Wildcard (Warcross #2)(46)

Let me, she seems to be saying.

She takes her hands off Tremaine’s shoulder and stands back. The terror in me reaches a fever pitch. Everything around me seems to fade away as Jax pulls her gun from her holster and pulls it back with a click.

This should be the part when I scream something out, where one word from me makes everyone stop and look in my direction.

But instead, I can’t utter a sound. Jax points the gun straight down at Tremaine’s forehead. She fires a single shot.

Tremaine’s body jerks. He crumples to the floor.

My hands clamp over my mouth to keep me from letting out a cry. The shot rings in my ears.

The kill I’d once seen Jax make now comes back to me in a wave, and I double over, hunching against the wall as I try to brace myself against the onslaught of the memory.

We believe that there are too many people in the world who go unpunished for committing terrible crimes.

Those were Taylor’s words that had ultimately persuaded me to join the Blackcoats. She had told me they fought for causes they believed in. Their actions were justified because she—they all—feared what Hideo was capable of.

But in a single moment, every positive thing I ever thought about the Blackcoats, every word they’d plied me with, vanishes. Tremaine was alive just a second ago and now he’s dead, and it’s because of me.

Breathe.

Breathe.

But I can’t think straight. I can’t function in this moment except to crouch like some kind of coward, trembling uncontrollably against the wall. The glass room in front of me blurs and straightens. I think I see Taylor stepping back as two guards drag the body away, another lingers behind to clean up the floor. Zero leans toward Jax to speak in a low voice, while Taylor tucks something into the hands of the other guards. No one looks concerned. It suddenly occurs to me that the guards here were paid to wait around and bring Tremaine’s body outside, so that they could drive it off somewhere. They were prepared to execute him.

My panic is cutting my breath short. I feel faint. The edges of my view are darkening, fading out, and I fight against it, the logical part of my mind telling me that if I collapse now, here, they’ll find me. And if they know I’ve seen all this, they won’t hesitate to do the exact same thing to me that they just did to Tremaine.

Jax looks bored—exasperated with that person who took up her time—she hadn’t even looked back at Tremaine’s body, which she’d left on the floor. How many has she killed this way?

The Blackcoats are murderers. Tremaine had warned me to stay away from them from the start—he’d only been here because he was looking out for me. And I’d gone ahead anyway. Now he’s dead. What if the Blackcoats are already out looking for me, having learned the connection between Tremaine and my work?

What have I done?

I can’t do this. I can’t stay here. I close my eyes and count, forcing myself to focus on the train of numbers in my head until they’re all I see. Hideo needs to know this. But what do I tell him? I don’t even understand everything I just saw. What is that robot that Zero had been commanding? And if he’s not here in person, where is he?

Get up, Emi.

I whisper the words over and over, until finally I unfreeze myself. I push my body off from the wall, rise from my crouch, and stumble back the way I came. Feverishly, I pull up my menus and set my maps for the hotel. I make my way far enough so that I’ve left the horrible room behind me and have reentered the soaring main lobby of the complex.

I swing my new board down toward the floor, ready to hop on it—but my hands are shaking so badly that I drop it with a clatter. I lunge in vain to catch it.

A click makes me whirl around. Jax is standing there, her pale skin stark against the black walls, her gun pointed directly at my head. Her gray eyes pierce through me.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she says.





17



I don’t dare answer. I just stay where I am and lift my hands over my head.

She waves her gun once at me. “Up.”

I do as she says. There are a few flecks of blood on her glove, Tremaine’s blood, and my eyes lock on to the sight. She’s going to kill me for being here, and there’s nowhere for me to hide. I’m going to die on the floor of this building, just like Tremaine did.

“Why the hell did you come here?” she snaps at me in a whisper.

“I was looking for Zero,” I say, not even believing my own bad excuse. My words come out haltingly, and I can hear the tremor in them. “I’m meeting Hideo tomorrow night. I—”

Jax observes me carefully. She knows I’m lying—but instead, she says, “You saw, didn’t you?”

I shake my head vigorously. “I heard.” Usually, I can lie better than this—but right now, the panic in my eyes gives me away. “It was too dark. All I got were voices down the hall.”

Jax sighs; she almost looks like she feels sorry for me, and I wonder if she recognizes the same look on my face from when she’d killed my assassin. “It’s impressive that I didn’t catch you on your way into the building. But here we are now.”

The echo of Tremaine’s killing shot still rings in my head, bursting over and over again, and my hands yearn to reach up and cover my ears.

Jax tightens her grip on her gun. This is it. My limbs are frozen in place.