Danny didn’t react, though. “Did you ever find your child?”
Mo’s anger blistered hotter. “Yes,” she hissed. “It took seven years, but we finally tracked him down. He’d been placed in a Guild facility in the Philippines. An hour before we arrived to collect him—and to change the management—the whole building was destroyed by an air strike. There were no survivors.” Her hands were clenched into fists on the table, but she was physically shaking with the pent-up anger and heartbreak.
Just as I was about to intervene, Danny reached out across the dirty table and gently placed a hand over my sister’s.
“I get it,” she said softly. “Now you want them to pay.”
Mo looked as confused as I felt. But she gave a jerking nod nonetheless. “Yes. I want them to pay. But I also want to stop them from doing this to anyone else and to save those countless children being raised to kill before they even learn to write their name. I want the head of whoever started Project Remus, and for the rest of the Circle to learn that they’re not untouchable.”
Danny’s lips tugged in a sad smile. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you.” Her voice was rough and pained, startling me. “Thank you for telling me, Mo.”
My sister gave Danny a puzzled look, clearly drawing the same conclusion as me. My siren didn’t seem to be so empathetic that she would feel someone else’s ten-year-old grief and betrayal, so what was she reacting to?
Before I could stop her, Danny pushed out of her chair and murmured a goodbye to Mo, then stalked back out into the street.
“What the fuck?” Moana muttered, and I couldn’t agree more. What the actual fuck just happened?
18
The gravel of the road crunched under my boots as I stalked away from the restaurant and back to my car. I needed to catch my breath and regain some composure before Kai saw through my mask. Before he guessed why Mo’s story had struck a personal chord with me.
“Danny, where are you going?” she called out from somewhere behind me, but I didn’t stop. I needed to… I didn’t know what. Maybe shoot something. Fuck yeah, that’d help my mood.
A heavy hand landed on my shoulder, and I just acted without conscious thought. I ducked and twisted, letting my entire lifetime of muscle memory do what it always did best. Keep me alive.
“Shit,” Kai hissed as I slammed him face-first into the gravel, his arm twisted up behind him in a lock so tight it would only take a fraction more to snap his wrist.
A deep shudder rolled through me, seeing the physical evidence of how rattled I was. And yet, it still took extreme effort to make myself release him and step away.
“Sorry,” I muttered, embarrassment and confusion swirling through my chest. “You startled me.” And that was the problem. No one startled me anymore; I was trained better than that.
Gritting my teeth, I drew a deep breath and mentally chastised myself for the fuck up. Then, because I refused to let Kai think he’d just seen a moment of weakness, I pasted an arrogant smile on my lips and relaxed my shoulders.
“You’re lucky I didn’t slit your throat, Big Man. You should be more cautious.” My tone was pure scorn, then I flicked my glance back to Moana, who stood some distance away looking shocked. “I appreciate your honesty, Mo. I’ll see what I can find on your mole. Maybe it’s Timothy, having a crisis of conscience or something.”
Mo frowned, folding her arms. “Do Guild mercenaries have a conscience?”
My answering smile was sharp enough to cut diamonds. “Good point.”
Not waiting for Kai to pick himself up off the road, I continued over to my rental car and climbed into the driver’s seat again. He could go home with Mo for all I cared; I needed to go burn off some steam.
Of course, I knew it wouldn’t be that easy to shake my new shadow, so I wasn’t even remotely surprised when he grabbed the passenger side door and hauled himself in as I accelerated down the street.
His one saving grace was that he didn’t fucking talk. Not even when I passed the turn off back to my safe house and continued driving. Shooting inanimate objects wasn’t going to satisfy the frayed emotions raging in my chest. Mo’s story had been the last thing I’d expected to explain their involvement with the Guild.
I needed to focus on the parts that weren’t personal. Like the fact that someone within the Guild was trying to help them by supplying key intel.
“How often does your mole get in contact?” I asked after a long silence.
He took a moment before replying, staring at the side of my face like he’d been doing the whole time I’d been driving. “Infrequently,” he finally said. “Far too infrequently. And with varying degrees of usefulness.”
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. “How do you know they’re Guild?”
“We don’t. But all of the intel they’ve provided is Guild classified and almost always pertaining to Project Remus. If I were to guess, someone involved in the project wants it shut down, so they’re outsourcing their dirty work to people who don’t mind getting their hands bloody.”
“Like you,” I murmured. Not that I was judging, I had no problem getting my own hands bloody. But that in itself was curious, because most mercenaries were like me. The fact that someone in the Guild would outsource to Ares, who had gained a reputation for killing our people? It wasn’t clicking together properly.
I mulled it over a few more minutes while driving toward the nearest city, Dogwood. It seemed… too convenient. But if it were a setup, then why drag it out for the better part of a decade?
“And they’ve always sent tips about Project Remus?” I asked, still trying to make sense of it. “What sort of tips exactly?”
Kai blew out a heavy breath. “I hope you understand the level of trust I’m placing in you, kaikohuru iti.”
I braked a little too sharply at the traffic lights and shot him a suspicious glare. “Why are you trusting me? And don’t even try to blame it on my magical vagina. A few good fucks doesn’t override your common sense that thoroughly.”
Ha, what a lie.
He stared back at me, a tiny smile playing across his lips. “The tips led us to research labs and to the orphanages themselves.” Apparently, he decided not to answer my question. Maybe it was my magical vagina after all.
“How do you know those orphanages were Guild-run? Or even that the children were being mistreated? They could have just been ordinary group homes that someone smoke screened to support this Project Remus idea.” I had a fair idea, but I wanted him to explain why he had such confidence in this mysterious and awfully convenient intel they were being fed.
Kai grunted a sound of frustration. “If you want all the dirty details of this project we’ve worked on for ten years, Siren, you’ll have to come back to the island with me and analyze the data for yourself. Is that something you want to do? I’d be happy to share everything we know, if you do.”
Fuck no. No way in hell was he luring me back into that trap, because I didn’t believe for even a second he’d given up on his desire to hold me captive. I didn’t care how hot it was in the short term, I was no one’s prisoner.