Three (Article 5 #3)(92)

I saw the picture DeWitt carried with him.

He had traded so many lives for his daughter.

In my silence Chancellor Reinhardt groaned, annoyed. He followed my burning gaze to Tucker. “I’m sorry, it must be difficult seeing Captain Morris again after all you’ve been through. Perhaps there’s something you’d like to say to him if not to me?”

Tucker stepped back, staring straight through me without any acknowledgment of what we had been through together. He folded the knife and put it away.

I had plenty to say to him, but I kept my mouth shut.

“Nothing? After he set up a fire in Knoxville that killed so many of your friends?”

My teeth began to ache from pressing them together so tightly.

“Not even after he led us straight to the Chicago resistance? I haven’t a clue how you made it out of there alive.” He chuckled bluntly.

“I’m not sure how he made it out, either,” I muttered, jutting my chin at Tucker.

A tight-lipped smile darkened Reinhardt’s hollow cheeks.

“Some people are willing to die for their cause, isn’t that right, captain?”

“Yes, sir,” said Tucker.

My interrogator folded his hands behind his back. “I wonder, Ms. Miller, if you are one of them.” He stared at me for one bone-chilling moment with his black ferret eyes, before heading toward the door held open by New Guy. Tucker followed.

“Is that what you told the insurgents?” I asked.

They both paused.

“Yeah, I know about that,” I said. “And I know you paid off their families to keep them quiet about it. They must have been in a pretty bad spot to take money from you.”

He laughed, but behind his back, his hands were folded, and they tightened, making his fingertips turn white.

“Don’t think I haven’t heard that before,” he said, turning slowly. “Reinhardt preyed on the poor. He promised their families would be taken care of if they served their country, gave their lives in the ultimate act of patriotism. Then blamed the acting administration for the war they started. Is that the way the story goes?”

I felt the blood rise in my cheeks. “That’s about right.”

“You see, you can’t tell me anything I don’t already know.”

“You’re wrong.” My voice was hoarse.

They both paused.

“You keep acting like Three is one man,” I said, a reckless bravery controlling my words. “You’re wrong. There’s thousands of us. There’s more of us than there are of you.”

Despite everything I’d seen, despite everything DeWitt had done, I clung to this. I did because my life depended on the secrets I knew, and if I gave them up I was as good as dead.

The cuts on my shoulder stung. “We carry them,” DeWitt had said, “because they remind us we are not alone.” I was not alone. Chase was with me. My mother was with me. Jesse, and Sean and Rebecca, and everyone else who had been wronged by the MM was with me, and that filled me with a freedom he couldn’t understand.

Tucker did not turn around. As he stared at the door, I watched his fists clench and release.

“No, Ms. Miller,” said Reinhardt. “There is but one man with a thousand hands. Cut off his head, and his limbs lose their purpose.”

“I guess that’s why we keep coming after you then,” I said.

His lips pulled thin, and grew dark white. Then he inhaled loudly through his nostrils and smiled. “Yes, that’s why.” On his way out, he added, “I’ll be back later to check on you, Ms. Miller. We’ll see how much you have to share then.”

The door closed, locked in place by a deadbolt.

*

MINUTES passed, stretched by my impatience. Dark thoughts gathered at the edges of my mind like storm clouds, but I kept them at bay, refusing to give in. I twisted my wrists within the cuffs, straining to pull my numb hands through the metal rings. My skin grew raw.

“You did well, Ember.”

I looked around, but the room was still empty.

“I’m officially losing my mind,” I said quietly.

A soft chuckling could be heard, and then the voice, weak and crackling, came again. “It’s Aiden. I think I’m in the room next to you. Or maybe below. It’s hard to say.”

I’d never heard him refer to himself by his first name before.

My gaze lowered to a drain in the floor where the sound had emanated.

“You heard everything,” I said.

He waited a moment. “Yes.”

If I was honest with myself, it was good to hear his voice; it didn’t make me feel so alone.

“Is it true? Did you sell out the posts?”

Another moment passed. “I don’t suppose it matters anymore, does it?”

“Endurance wasn’t empty.”

“I know.”

“The safe house wasn’t empty.”

Down the hall, someone was yelling. The guards responded, harsh words and the clang of metal hitting metal. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, and somehow that made me even more afraid.

“No,” he said finally. “It wasn’t. Once the Bureau knew the location, there was nothing we could do.”

Without blowing the mission. Even now I was afraid to speak it out loud in case someone was listening.