Wildcard (Warcross #2)(42)

Once he knows, there’s no turning back.

“I’ll show you instead,” I reply.

Then I bring up an image of Zero without his armor, his face exposed and unmistakable. The image hovers between us.

It’s as if I’d struck Hideo straight in the chest. He doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t blink. The color drains from his face. In the blue light, his skin takes on an ominous glow from below, and his eyes look like black marbles. His lips tighten. His hands move slightly, and when I look down at them, he’s balled both into fists so tightly that his scarred knuckles have turned white.

His stare never leaves Sasuke’s face, one that looks so similar to his own. He scrutinizes everything—the way his eyes turn sideways, the thoughtful tilt of his head, the hardness of his smile. Maybe he’s making a mental list of all the ways the two of them are alike, or maybe he’s matching up these features with what he remembers of Sasuke as a child, as if he’d drawn a new image in his head with these two pictures combined.

Then his eyes shutter. Whatever he thinks of the photo disappears behind a cloud of disbelief. He turns to me. “This has to be fake. You’re lying to me.”

“I’ve never been more truthful.” I keep my words steady and the image unwavering.

He straightens and takes a step away from me, so that half of him is in a red column of light. “This photo isn’t real. That isn’t him.”

“It’s real. I swear it on my life.”

The anger on his face is growing every second, a wall bricking in the part of him that had believed me. Still, I stay where I am, digging my nails into the palms of my hands. “I’ve met your brother.” Then I join him on the red light as I continue, slower and more forcefully this time. “I don’t know everything about him yet, and I can’t tell you everything here. But I saw him with my own eyes—I’ve spoken with him directly. Zero is your brother.”

“You’re baiting me.”

There in his voice. I hear it, the tiniest hint of doubt, a delay long enough to tell me that I may be getting through to him.

“I’m not.” I shake my head. “Didn’t you originally hire me to hunt for people you’re searching for? This is what I do.”

“Except you don’t work for me anymore.” He narrows his eyes at me. There’s fire in his gaze, but beyond that, I can see fear. “There’s nothing holding us together that would make you do this, unless you want something from me. So what is it, Emika? What do you really want?”

He’s reading me better than I thought, assuming that because of what he’d done to me, I’m doing the same to him. I’d told him once that I was coming for him, and he hasn’t forgotten it.

“I’m not hunting you,” I say. “I’m trying to tell you the truth.”

“Who are you working for?” He draws closer now, his eyes focused on me with that familiar, searing intensity. “Is it Zero? Did someone put you up to this?”

He’s leaping ahead now, guessing too much. For a moment, I think I’ve gone back in time to when I’d first met him, when I had to stare him down to prove my worth.

“It’s not safe to tell you more here,” I reply. My voice does not falter under his scrutiny, and I don’t look away. “I need to talk to you in private. Just the two of us. I can’t give you anything more than that.”

Hideo’s face looks completely closed off. I wonder if he’s replaying in his mind every detail from the day that Sasuke went missing, every excruciating moment he lived through afterward. Or maybe he’s trying to break this scenario down, puzzling over whether I’m setting a trap for him or not.

“I’m not the one who broke our trust,” I go on, more softly now. “I always told you the truth. I worked faithfully for you. And you lied to me.”

“You know exactly why I had to do it.”

My anger now flares at his stubbornness. “Why’d you lead me on, then?” I snap, growing angrier with each word. “You could’ve just stayed away or hired someone else. You could’ve left me alone instead of pulling me in.”

“Believe me, I regret nothing more,” Hideo snaps back.

His answer startles me, and I forget the retort I already had prepared. He doesn’t look like he was ready to say it, either, and he turns away from me, looking back toward the museum hall. Peals of laughter come from inside. The sounds echo down to us.

I try one more time. “Do you care enough about your brother to believe that maybe, just maybe, I’m telling you the truth?” I finally reply. “Do you still love Sasuke or not?”

I’ve never said his brother’s name out loud before. It’s this that finally seems to crack through his shield. He winces at my words. For a moment, all I can see is Hideo as a small boy, his terror as he realized his brother was no longer in the park. He’s spent so many years building up his defenses, and now here I am, ripping right through them with a simple question. Forcing Sasuke back into the present.

For a while, I think he might refuse me again. I’ve miscalculated everything in my plans against him and the Blackcoats—I’ve sorely overestimated how well I could control this situation. This is too big a hurdle for me to cross.

Then Hideo turns back to me. He leans down slightly, so that our two silhouettes nearly touch.