All In (The Naturals, #3)(82)

Older than my mother would have been, if she’d lived.

“Take your time,” Nightshade said. Even though I knew he couldn’t see me, it felt like he was looking directly at me.

He has kind eyes.

My stomach twisted with unexpected nausea as he continued. “I’m here when you’re ready, Cassandra.”

Judd’s grip tightened slightly on my shoulder. You’d kill him, if you could, I thought. Judd wouldn’t have lost a single night’s sleep over snapping this man’s neck. But he didn’t make a move. Instead, he stood still, with me.

“I’m ready,” I told Agent Sterling. I wasn’t, but time was a luxury we didn’t have.

Judd met Agent Sterling’s gaze and gave a curt nod. Sterling stepped to the side of the room and hit a button, converting the two-way mirror in front of us to a clear pane.

You can see me, I thought as Nightshade’s eyes landed on mine. You see Judd. Your lips curve slightly. I kept my face as blank as I could. One last card to play. One last game.

“Cassandra.” Nightshade seemed to enjoy saying my name. “Judd. And the indomitable Agent Sterling.”

You watched us. You get off on Judd’s grief, on Sterling’s.

“You wanted to talk to me?” I said, my voice unnaturally calm. “Talk.”

I expected the man on the other side of the glass to say something about Scarlett or about my mother or about Beau. Instead, he said something in a language I didn’t recognize. I glanced at Sterling. The man opposite us repeated himself. “It’s a rare snake,” he translated after a moment. “Its venom is slower-acting than most. Find a zoo that has one, and you’ll find the antivenom. In time, I hope.” He smiled, and this time, it was chilling. “I always have had a certain fondness for your Agent Briggs.”

I didn’t understand. This man—this killer—had brought me here. He’d used the only bargaining chip he had to bring me here, and now, having seen me, he was handing it in?

Why? If you enjoy tormenting Judd and Sterling, if you want to leave them with the taste of fear in their mouths, with the bitter knowledge that the people they love will never be safe, why cure Briggs?

“You’re lying,” Agent Sterling said.

We should have brought Lia, I thought. And a second later: I shouldn’t be here. The feeling started in my gut and snaked its way out to my limbs, weighing them down.

“Am I?” Nightshade countered.

“Incurable. Painful.” I spoke the words out loud without meaning to, but didn’t pull back from talking once they’d made their way out of my mouth. “You wouldn’t just hand away your secret. Not this easily. Not this fast.”

Nightshade’s eyes lingered on mine a moment longer. “There are limits,” he admitted, “to what one might say. Some secrets are sacred. Some things you take to the grave.” His voice had taken on a low, humming quality. “But then, I never said your Agent Briggs had been afflicted with that poison.”

That poison. Your poison. Your legacy.

“Go.” Judd spoke for the first time since the man who’d killed his daughter had been brought into the room. He met Sterling’s gaze and repeated himself. “He’s telling the truth. Go.”

Go get the antivenom.

Go save Briggs.

“We’re done here,” Sterling said, reaching for the button on the wall.

“Stop.” The word burst out of my mouth. I couldn’t draw my gaze away from the killer’s. You brought me here for a reason. You do everything for a reason—you all do.

Nightshade smiled. “I thought,” he said, “that you might have some questions for me.”

I saw now, the game he was playing. He’d brought me here. But staying? Listening to him? Asking him for answers?

That was on me.

“Go,” Judd told Sterling again. After a split second’s hesitation, she did as he said, dialing her phone on the way out. Judd turned back to me. “I want to tell you not to say another word, Cassie, not to listen, not to look back.”

But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t make me walk away. I wasn’t sure he could walk away himself. You can look at the files, Judd had said, back when this all began, but you’re not doing it alone.

Neither one of us was doing this alone now.

“Beau Donovan.” I turned back to the monster waiting patiently on the other side of the glass. I couldn’t make my mouth form the words to ask about my mother, not yet. And I couldn’t—wouldn’t—bring up Scarlett. “You killed him.”

“Was that a question?” Nightshade asked.

“Your people left him in the desert fifteen years ago.”

“We don’t kill children.” Nightshade’s tone was flat.

You don’t kill children. That was a rule they lived by. A sacred law. But you have no problems leaving them in the desert to die of their own accord.

“What was Beau to you? Why raise him at all, if you were going to turn him out?”

Nightshade smiled slightly. “Every dynasty needs its heir.”

My brain whirred. “You weren’t raised the way Beau was.”

The rest of them, Beau had said, they’re recruited as adults.

“The term Master suggests an apprentice model,” I continued. “I’m assuming Masters choose their own replacements—adults, not children. The cycle repeats every twenty-one years. But the ninth member, the one you call Nine—”