The notion that she had been playing me sat like lead in my gut.
Had she left with Jodi? I fucking owned her. She didn’t get to walk away.
It took a few seconds for me to assimilate the data on the app. The little green dot was right here. “What the hell is happening?”
“Hey, guy with the dick and very little else!” As I looked up, I copped a fist in my face.
I rocked back on my heels. The nearby soldiers waded in to drag Jodi off, which was for the best because I was going to knock her out cold if she came at me again.
“You crazy fucking bitch. Where is she?”
She fought the soldiers. “Where is she? What the fuck is wrong with you?” she roared at me. “You were supposed to be protecting her. Not cozying up with her fucking psycho uncle.”
My brows pinched together as I tried to piece together this minefield and failed.
Mitch rounded the corner at a jog as I was about to take Jodi by the throat.
“The fuck, Jodi?” Mitch said. “You promised you wouldn’t start anything. You gave me your fucking word!”
The fight went out of her—it went out of me too—and the soldiers released her cautiously. “You got my word right up until golden boy here started schmoozing with Ava’s sick uncle.”
“Who the fuck is her uncle?” I demanded. Not Taylor? He’d never once mentioned a missing niece.
“She never told you, did she?” Jodi’s smug face set my teeth on edge. If Mitch hadn’t waded in, I’d have decked the bitch for sure.
“She’s missing,” I said. “Her tracker isn’t working. Tell me what I need to fucking know!”
Her smirk dropped, and she looked so fucking ill that it brought a surge of near debilitating fear.
“The man on the stage with Taylor,” she spat. “Martin Zander is her uncle. He killed her father soon after the collapse. Took her mother as his partner. He didn’t want her mother—he wanted Ava. She wouldn’t leave. Not while her mother was trapped there with him. I was Ava’s bodyguard.” Her voice softened to a growl. “Zander killed her mother and told Ava it was time she took her rightful place. We fled the same night. I cut his brand from her temple myself.”
Her chest was heaving. She wasn’t lying; I could see the terrible truth in every strained line of her face.
“She’s got hacking skills,” she said, voice lowering. “It’s the only reason we got out. Whatever you think you have to track her, she’ll know how to disable it. She has probably redirected it to someone else. Knowing Ava, she’s had a contingency plan for a while. This community was always too big for her to be safe. But when she said she wanted to stay with you, I fucking hoped I was wrong.”
“Okay,” Mitch said. “The tracker is still inside her, which means we can restore whatever she did.”
“You think Zander didn’t try to do the same and failed?” Jodi said.
“Yeah, well, we have ten times the resources Zander does,” Mitch said. “So I’m going to give it a shot.”
I nodded. Mitch moved to the side and got straight on his communicator.
“Do you have any idea where she might go?” I asked Jodi.
She shrugged. “She’s not safe while he’s alive. She won’t stay here now that Taylor is associating with Zander. Even if you find her, she’ll run again.”
“Why wouldn’t she have told me instead of running?” I swiped a hand down my face.
“Are you fucking dumb?” Jodi asked, face twisting in a sneer. “What are you going to do if Taylor asks you to hand her over as part of his new deal with Zander? You going to say no to your king?”
“You’re damn right I’m going to say no,” I bit back.
“It wouldn’t matter to Zander,” she said. “Once Zander finds out she’s here, he’ll break the alliance in a flash for what he wants. He’s fucking obsessed with her.”
“Zander is that much of a threat to her?”
“Yeah, he’s a threat,” Jodi said. “She’ll never be safe while that asshole lives.”
“Blaine?” The soft warning in Carter’s voice barely registered. “Don’t do something stupid.”
“Hell yeah,” Jodi goaded. “Do something stupid. I’ll hold your fucking hand while you do it. You going to kill him?”
I pinned her with a look. My eyes shifted toward Mitch, who was off his communicator and giving me a cagy look. “Keep working on her tracker,” I said, stabbing a finger at him. “I’ll be back once I’ve eliminated the threat.”
“Are you going to kill him?” Jodi demanded. Damn, the bitch was pushy.
I nodded. She was hiding something. “Something I need to know?”
She folded her arms. “Nope, I’m going to stand back and watch the show.”
Parking Jodi’s crazy, I stalked back along the corridor toward the private room where Taylor would be in conference with his favored advisors and Martin Zander. Pulling the gun from the holster, I checked it over before slotting it back.
No one stopped me when I pushed the door open and entered the room. A jolly fucking scene with Taylor relaxing before the big windows that offered views over the river.
I had a vague notion that my rapid entry caused a few raised brows from both the political worms and the four heavily armed guards on duty within, but I didn’t let that deter me. I walked straight up to Martin Zander, drew my gun, and put a bullet in his head.
Blood splattered over the table and those too close to the action.
Gasps, cries, and even a scream—I thought that might have been Harris—greeted this development, and every gun in the room trained on me.
“Everyone, calm down,” Taylor said, rising from his seat and holding both hands out and up to settle the occupants before directing a glare my way. “What the fuck, Blaine?”
Zander hadn’t arrived alone, and the sound of the weaselly ass who’d accompanied him hyperventilating filled the smaller conference room.
“Sorry,” I said, not feeling remotely sorry. “He needed to die.”
I caught a faint twitch of Taylor’s lips before he shook his head. “Relax, everyone. If Blaine said he needed to die, he needed to die.”
He nudged his head at Zander’s hyperventilating friend. “Does he need to die too?”
I shrugged. “No idea.”
Taylor chuckled because the crazy bastard was into violence. He put his hand on the shoulder of Zander’s sidekick, making the other man flinch. “Looks like my expansion plans have been brought forward.”
Yeah, I’d figured something was off when he’d mentioned an alliance. Taylor didn’t do alliances. “I’ve got stuff I need to deal with.”
His lips twitched again before his face smoothed out as he inclined his head in approval. I realized then, perhaps for the first time, that I had his complete trust.
Carter
After Blaine left, I was called to Taylor, which in my opinion did not bode well. My brother had just shot and killed the man our king had been standing up with on the stage.
Taylor needed a doctor, I was told, and I didn’t have a choice. Despite Blaine’s assurance that Taylor wasn’t pissed, I didn’t want to take Nora into whatever had transpired for them to need an emergency care doctor.