“Hunting.” Her eyes gleam. “And I found what I was looking for.”
With the tracker in custody, perhaps I can get some answers of my own. Not that a tracker will give me information of his own volition. I’ll have to get my hands dirty, maybe do a few things that until a month ago I’d have sworn I’d never do, but I will have answers. Whoever is masquerading as a loyal Baalboden survivor is going to be caught and punished.
“What’s the bad news?” I ask, and Willow purses her lips like she’s just sucked on a lemon.
“He didn’t survive.”
“What didn’t he survive?” Frankie frowns at her.
She shrugs. “Me. He found it necessary to try to kill me after I’d already defeated him. I defended myself, and now he’s dead.”
I swallow the harsh tang of disappointment, and force myself to say, “It’s okay. At least you removed that threat. Now we just have to figure out which of our people knows about my past and—”
“Oh, I don’t think we’re looking for one of your people.” Willow’s dark eyes find mine, and something feral lies in their depths. “The tracker had a wristmark on his right arm. It looked identical to the ones everyone in camp wears.”
“Rowansmark trackers don’t have wristmarks,” Rachel says.
“Well, this one did.” Willow fists her hands on her hips as if daring us to call her a liar.
I feel sick. Unsteady. My blood roars through me, and I have to grab the end of Rachel’s bed to hold myself upright as the final pieces fall into place.
“No wonder we couldn’t find the traitor in our camp. He had a wristmark. He’d studied Baalboden. He knew just enough to masquerade as one of us, and we never questioned it because he looked the part.” I can’t stand still. Not when so much fury fuels me. Right under my nose this entire time. A tracker. Sneaking into my tent and leaving messages. Slitting throats. Poisoning us and then watching us burn. I stalk across the room and wheel back around to see the rage that burns in me reflected on every face I see.
“I know you said to leave the last message in the middle of the road, but it’s a clue. After seeing the wristmark on that tracker, I figured we needed all the clues we could get,” Willow says as she thrusts a piece of parchment at me.
It hasn’t survived the night very well. It’s stained with damp, and the ink is smudged in several places. I wish I could go back and reverse my decision to leave it where it lay, but wishing won’t solve the problem.
“Spread it out,” I say, and pull the small table beside Rachel’s bed over to me. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
Willow lays the parchment on the table’s surface and secures two opposing corners by placing a mug on one and a jar of salve on the other. I peer at the words scrawled across the page and try to force it all to make sense.
Traitors d erve to ie. You h ve b n dged.
“The first sentence is obviously ‘Traitors deserve to die.’ Not quite sure about the end of the second sentence, though.” Adam taps the parchment lightly.
“Traitors deserve to die. You”—I draw my finger in a line beneath the other words and go for the obvious—“have been . . . what? You have been—”
“Judged?” Adam asks.
“Sounds like the same pile of self-righteous idiocy he’s been saying all along.” Willow waves her hands in the air with more drama than I realized she possessed. “Your debt is unpaid! Traitors deserve to die! You’ve been judged!” She looks at me. “Wait until we catch him. Then I’ll show him what it’s like to be judged.”
“Judge and be judged.” Rachel’s voice shakes as she struggles to sit up.
A finger of ice slides over my skin. I’ve heard those words before. Where? When?
“What are you saying?” Adam asks her.
“The killer. When he had me during the fires. He said . . .” Her fingernails scratch lightly at the bandage on her arm. I reach across the bed and take her hand in mine.
“He isn’t going to hurt you again,” I say.
“He is if he gets the chance,” Willow says.
“Does it ever occur to you not to say whatever comes into your head?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Tell me I’m lying.”
Lying. The killer’s been lying to me all along. Maybe instead of concentrating on trying to find him by what we know of his past, we need to focus on what actions he took to make his lie seem like the truth to me.
I rub my thumb across Rachel’s knuckles and say, “The killer needed us to trust him. Accept him. The best liars use as much truth as possible. He’d have a convincing story. One that could explain away anything we might find worrisome.”
“He’d make sure his actions gained your trust as well,” Quinn says from across the room. “He’d confide in you. Fight for you. Maybe make it seem like he’d risked his life for you, because who would believe the person determined to destroy you would be willing to die for you?”
“Maybe he’d find a way to have an alibi during the murders—or something we’d believe to be an alibi—to deflect suspicion,” Adam says.
“Judge and be judged.” My blood hammers through my veins, and my breathing scrapes my lungs in harsh bursts. I remember where I’ve heard that phrase before.
“Logan?” Rachel leans forward. “Are you okay?”
“He said it was something his father used to say.” I look at her, but I’m not seeing her. I’m seeing the boy who fought better than he should’ve been able to fight and explained it away with a convincing story about his former occupation. I’m seeing the boy who argued that it was morally wrong to give the Rowansmark device to any other city-state.
I’m seeing the boy who looked me in the eye as we stood in the tunnel beneath the Commander’s compound and told me he wouldn’t rest until the man he held responsible for his father’s death was punished. I’d assumed he meant the Commander.
Now I realize he meant me.
“It’s Ian,” I say, and Rachel’s face goes white. “He told me he could fight because he’d been apprenticed to the Brute Squad, but that was a lie. He also said his father was loyal to the Commander and that it cost him his life. I think he was telling the truth about his father dying. Everything Ian’s done . . . this was personal to him. If James Rowan punished Marcus for his treachery, and Marcus didn’t survive his pain atonement, that would be enough to push his son over the edge.” I don’t say that this makes Ian my brother. I don’t have to. I can see the horrified realization on everyone’s face.
Ian, with his easy charm and his courage against Carrington. Ian, with his false loyalty and his dedication to no cause but his own desperate need for revenge.
Ian, with his knife to Donny’s throat. With his syringe full of poison in Sylph’s room. With his hands on Rachel.
“I’m going to kill him.” I let go of Rachel’s hand and stand. “I’m going to find him and kill him.” My eyes meet Willow’s dark, feral gaze. “And I’m going to make it hurt.”
She smiles. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
RACHEL
“You can’t go without a plan,” I say, but what I mean is they can’t go without me.
“I have a plan: Kill Ian,” Logan says. In his voice I hear the furious need to avenge Donny, Sylph, Thom, and the others who died under his watch because of his brother.
Because of Ian.
The boy who saved me from the Cursed One so he could gain my trust. So he could forge an alliance with me behind Logan’s back. So he could try to use me to get his hands on the device.
Nobody uses me and gets away with it.
“I’m coming too,” I say, and push the blanket off myself with my left arm.