,” Hart corrected.

I almost saidwhom, and then decided that this was probably one of those moments in which grammatical correction probably wouldn’t be welcomed. Or, more specifically, in which it would make people seriously annoyed instead of just a little annoyed.

“Who, then,” Cass said.

“Us,” Raj replied softly, his eyes now directed down on the crowbar. “Arcanids at least, which means they’re likely to target Arcanid-focused organizations. So Hands and Paws, the AARC offices?—”

“The AAYC,” Hard put in, his voice hard. Taavi worked at the Arc-Arcanid Youth Center.

Raj lifted his eyes to mine. “And Arcanid-owned businesses,” he said softly.

“Well,”Ward said, his arms crossed over his chest. “We’re not closing down.”

Raj scowled at him.

“Told you,” Hart said.

“Mr. Campion?—”

Ward almost looked amused. “I’m not going to do it just because you ‘Mr. Campion’ me,Agent Parikh.”

A muscle ticked in Raj’s jaw. “I am trying to keep you and your employees safe,” he ground out between clenched teeth.

“And I appreciate the warning about yet another group of crazy people—sorry, Rayn.” He grimaced. Ward tended to apologize to me every time he used the term ‘crazy.’ I wasn’t sure whether to be touched or offended by that. “But if I closed down every time somebody wanted to hurt me, my husband, my kids, or my coworkers, I wouldn’t ever be open, so fuck that.”

I agreed.

“He’s got a point, Tony,” Hart remarked. “People do want to kill him a lot.”

“You are not helping, Keebler,” Raj half-growled.

“I don’t know why you think I’m trying to help,” Hart replied. “I don’t think he should shut down.”

Raj glared at him. “There is a direct threat against Arcanids in this city, one whose size we’re uncertain about.”

“And whose targets you don’t actually know,” came Mason’s voice from the hallway. He was carrying Grace, who was clearly refusing the nap he had been trying to get both babies to take.

“Did Zane go down?” Ward asked him, and Mason nodded. Grace had one of Mason’s braids in her mouth along with her thumb, her green cheek resting on his shoulder.

Raj huffed a breath out through his nose, a sign that I knew meant he was annoyed. “No, we don’t know their targets,” he admitted. “But we do know they’ve killed four and assaulted one Arcanid thus far. And we know that the preacher is openly advocating anti-Arcanid hate.”

Mason nodded. “And we make up six percent of the population, so there are quite a few of us to choose from.”

“You—”

“Let it go, Raj,” Hart said softly. “You’ve warned them, so they know to watch their asses.”

Behind us, the bell rang over the doors as Dan Maza pushed his way through them. I was betting that Hart had told him where we were. “Hey,” he said, reaching down into his satchel. “I come bearing gifts.”