Shards of Hope

Chapter 68

IT WAS TAMAR who found the smoking gun the next morning. The financially savvy twenty-four-year-old woman whom Aden had saved from an execution order, and who’d been working for him long before the Arrows rebelled against Ming, said, “The money for the apartments where the two saboteurs were found came from a shell corporation, but I was able to strip away the layers to get a name.”

That name was Hashri Smith.

It wasn’t difficult to trace the man, given the information Tamar had uncovered. He proved to be a midlevel human businessman based in Singapore. Portly, with a thick head of black hair and round brown eyes that gave him a permanently startled air, he ran an import-export business that appeared to be fully legitimate. Nothing in his background said he had the kind of contacts or interests that would lead to an attack against Arrows.

He was, however, making frantic calls to a disconnected comm number night after night. During the day, he constantly mopped up perspiration using a handkerchief, his brown-skinned face haggard. Surveillance images taken from his own security cameras showed him jumping at shadows, as if he expected to be assassinated at any instant.

“He’s been cut from the fold,” Aden predicted before he made the executive decision to have Smith brought quietly in. Normally, he’d have waited, watched, but his instincts told him that would be a pointless delay—and if there was even a slim chance the human male knew Persephone’s whereabouts or fate, Aden couldn’t justify even a short wait.

Vasic went in and grabbed Smith while he was sleeping, the teleport made so swiftly that only someone who’d been inside the target’s bedroom and awake at the time would’ve noticed it. Since Smith slept in a separate bedroom from his wife, there was no witness.

Vasic seated the male in a room deep in Central Command that was a pure black cube. He and Zaira kept watch as Aden talked to Smith; though none of them believed the now shivering man was dangerous, it would be stupid to be complacent.

“You know who I am?” Aden asked Smith after taking a seat in the chair across from him.

Dressed in white-striped red flannel pajamas, the whites of his eyes visible and his hands tightly locked together, Smith jerked his head up and down. “Arrow,” he croaked out.

“Would you like a glass of water?”

Another jerk.

I’ll get it, he telepathed to Vasic and Zaira before walking out to do exactly that. I need him to trust me.

Why? Zaira’s blunt tone. Rip the truth from his mind. Olivia was brought in five days ago. Two or three more days at most and her daughter’s captors will realize Olivia’s memories were permanently damaged.

Do you really believe this man is anything but the lowest level of pawn?

Folding her arms as Aden returned to the room, Zaira focused a hard stare on Smith. The man visibly wilted. Damn it, she muttered. He’s the worst excuse for a terrorist I’ve ever seen.

Giving Smith the water, Aden sat in patient silence while the other man glugged it down.

Smith handed the glass back with a hand that trembled. “Th-thank you.”

Aden placed the glass on the floor beside his chair. “Do you know why you’re here?”

Smith’s eyes shifted left then right, his hands twisting in his lap. When he shook his head, Aden spoke very quietly. “Hashri, I can scan your mind, pick out anything I need to know. I can strip you of every one of your secrets.”

The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed, his breathing turning ragged.

“But I won’t,” Aden continued. “That would make me no better than the murderers we hunt.” It was a decision Aden had made with the fall of Silence. “However,” he said when the businessman looked hopeful, “my personal moral choice isn’t stronger than my loyalty to the squad. I will do whatever is necessary to protect my men and women and, in this case, an innocent child.”

“I don’t know anything,” Smith blurted out, tears streaking out of his eyes. “I really don’t.”

Aden knew no further persuasion would be needed. As Zaira had realized, Smith wasn’t a criminal mastermind—he was a bit player who’d been given just enough power to feel useful and not question his masters. “Tell me how and when this all began.”

“Um.” Smith wiped his face with his knuckles, his expression eager to please. “Eight months ago, I received a letter—an actual, printed letter—asking if I’d like to be part of a networking group designed to connect business owners together in a mutually beneficial way. It said I’d been chosen because of my innovative advertising techniques.”

Smith swallowed convulsively again. “My business wasn’t doing so well, so I thought, why not? I figured I might find someone who could maybe help me get a few more contracts.”

Eight months ago, Vasic said inside his mind. Same timeline as the BlackSea abductions and months before the fall of Silence.

The cracks had begun to appear to anyone who was paying careful attention. Aden had noticed, known those cracks were permanent. Psy or non-Psy alike could’ve read the signs.

“Did you keep the letter?” he asked the pajama-clad man in front of him.

He shook his head. “Later, they told me to get rid of it.”

Aden decided to follow up on that instruction later. “What did you do after deciding to join the group?”

“I RSVP’d to the number included in the letter and got a recorded message saying I’d soon be sent another letter with further details.” Smith looked up, the whites of his eyes now red with burst blood vessels. “I don’t know why I’m here.” His voice was a plea. “I just did a favor for a friend.”

“Finish your story.” Aden made no threat, his tone even, but Smith trembled.

“A week after that first contact, I received another letter. It listed the names of three other businesspeople in my area who were interested in the networking opportunity. We contacted one another, got together. I figured one would be the person who’d started the group in the first place, but no one copped to it.” Smith shrugged. “I didn’t really worry too much about it—the others were good people and we made an agreement to help each other where we could.”

“Your business improved,” Aden guessed.

“Yeah.” A shaky smile. “I suddenly started getting more contracts. Nothing huge, but enough to bring me out of the red. When I was sent a third letter four months later saying that the organization that had brought us all together and ensured our prosperity would like a favor in return, I called back on the number provided and left a message saying yes. I figured I owed them.”

“What occurred?” Aden said when the other man paused and looked to him as if for further instruction.

“I got a letter thanking me for my assistance and asking me to pay for a couple of apartments. But first, I had to follow instructions to set up a shell corporation and all that.” Smith sighed and seemed to slump in his chair. “Soon as I saw the shell corporation stuff I knew something was hinky, so I ignored it . . . and my contracts started falling away.” Shoulders shaking, he began to cry. “I have kids, a wife. I can’t go bankrupt. I did what they asked.”

“Where did you get the money for the rents?” Smith had paid for a full year in advance, and Venice rentals weren’t cheap. If there had been a money transfer, Tamar might be able to track it.

“I was overpaid a couple, maybe three times on invoices, and since the letter said the money would be provided, I figured out quick that the extra was for the rent.”

Aden had already made sure Tamar had full access to Smith’s files. Now he questioned the older man in detail about the specific contracts that had brought him the money, and telepathically alerted Tamar to push those forensic investigations to priority status. “Did you ever hear from your benefactors again?”

Smith shook his head. “When I heard about what happened in Venice—about the suicide—and I realized it was from one of the rentals, I called the number I had, but it was disconnected. I talked to the others in the group to see if anyone else had an e-mail or something, but the others had the same number.”

And had no doubt been asked to do small tasks of their own. It turned out Smith knew the basic gist of those tasks, but Aden would get the details from the others. When he did a few hours later, he saw why Hashri Smith and his associates continued to breathe. All knew only a minuscule detail at best, and none of those details led to anything but dead ends.

Also interesting was that all four reported a gradual downturn in business over the past two months. Used up and discarded, Aden thought. Nevertheless, he released the terrified businesspeople with the coda that should they be contacted again, they were to alert the squad. “I don’t believe they’ll be contacted,” he told his team of senior Arrows late that afternoon. “Smith and his cohorts played their roles and have now been written out.”

Their opponent was not only smart and sly but ruthless and calculating. If it was a human or changeling, they had to have high-level Psy support or the ability to hack into secure Psy databases. Aden’s bet was on the former—all the conflict-causing “tricks” to date that had to do with the Psy had been too well designed and targeted to have been thought up by an outsider.

It had to be someone who had deep knowledge of the PsyNet and the politics within it.

He said as much to Zaira as they took an hour out to de-stress with hand-to-hand combat in a quiet corner of the valley. Spinning out with a kick that tapped his ribs without causing harm, she said, “Your instincts are usually right on things like this.”

Avoiding a blow that would’ve connected with her jaw if he hadn’t pulled it, she tried to get in under his guard, got a shoulder tap for her trouble. “Clever.”

“I wouldn’t want you to think me easy prey.”

Zaira knew that was ludicrous. “Never . . . unless it’s in bed.”

Molten heat in his gaze. “What shall we try tonight?”

She sent him an image.

Barely avoiding what would’ve been a mock-killing blow, he shot her an image in answer. She stumbled, then narrowed her eyes. If you ever want me to do that, you have to do what I suggested.

Deal.

She pointed an accusatory finger. You wanted both anyway. The faint smile on his face gave him away.

So did I, she admitted before she went at him, no playing now.

He held his own, both of them breathing hard by the time they called a halt. “Where are you headed?”

“Miane called,” Zaira said, the break over and her mind on a little girl who probably didn’t understand why she was locked up, why her mommy hadn’t come for her. “Olivia’s memory wasn’t as shot as we initially thought—she remembers being with her daughter, so they were both held at the same place.”

It eased some of the raw fury in Zaira to have it confirmed that at least Persephone hadn’t been alone the entire time she and her mother had been held captive. “I’ve been invited to one of BlackSea’s floating cities to sit down with Olivia and Miane to see if we can narrow down the location.”

Aden ran a hand through his hair. “The alpha wants an Arrow in the mix.”

Nodding, Zaira said, “She knows we have access and contacts closed to BlackSea.” And vice versa. “I better get going. The meet is in fifteen and I need to shower—Vasic’s offered to do the transport.”

“Have they promised not to shoot him this time?”

The darkness inside Zaira flickered with what might have been laughter. “According to Miane, as long as he doesn’t return uninvited, he’ll leave without holes in his body.”

Aden suddenly frowned. “Did Vasic attempt to lock onto Persephone’s face using the extra photographs Miane was able to locate?”

“Yes.” Over and over. “But the images were all from months before her abduction. Children grow too fast.” Vasic couldn’t lock on to the one-year-old girl because she no longer existed.

“But if Olivia’s memories are coming back,” Aden said, “then she may have an image inside her head. See if you can get that out.”

Zaira nodded. “I will.” The only problem was that Olivia was changeling, with the attendant natural shields. “I have to go.” Sliding her hand over Aden’s cheek, she pressed her lips to his, the kiss soft. A promise to return and a gift she took with her as she walked once more into the darkness, the rage inside her black lava that became blood in her veins as she sat down in front of a broken woman whose mate was dead and whose baby was in the hands of monsters.

“They’ll kill her,” Olivia whispered, rocking back and forth in a room inside a city that moved with the sway of the waves. “They’ll kill my poor, sweet girl. Mama’s here, Mama’s here, that’s what I always told her after they took us to that place. Mama’s here.” Sobs rocked her frame, horror in her eyes as she looked up. “Where is she?” She grabbed at Zaira’s hand. “Where’s my baby?”