know what’s going on here, so that you can stay as safe as possible, but I can’t tell you unless I have your word you will keep it quiet.”
She threw her hands up in the air, her blank mask totally gone. “Of course, I’ll keep quiet! Who would I tell? Besides I’ve just shared my life with you.” She smiled. “I don’t do that with just anybody, you know.”
I gave her a small smile, knowing that was totally true, but let go of her hand, my bare feet squeaking on the floor as I paced. “Before I was taken to that holding prison where you and Rawson found me four years ago, I had an interview for a job.”
Her expression turned incredulous. “What the hell’s that got to do with any of this?”
“Just sit down and listen.”
Her brows rose and her arms crossed over her chest.
Shit. I need to curb my goddamn bossy tongue around her. “Please.”
Her brows twitched again, but she sat on the table, swinging her legs.
“It was with a woman who called herself Miss X...” Ember opened her mouth, no doubt to add some sarcastic response to that. I held up my hand and quickly continued. “I know, corny, but true. If I got the assignment, I was supposed to go deep undercover, answering only to the Overseer of the SBI.”
“The Overseer? Jeez, Connor, no one even knows what he looks like. What were you supposed to do?”
I met her astonished gaze. “At the time I had no idea. Something weird happened in my last interview. A portal opened behind me and I found myself paralysed. I never saw the person who came through that portal, but they put a gun in my hand and forced me to pull the trigger. I shot Miss X.”
“Oh my god! Is that how you ended up here?”
“Yeah, pretty much. All hell broke loose after that gunshot. Owen barged in, followed by Doherty and his men. Both Owen and I were accused of murder. But the weirdest part of all is that Miss X’s body just disintegrated in front of us. Her ashes rose from the ground and disappeared into an air vent. I’ve never seen anything like it.” I shook my head. I still had no idea what had happened back then. I’d never heard of the dead, not even the supernatural dead, being able to just float away.
“What about cameras?”
I shook my head again. “Whoever came through that portal knew where they were. The only thing caught on camera was me shooting Miss X with a gun that I didn’t even own. Doherty arrested Brady, I mean Owen, saying I couldn’t have smuggled the gun in there without help. We never saw a courtroom and never went to trial.”
Her eyes darkened to that deep green again. “Christ, Rawson went mad after you went missing. They told us you were dead, but he never believed it. He searched so hard to find out what had happened to you.”
My throat ached for the pain Doherty had caused my family. “Rawson told me. He called in favours and managed to get into the back up feeds from the headquarters cameras. Someone had tried to erase them. But he saw the whole thing. Me shooting Miss X and her disappearing, Doherty coming in and him arresting both me and Owen. He went to see Lyss to tell her what he’d found out.” I ground my teeth together hating that Lyss had got caught up in all this. “They had already killed her.”
“I was there.” Her voice shook and I stopped pacing. “Not when they killed her, but after. That bastard... Zander you call him? He tranquilised Rawson while he was trying to crawl to her body…” Her voice broke, her eyes bright and shining with unshed tears. “He was crawling, Connor, an alpha as strong as him. They broke him that day. They took his reason for living and ripped her apart. There was...there was just...so much blood.” Her last words came out on a sob.
My fists tightened, my fingernails piercing my skin. Zander had kept that fucking nugget of information from me. He’d better hope he hadn’t been the one to end Lyss’s life, or I was going to rip him limb from limb, and no amount of threats would stop me. I crossed the space between us and wrapped her up in my arms. “I’m sorry,” I whispered into her hair, my heart breaking for her.