“I’ll deal with them,” Ian said quietly. “You change.”
Ferdinand and I met Cat in the cargo bay and she ran to Ferdinand. She didn’t wait for an invitation, she slammed into him and squeezed him tight. “I’m so happy you’re okay!”
“I’m happy to see you, too, Cat,” he said in his computer-generated voice.
She stepped back, shocked. “What happened?”
“Silva,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t question him further. “I brought clothes.”
We changed in the cargo bay. Cat had brought Ferdinand a charcoal suit with a white shirt. She’d brought me a deep sapphire sheath dress and strappy black heels. The dress was one of my mourning dresses, nearly black.
While we were getting dressed, Cat talked. “I’ve been working with Marta Stevens to track down a couple of leads. We didn’t use the rest of the security team because she feared we had a high-level leak, but Marta is good. We did not expect both lines of inquiry to lead to the same person.”
“Who was it?” Ferdinand and I asked at the same time.
“Pierre, Hannah’s husband. He sang like a bird when Marta brought him in for questioning.”
I froze in the middle of twisting my hair up. “What? He’s a bastard, but he’s married to a High House. Why would he risk it?”
“He’s deep in gambling debt, like destroy-his-family’s-House deep. He’s burned through all of the money he got from the marriage and Hannah refuses to give him more. He had to take a loan from one of his mother’s companies to hire Silva. It’s unclear if she knew what the money was for. We’re digging into it.”
I pinned my hair in place, trying to understand his motivation. “What does he get if Ferdinand dies? Who holds his markers?”
“It’s more what Hannah gets. She becomes heir, which puts her—and by extension, him—in charge of the vast resources of House von Hasenberg. House James has quietly been buying his markers through a series of shell companies. They have ties with Rockhurst, but they haven’t declared war, and we haven’t been able to find evidence that they’re working together. Yet.”
“What does House James want?” Ferdinand asked.
“Mineral rights in Antlia.”
I snorted. “Good luck getting that one past Father. I’m sure he was just going to let Pierre sign away the very mineral we’re going to war to claim.”
Ferdinand shook his head. “Mineral rights agreements don’t need Father’s signature. As named heir, I can sign them. Hannah’s husband could sign them and they would be legal if she were the named heir.”
“Really?” I paused. “Wait, if I didn’t know that, how did he?”
“Someone’s feeding him information. Maybe House James, maybe someone else. We haven’t had time to track it down,” Cat said.
I used the handheld cosmetics kit I had to apply light makeup. “Why attack me?” I finally asked.
“He knew you dealt in information and Silva needed cover. That dinner party that Hannah mentioned on the night of the attack? It was in the building across from House Chan. Pierre left a door unlocked for the shooter and sent the message when you appeared. We wouldn’t have known any of that yet except he confessed. He thinks by cooperating and giving up his allies, he’ll be exonerated.”
Cat continued, “When the attack failed, Pierre seemingly panicked and tried to discredit you. That’s ultimately how we found him. That and he was paying one of Ferdinand’s bodyguards to send him Ferdinand’s schedule.”
I shook my head. Pierre had never been the brightest, but I’d thought he was smarter than this. “Is it possible he’s a patsy?”
Catarina thought it over. “It’s possible,” she said at last. “He was definitely involved, but someone is manipulating him. House James was leaning on him, threatening all sorts of ruin. Perhaps someone was leaning on them. We don’t know, yet.”
“Where is Pierre now?”
“He’s in ‘protective custody.’” She made air quotes around the words. “He still seems to think he’s going to walk. I managed to persuade Marta to wait for Director Bishop’s return before going to Father.”
“Does Hannah know?” I asked.
Catarina nodded. “I briefed her. We managed to snag Pierre quietly, but she deserved the truth. She certainly wasn’t heartbroken, but she’s beating herself up.”
I knew exactly how she felt. Relief mixed with an equal measure of guilt. Mine for letting Gregory die; hers for not seeing what Pierre was doing.
“How do you want to do this?” Ferdinand asked.
I closed my eyes, trying to process everything I’d just learned. We had enough to destroy Pierre, but we needed to know