“I can’t.” Keen turned his tablet toward her. “He’s dead.”
She scanned the images on his tablet screen. Randy, her stepbrothers Kurt and Karl and all the other men who lived at the mine were laid out on metal slabs. Most of them had been shot. Randy, however, had obvious signs of torture on his body. She grimaced and glanced away. He might have been a real bastard, but she didn’t think anyone deserved torture.
“How long?” she asked, wondering if that was why she had been left in the prison camps.
“The day we rescued Terror,” Keen explained. “When did you start working for Devious?”
Keen’s sudden shift of focus threw her off kilter. Certain he was trying to confuse and frustrate her, she took her time answering him. “That’s an expansive question.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Expansive is an interesting way of describing your relationship with him. Let me narrow it down for you. When was the first time he asked you to spy?”
“He never asked me to spy.”
Keen seemed unconvinced. “Never?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t have to.”
“Because?”
“Because he used to put listening devices on me without me knowing what they were,” she explained. “I didn’t understand what he was doing until I was older. I realized someone was messing with the buttons on my shirts. They were heavier and felt clunkier when I was getting dressed. I took one apart and noticed there was a tiny little device between the two layers of plastic. I caught Devious in my room, going through my shirts, a few days later.”
“And then?”
“And then he asked me to pretend I hadn’t found the device.” She shrugged. “So, I did.”
“Why?” Keen studied her with narrowed eyes. “Why did you want to risk extreme danger to yourself to help him?”
She shrugged and thought about how to answer him. “I don’t know. It seemed like the right thing to do. What the Splinters were doing—are doing—is terrible. I don’t support them or their tactics, but I couldn’t get out. I was stuck there. If I had to be there, helping Devious from the inside seemed like the only way I could make a difference.”
“So, you helped him out of the goodness of your heart?” Keen shifted in his chair. He glanced back at the hulk leaning against the door and said something that made the other man laugh. Hating that she couldn’t see his mouth, she was left to wonder at what ugly thing he had said at her expense. When he turned back to face her, Keen wasn’t smiling. “You know what I think?”
Certain he was going to say something stupid, she shook her head.
“I think you’re lying about all of it.”
Certain she had misunderstood him, she asked, “Excuse me?”
“You’re a liar,” he said, enunciating each word slowly and clearly.
She frowned and typed out her reply. “No, I’m not.”
“The thing is—we have all of Devious’ reports and all of his transmissions,” Keen explained. “You’re never mentioned in any of them. Never. Not once. Not even under a code name.”
“And?” She didn’t think that was so strange. Surely, if he had been worried that he might be uncovered as a double agent, he wouldn’t have put her at risk by naming her in his dispatches.
“Maybe you were never his asset,” Keen suggested. “Maybe you never really worked for him or with him. Maybe the whole time you were just a sneaky little bitch sharing details about Devious and his work with your stepdad and your stepbrothers and all the other Splinter shitheads surrounding you.”
“You’re insane,” she snapped angrily. “I never told anyone about my connection to Devious. Never.”
“Not even Terror?”
She blinked and then hastily typed out her answer. “That’s different. Devious asked me to tell Terror that I worked for him.”
“Did he?”
“Yes!”
“And Terror is the only one you told?”
“Yes!”
“Then how the fuck did this happen?” Keen swiped at his tablet’s screen before tossing it across the table at her. “Explain that!”
She flinched at the sight of Devious—or rather, what was left of him—hanging by his bound, bruised wrists from the ceiling. She had to swallow the rush of sickness that threatened to erupt at the sight of his horribly decomposed body. She looked away, desperate to clear the macabre image from her mind.
Yet, even as she tried to purge the image of Devious’ bloated corpse, she couldn’t shake the idea that something was wrong. There was something off about his body. Steeling herself, she turned back for another look, but Keen swept away the tablet