This had been a cold, calculated hit on the town. The Brat were sending a message to all the other towns in the northern part of the country, letting them know what would happen if they didn’t comply with their demands. And it just wasn’t fucking acceptable. People were now homeless, unemployed and in mourning, and there wasn’t much we could do about it. Erik was scrambling to find accommodations for them in neighboring towns, but that was only a short-term solution. All their businesses had been burned and most only had the clothes on their backs.
I’d spent the whole day helping people, delivering truckloads of them to neighboring towns. I’d just dropped off a group in Vinake when the 9-1-1 text went out, and my whole body froze when I saw it had come from Solange. I’d been about to call her when Mrs. Freela chose that moment to have a heart attack. Between performing CPR and then racing her across town to the hospital, it was nearly an hour before I had a chance to find out what was going on. I’d tried to call Solange but her phone had gone to voicemail and I called Jonas in a panic.
“Where is she?” I demanded.
“She’s fine,” he said quietly. “A little shaken up, but okay. Unfortunately, Logan wasn’t so lucky.”
“Fuck,” I growled. “How bad?”
“He’s dead, man.”
“What?!”
“The Brat attacked the school. It was just Solange and Logan. He locked her in the server room but there were too many of them. By the time we got there with reinforcements, he’d been hit multiple times. He bled out on the way to the hospital.”
I cussed in a dozen different languages, letting anger cover my grief, because Logan was one of us, one of the good guys. A great kid who’d overcome a lot in his life and had proudly served his country before coming here to serve the royal family. He was smart and funny, the joker of the group, and the first one to offer to help. It was unfathomable that he was dead, and I turned, punching my fist into the wall as I tried to breathe through the inevitable grief. I’d been through this before, with my brothers-in-arms in the military, but this was different. That had been war. This was… There were no words for what this was.
That Solange had been there when it happened, and had potentially nearly been killed as well, almost sent me into a rage. I desperately needed to hear her voice, see her, make sure she was okay, but I needed to calm down a little first.
I called her again a few minutes later and this time she answered. There was no doubt she’d been crying and my heart squeezed painfully with regret.
“Hey, beautiful.”
“Can you come home?” she whimpered, softly crying.
“Things are crazy here,” I said. “I’ll try to get back tomorrow, but Mrs. Freela just had a heart attack… It’s bad.”
“Things aren’t great here either,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “I miss you.”
“I miss you too.” I paused. “How are you doing?”
“I’m kind of numb,” she admitted.
“It’s normal. You’re okay, though. That’s what matters.”
“It’s not what matters. Someone is dead and I just sat there.”
“What else were you supposed to do?”
“I don’t know, but it shouldn’t have been sitting there in my bra, covered in Logan’s blood, while the men I work with showed up to save the day. I sat there, again, like a helpless…woman!” She burst into tears.
“You weren’t helpless. You disabled the computer system, which potentially saved a lot of children. Logan told Sandor in the SUV on the way to the hospital how you opened the door and pulled him inside the computer room, how you did what he told you to without questioning him…how you pointed the gun at the door, ready to fight till the end if you had to. You were incredibly brave. I’m proud of you. You’re a lot stronger than you think you are. I would never use the word helpless to describe you.”
“I never, ever want to hide in a closet again!” she cried. “I said this last time too, but I mean it!”
“I know, honey.”
“I’m serious. This is the second time I’ve been cowering in a corner while people were in trouble. If there’s ever a next time, I want to fight. I want to learn to shoot.”
“I can teach you.”
That seemed to calm her and she sighed. “I’m sorry. This was a really hard day and you aren’t here.”
“It’s okay. It was a rough day in Braksa too. The entire town has lost everything. Their homes, their businesses, and a few lost their lives.”
“That’s terrible. Is Erik going to help them?”
“He’s going to try.”
She was quiet and I understood. She was still processing what had happened to Logan, and though I’d been through this before, so was I. I was angry I hadn’t been there to help, hadn’t foreseen that there might be trouble at the school, but I probably didn’t feel anywhere near as guilty as Jonas did. He’d taken it hard, from what he’d told me in our brief conversation.
“This is our first loss as Royal Protectors,” I said out loud. “We’re all going to go through an adjustment.”
“That makes sense.”
“Listen, I have to go, but we’ll talk tomorrow, okay? Try to get some rest.”
“I will. Promise you’ll be careful.”
“I will. Sleep well, sweetheart.”
I was up half the night driving back and forth from Braksa to Vinake and another neighboring town called Marnote, which was halfway between the two. When Sandor’s name flashed on the screen of my phone at four thirty, I figured he’d been up all night too. I was dog-tired, but there was still a lot of work to do and I figured I’d crash on someone’s couch for an hour or two to get my second wind, but not yet.
“Hey, man.”
“Hey.” Sandor sounded both tired and frustrated.
“What’s going on?”
“I have to talk to you about something and you’re not going to like it.”
Uh-oh.
This couldn’t be good.
“What’s up?”
“We’ve spent all night trying to figure out how this happened and there’s only one answer.”
“Which is?”
“Someone tipped them off.”
“What?”
“How else would the Brat, who are based in Turkey and focused on the northern part of the country, know so much about a school here in Hiskale that isn’t even open? Sure, Erik talks about education constantly, but he hasn’t spoken publicly about this particular school for this very reason. And yes, it’s been under construction so locals could see it, but there’s no name on the front, no public information available anywhere beyond a fancy new school. Jonas said there have been glitches in the system for days, and he figured out today that someone’s been trying to hack into it all week. The only person who could have given them enough info to even know there was a computer system set up was Solange.”
“No way!” I shot back angrily. “She would never do that.”
“Axel, I know how you feel about her, and I don’t want to believe it either, but until we can get to the bottom of this, with facts, and exonerate her, she has to be removed from any access to information, including living at the palace.”