Wildcard (Warcross #2)(38)

“We heard you were out celebrating with the Phoenix Riders tonight,” she says. “Congratulations to your former team.”

Jax had trailed me, after all. I fight the urge to look around to see if she’s standing in here right now, somewhere I hadn’t noticed. “I don’t need you guys to chaperone me all over the city.”

Taylor uncrosses her legs, the sole of her shoe hitting the carpet with a soft thud, and leans forward to rest her elbows against her knees. Her eyes meet mine and lock me in. “Where were you?”

So, she doesn’t trust me. “I was out on the mission that you and Zero assigned to me,” I reply evenly. “Find a way to get in touch with Hideo. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

She frowns. “And did you accomplish anything?”

I take a deep breath. “The Riders are going to let me use their private meeting with Hideo tomorrow.”

“Is that so?” At that, Taylor’s eyebrows lift in mild surprise. “Well. Maybe you are as good as Zero says.”

“I always earn my keep.”

“And is that all you did tonight?”

Here’s the real question she’d wanted to ask me, and why she was waiting for me here in my room. Be careful out there. Tremaine’s warning reappears in my mind. I narrow my eyes at her. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that someone accessed the Blackcoats’ image databases today, and it wasn’t any of us.” She studies me. “The timing makes me wonder if you know something about it.”

Image databases. Japan Innovation Institute of Technology. My heart leaps into my throat. Tremaine had been poking around in the corporation’s database earlier. I think of the maps he’d shown me, the interiors of the building. Is Taylor talking about him? What if he’d accidentally left a trail? Does she know what he took?

Stay calm, I tell myself. “It couldn’t have been me,” I reply. “I didn’t do anything except meet the Phoenix Riders after tonight’s game and have a conversation with them. No downloading, no hacking.”

She stares at me, but I don’t dare add more. The crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes crinkle as she studies me thoughtfully. A few long minutes pass.

Then, her stare softens, and she relaxes her shoulders. She glances toward the windows. “If Zero suspected you of breaking into our files, he would be here himself, interrogating you. And he wouldn’t be this civil about it.”

The thought sends a chill through me. “Then why are you here instead?”

“I’m here to warn you,” she replies, giving me a concerned look. “You don’t want to get in over your head.”

“But I didn’t do anything.”

She looks doubtful. There’s a pause, and then she clears her throat. “How old were you when you first started bounty hunting?” she finally asks.

“Sixteen.”

She shakes her head. “I was young, too, when I started my first job. Back then, we lived in Estonia, and my father laundered money using the pharmacy he ran as a front. Drugs, you know.”

I watch her carefully. It shouldn’t surprise me that she had early ties to something illegal, given that she’s working for the Blackcoats—but I must look startled by her answer, because she gives me a small laugh.

“Ah, that surprises you. I don’t seem like the type, do I?” She looks down. “I was sharp for my age, and I could repeat things back, word for word, so my father had me run messages for him.” She makes a casual gesture with her arm, miming a back-and-forth action. “You don’t want digital messages lying around on phones to incriminate you. I could say what I was told to say and then forget it the second I said it. He told me I had a good memory. That it’s useful for lies.” She shrugs. “But he wasn’t as good at it as I was.”

I clear my throat. “What makes you say that?”

“I came home one day to see him sprawled on the floor, his throat cut and his blood soaked into our rugs. That copper smell still lingers with me.” The curve of her lips straightens, like she bit into something bitter. I shudder. “Later, I learned that a client of his had come looking for him, and he’d tried to lie his way out of it. The client hadn’t believed him.”

I swallow hard. Taylor doesn’t look at me as she continues. “After that, all I ever did was wonder about how the wires in my brain were hooked up. How those wires stop working the instant your body shuts down. I’d wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, dreaming of being alive one moment and then dead the next.”

She sounds like I imagine a neuroscientist would, someone fascinated with the inner workings of the mind. Had she moved to Japan to work at the institute? I try to picture her as a child with wide eyes and those straight, innocent brows. The thought of her getting away with lies so often seems pretty possible. “Why are you telling me this?” I ask.

“I could convince myself of a lie so well that I’d sincerely think it was true. Do you know what that’s called? Self-deception, Emika. Lies are told more easily when you don’t see them as lies. My father said he wished he had my ability to believe wholeheartedly in something untrue, because if you’re able to believe anything, then you can believe your way into happiness. That’s why I’m alive, and he’s dead. Because my brain could connect that wire, and his couldn’t.” She leans forward, looking earnestly at me. “Maybe you’re good at it, too. I imagine it’s a useful skill for a bounty hunter.”