All of the adults around them are covered in dirt and dust, but have smiles on their faces where the kids can see them. Whenever the children look away, you can see their parents grimacing and looking concerned at the state of things, but they're all coming together to set things right.
Gabe holds my hand up to press a kiss to the back of it and murmurs quietly, “This place was never going to stay a secret for long, but I still think it's worth it. I still think keeping these people safe is worth it, Bond. We’re exactly where we need to be. We’re all safe here because of you.”
I swallow again, my voice still trapped somewhere in my chest, but this time, I don't feel as if I’m being choked with guilt and terrible emotions.
As we head back off towards the house, Atlas offers to grab me something to eat as we pass the amazing smells from the dining hall, but I decline. I can't think about food right now, not with the memory of my bond munching on a soul in my gut still so fresh.
My stomach churns at the mere thought of it.
It's only as we're walking back up the stairs that I remember our water contamination issues and the fact that I'm still not allowed to take a shower. Tears fill my eyes again but I hastily swipe them away. I’m not going to work this hard to have my shit together only to lose it now over some goddamn hot water.
Gabe notices anyway and runs his thumb over mine, a silent show of support, and I give him a grimacing sort of smile back.
When Atlas finally gets his keys to work and swings open the front door, we find Sawyer and Gray sitting at the table together, waiting for us.
My heart drops to the floor.
Sawyer rolls his eyes at me and pokes a finger in my direction. “Don’t look at me like that, Fallows. I’m here to fix this fucking mess, because we both know my sister didn’t kill someone in cold blood.”
My spine crumples and I slouch towards the table, throwing my arm out dramatically because, dammit, if now isn’t the time to get dramatic, then I don’t know when is. “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have ever believed it either, Sawyer. But… How the hell are we going to explain it? I can’t… fuck, what the hell are we going to do? I can’t even blame North, Gryphon, or even Nox for being so forceful about this because… Dara was murdered. Someone needs to be held accountable, and if it’s not Sage, then we need to figure out who it really is and we need to do it now.”
He rolls his eyes at me all over again and pulls his laptop closer to himself, flicking a look at my Bonds, who are both watching us warily from the door like they’re waiting for a moment to jump in and pry us away from each other.
I’m not worried about Sawyer.
I’m his best chance at getting Sage out of this and we both know it. I have no freaking clue how we’re going to do it. There’s a burning sort of guilt inside of me at the fact that I’m still not absolutely sure that she’s innocent here, because I watched the knife slice through Dara’s throat. But there’s no way I’m not going to investigate every second of Sage’s last movements until I’m sure either way.
She’s my best friend, dammit!
I walk over to slump into one of the other chairs at the table, picking the opposite side just so I don’t completely mess with my Bonds’ overprotective natures. The last thing this situation needs is one of them going off. My bond is still silent in my chest in its weird dormant state. It is thoroughly freaking me out, but also that might not be such a bad thing right now.
Sawyer starts clicking away at his keyboard and speaks without bothering to look away from the screen. “Clearly, we need to figure out who it is, and not just because the fucking asshole needs to die for involving my sister in it. Dara was a huge loss, both personally and strategically, but there’s a lot of other assets living inside these walls. Did you know that Unser is here now too? If he gets his throat slit while he’s sleeping or something, then we’re fucked. Not to mention Councilman Hannity and his family. Oh, and then, I don’t know, your entire freaking Bond Group of overachievers and void-eye savages. If someone got the jump on you, then we’d have serious fucking problems.”
Atlas scoffs and walks over to pull out the chair next to mine, perching on the edge of it with a kinetic sort of energy still thrumming through him, as though he’s preparing himself to dive at either one of them if they look like a threat to me. Gabe is less concerned, probably thanks to knowing Sawyer and Gray his entire life, and he slumps in the other seat next to me so that I’m flanked entirely by overprotective Bonds.
Sawyer glances up at the two of them and pulls a face at whatever attitude he’s facing from them, then flicks me a much more sedate face. “Whatever is going on here, the water contamination was the first incident. Sage has already been ruled out of that, right? Why don’t we start there and work our way over to the… murder,” Gray says, all sorts of reasonable and level-headed and zero sass, which makes him a better planner here than the rest of us about a million times over.
I nod and rub a hand over my face, tugging Atlas’ jacket from my shoulders and setting it over my legs. “Okay, so… we start at the beginning. Where were we all this morning when Dara was murdered?”
Chapter Two
Oli
Everything comes back to Riley and Giovanna.
Sawyer tracks every last second of our morning, even when Atlas wants to murder him for all of the snide comments he makes about the two of us spending the night together out in that cave. That now feels as though it was a million years ago, but we find nothing out of the ordinary.
Sage woke up in her bed super early, said goodbye to each of her Bonded as she went on her routine morning run, and then made her way over to one of the wall security outlooks.
Then she killed our Shield.
There’s nothing else there for us to pull apart, no one approached her or injected her with some mind altering substance. She woke up and… chose murder?
“It has to lead back to Giovanna. She’s the one who is into mind control and fucking us all in the ass with a fucking cactus for the Resistance. We’ve let that situation stew for too long, and now they’re using the only in they have with us,” Sawyer rants, his fingers a little more frantic as they fly across the keyboard than they normally are.
Gabe pulls a face and leans back in his seat, still frustrated at how little we’ve figured out in the time we’ve been stuck here. “Could Giovanna really do that? Do you think she has enough power to go through Riley to Sage, even though they’re not Bonded? That’s… a lot of power. A lot more than I ever thought that manipulative bitch ever had.”
I glance at Sawyer but he doesn’t look away from his screen. “She’s always masked how much power she has because she was using so much by messing around in Riley’s head. I’m not ruling it out. Someone needs to go after her, rescue Riley, and drag her back here until we can rule it out. If it’s not her… I’ll keep digging.”
Atlas side-eyes me like he’s sizing me up and figuring out exactly how I’m going to react before he adds in, “And what are we going to do if it turns out that Sage is a turncoat? I don’t want to believe it either, but someone needs to say it.”