Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(24)

Yep. Bottom of my class. I was certain that was just what they expected. But deep inside—very deep—I was still disappointed, before I put on the brassy armor of self-confidence and pretended that coasting just above fail was my survival strategy.

The send-off gala the night before our departure was the social ticket of the year, and my mom and sister were beyond thrilled to be going; they’d gotten free fancy dresses and makeovers, while I stuck to my uniform. I had gone for a haircut, though—trimming my curls on top, undercut, with a fade on each side, so I looked sharp and tailored as I threaded through the crowd.

I headed for Kiz, who was chatting up a famous Nigerian pop star. With his dark skin, well-trimmed goatee, and white suit edged in silver, Obari was fine. I could see why my sister was glowing. A hand wrapped around my arm, stopping me. When I turned, I was facing a tall white man in a crisply tailored black evening suit. His smile was all shark teeth and cold, dead eyes, and even though I didn’t recognize him in that second, I knew his type.

“Nice to finally meet you, Miss Cole. Congratulations are clearly in order. The first Honor chosen from the Lower Eight.” He was still holding on to me with his left hand, but now he extended his right. A giant ring with a red stone—ruby?—glinted on one of his fingers. “Torian Deluca.”

My mouth went dry, and my pulse stuttered, then sped up. I wanted to pull free and bolt, but you don’t run from a dangerous beast. “So?”

He wrapped both hands around mine, approximating a congratulatory gesture, but it ground my knuckles together so hard my eyes watered. I didn’t flinch, holding his gaze until he tipped his head like a curious predator deciding what to bite first.

Deluca leaned in. “You have something I want.”

“I hope it’s a smile. I give those for free . . . Oh, wait. Fresh out.”

“Didn’t you get my card? I want the data.”

“Well, I don’t have it. What are you going to do? Kill me here in the ballroom?”

“I’d kill every Honor in this place if I had to,” he said. “I don’t have to. You’ve got a weakness. If you want to see him alive again, you’re going to hand the data tab over.”

Him?

Derry. I’d given Derry the chem.

Horror paralyzed me for a second, and then Deluca pulled an H2 from his pocket. He turned it to show me the screen. The sound was off, but the picture was right there in vivid color: Derry, screaming. Bloody.

I wanted to grab something, anything to use as a weapon and kill this man right here. Instead, I raised my gaze back to Deluca’s and said, “Don’t know him.”

“No?” He shook the H2 back and forth a little. “Doesn’t ring a bell? Derry McKinnon?”

“Nope.”

“Funny. He went looking for more of this.” From the same pocket, Deluca produced a small bag with just a dusting of shimmering crystals. “Derry said a lot, like how you killed my man Enzo and forced him to bury the body. Look, kid. If you think you can bootleg my designer formula, well.” He drew his finger across his throat. “Don’t even try. Hand over the data and I’ll . . . let it go.”

That was a lie. I saw it in the icy smile that came after.

“And Derry?” Numbness trickled in. The rest of the ballroom had faded out. Derry talked. Not just about the chem, but he straight-up rolled on me.

I had been making excuses for Derry for years, and it stopped now. No matter what, he shouldn’t have given me up. Not with everything I’d done for him.

Fucking asshole.

“Let him go, and I’ll tell you where to find the tab. It’s still in the box.” I took a wild guess, because it didn’t really matter if I was wrong. “You had the formula on that data tab inside, right? What’d you do, kill the chemist and wipe his records?”

Deluca was smooth. He hardly reacted at all, but I saw the little creases at the corners of his eyes, the nearly invisible twitch in his jaw. That box I’d grabbed hadn’t been his daughter’s personal stash; it had been Deluca’s production order, and she’d been taking it to his street lab. That formula he’d stored on the data tab, the one I’d ditched? That was worth billions.

But not to me. The only thing it was worth to me was Derry’s life.

When he didn’t respond, I said, “Do we have a deal?”

“I don’t work on credit. He’s dead if you don’t cooperate.”

No choice. I had no other leverage, so I called up a map and marked the alley where I’d dropped it, next to the VR porn studio. “Here,” I said. “I stuck it under some fallen bricks. Probably still there, unless somebody found and scrapped it.”

I killed twenty agonizing minutes at his side while he dispatched goons to check the site, and after his men retrieved the data tab, he pulled out his H2 and jabbed the screen. Then he held it out to me, a live feed; I could see the clock off to the side, set to Detroit time. A guy in a mask stepped up and slashed Derry’s ropes away. Derry got up, staggered, and ran. The guy in the mask shook his head and said something I couldn’t hear to the camera, and then he picked up the H2 on the other end and turned it around. I saw Derry darting out a broken doorway.

“What guarantee do I have that you’re not just going to hunt him down now and kill him?” I asked.