Scarlet (13 page)

Wolf yanked Scarlet to her feet and released her, using both arms to restrain her struggling father. Scarlet almost expected to see foam at the corners of her dad’s mouth.

“The tattoo, Scar! It’s them! It’s them!”

She pushed her hair off her face. “I know, Dad. Just calm down! I can explain—”

“You can’t take me back! I’m still looking! I need more time! Please, no more. No more…” He dissolved into sobs.

Wolf’s eyebrows drew together as he peered at the back of her father’s drooped head, then he grabbed a thin chain around his neck and pulled, snapping it.

Her dad flinched and, when Wolf released him, sank heavily to the floor.

Scarlet gawked at the necklace hanging from Wolf’s fist—a small, unfamiliar charm dangling from it. She couldn’t remember her father wearing any jewelry, other than the monogamy band that he’d taken off within days of her mother figuring out the ring hadn’t served its purpose and leaving him.

“Transmitter,” Wolf said, holding the charm up so that its silver sheen blinked in the light. It was no larger than Scarlet’s pinkie nail. “They’ve been tracking him, and, I would guess, listening in on everything as well.”

Scarlet’s dad hugged his knees, rocking.

“Do you think they’re listening right now?” Scarlet asked.

“Most likely.”

A firework exploded in her rib cage and she launched forward, grabbing Wolf’s fist in both hands. “There’s nothing here!” she screamed at the charm. “We’re not hiding anything and you have the wrong woman! You’d better bring my grandmother back, and I swear on the house I was born in if you’ve hurt one hair, one wrinkle,
one freckle on her body
I am going to hunt every last one of you down and snap your necks like the chickens you are, do you understand me? BRING HER BACK!”

Throat hoarse, she fell back and released Wolf’s hand.

“Finished?”

Trembling with anger, Scarlet nodded.

Wolf dropped the transmitter on the floor, grabbed the hammer, and smashed it with a single, clean strike. Scarlet jumped as metal crunched against the concrete.

“Do you think they knew he would come here?” Wolf said, standing.

“They left him in our cornfield.”

Her father’s voice rose between them, dry and empty. “They told me to find it.”

“Find what?” Scarlet asked.

“I don’t know. They didn’t say. Just … that she’s hiding something. Something valuable and secret and they want it.”

“Wait … you knew?” said Scarlet. “You knew all along that you were bugged and you didn’t try to tell me? Dad, what if I’d said something or done something that made them suspect me? What if they
do
come after me next?”

“I didn’t have a choice,” he said. “It was the only way they would let me go. They said I could only have my freedom if I found what your grandmother was hiding. If I found some clue that would help … I had to get out of there, Scar, you don’t know what it was like—”

“I know they still have her! And I know that you’re coward enough to save your own skin and not worry about what’s happening to her, or what could happen to me.”

Scarlet held her breath, waiting for him to deny it. To give some twisted excuse like he’d always had, but he stayed perfectly still. Perfectly silent.

Her skin flushed with anger. “You’re a disgrace to her—to everything she’s ever stood for. She would risk her life to protect either one of us! She would risk her life for a stranger if it was the right thing to do. But all you care about is yourself. I can’t believe you’re her son. I can’t believe you’re my
father.
”

He raised his haunted eyes to her. “You’re wrong, Scarlet. She watched them torture me.
Me.
And still she kept her secrets.” A spark of defiance flickered over his face. “There’s something your grandmother never told us, Scar, and it’s put both of us in danger. She’s the selfish one.”

“You don’t know anything about her!”

“No,
you
don’t! You’ve been idolizing her since you were four years old and it’s blinded you to the truth! She’s betrayed us both, Scarlet.”

Blood pounding against her temples, Scarlet pointed out the door. “Get out. Get off my farm, and never come back. I hope I never see you again.”

He paled, the circles like bruises under his eyes. Slowly, he peeled himself off the floor. “You’re going to abandon me too? My own daughter and my own mother, both turning against me?”

“You abandoned us first.”

Scarlet realized that in the five years since last she’d seen him, she’d come to match her father’s height. They stood eye to eye; she burning up on the inside, he frowning as though he wanted to be sorry but couldn’t quite grasp the emotion.

“Good-bye, Luc.”

His jaw flexed. “They’ll come for me again, Scarlet. And it will be on your hands.”

“Don’t you dare. You’re the one who was wearing that transmitter, you’re the one who was willing to sell
me
out.”

He held her eyes for a long, slow count, like he was waiting for her to change her mind. Waiting for her to welcome him back to the house, back into her life. But all Scarlet could hear was the crunch of the hammer against the transmitter. She thought of the burn marks on his arm and knew he would just as soon give her over for torture, if it would have saved his own skin.

Finally, his gaze fell, and without looking at her, without looking at Wolf, her dad shuffled through the debris and out of the hangar.

Scarlet’s fists settled against her sides. She would have to wait. He would go into the house to collect his shoes. She imagined him rummaging through the kitchen for food before he went—or trying to hunt down some stray liquor bottles. She dared not run the risk of their paths crossing again before he was gone for good.

The coward. The traitor.

“I’ll help you.”

She crossed her arms, protecting her anger against the gentleness of Wolf’s voice. She scanned the chaos all around her, the mess that would take weeks to put right. “I don’t need your help.”

“I meant, I’ll help get your grandmother back.” Wolf ducked away, like he was surprised he’d made the offer.

It took a pathetically long time for her thinking to change directions, from the internal rant against her traitorous father, to the hefty meaning behind Wolf’s words. She blinked up at him and held her breath, imagining his words captured in a bubble that might blow away. “You will?”

His head jerked in what could have been a nod. “The Wolves are headquartered in Paris. That’s probably where they’re keeping her.”

Paris.
The word filled her up. A clue. A promise.

She glanced at her ship and its shattered window. Renewed hatred flared for her father, but it deflated quickly—there wasn’t time. Not now. Not when she had her first taste of hope in two endless weeks.

“Paris,” she murmured. “We can take the train from Toulouse—it’s, what, eight hours?” She hated the thought of being without her ship, but even the obnoxiously slow maglev train would be quicker than getting the window replaced. “Someone will have to look after the farm while I’m gone. Maybe Èmilie, after her shift. I’ll send her a comm, then I just need to grab some clothes and…”

“Scarlet, wait. We can’t just rush up there. We need to think this through.”

“Rush? We can’t
rush
? They’ve had her for more than two weeks! This isn’t rushing!”

Wolf’s gaze darkened and Scarlet paused, for the first time recognizing his unease.

“Look,” she said, wetting her tongue, “we’ll have eight hours on the train to think up something. But I can’t stay here a moment longer.”

“But what if your father is right?” His shoulders stayed stiff. “What if she has hidden something here? What if they come looking for it?”

She roughly shook her head. “They can look all they want, but they won’t find anything. My dad is wrong. Grand-mère and I don’t keep secrets.”

Fourteen

“Your Majesty.”

Kai turned away from the window that he’d been staring out half the morning, listening to the drone of the news anchors and military officials reporting on the escape of the most-wanted convict in the Eastern Commonwealth. Chairman Huy stood in the doorway, Torin beside him. Both looked supremely unhappy.

He gulped. “Well?”

Huy stepped forward. “They’ve gotten away.”

Kai’s pulse hiccupped. He took a tentative step toward his father’s desk and gripped the back of the chair.

“I’ve given the order to deploy our reserve fleets immediately. I am confident we’ll have the fugitives found and taken into custody by sunset.”

“With all respect, Chairman, you don’t
sound
particularly confident.”

Though Huy puffed his chest out, his face took on a tinge of pink. “I am, Your Majesty. We can find them. It’s only that … it’s complicated by it being a stolen ship. All the tracking equipment has been stripped.”

Torin let out an irritated sigh. “The girl has proven herself to be more clever than I would have given her credit for.”

Kai dragged his hand through his hair, extinguishing an unexpected spark of pride.

“There is also the issue of the girl being Lunar,” Huy added.

“Whoever captures her will just have to be alert,” said Kai. “They should all be made well aware that she’ll no doubt try to turn their minds against them.”

“There is that too, but not what I was referring to. In the past, we’ve had difficulty tracking Lunar ships. It seems that they’ve learned how to disable our radar systems. I’m afraid we’re not sure how they do it.”

“Disable our radar systems?” Kai glanced at Torin. “Did you know about this?”

“I’ve heard rumors,” said Torin. “Your father and I chose to believe that’s all they were.”

“Not all my contemporaries agree with me on this matter,” said Huy. “But I myself am convinced it is the Lunars disabling our equipment. Whether it’s through their mental abilities or some other talent, I can’t tell. Regardless, Linh Cinder won’t get far. We’ll have every resource searching for her.”

Tempering his inner turmoil, Kai molded his face into stone. “Keep me informed.”

“Of course, Your Majesty. There is one other thing I thought you might want to see. We’ve finished going over our security footage from the prison.” Huy gestured to the inlaid screen in Kai’s desk.

Rounding his chair, Kai tugged on his long sleeves, suddenly warm, and sat down. A comm from the council of national security rotated in the corner. “Accept comm.”

The screen brightened with footage of the prison, all white and glossy walls. It showed a long hallway lined with smooth doors and ID scanners. A prison guard moved into view and gestured at a door. He was followed by a short, old man wearing a gray cap.

Kai jerked upward. It was Dr. Erland. “Volume up.”

Dr. Erland’s familiar voice filtered through the screen. “I am the leading scientist of the royal letumosis research team, and this girl is my prime test subject. I require blood samples from her before she leaves the planet.” Looking miffed, he reached into a bag and pulled something out—a syringe, but the bag still bulged. That wasn’t all that was inside it.

“I have my orders, sir,” said the guard. “You’ll have to obtain an official release from the emperor to be allowed entrance.”

Kai frowned as the doctor put the syringe back into the bag, knowing that Dr. Erland hadn’t made such a request.

“All right. If that’s protocol, I understand,” said Dr. Erland. And then he just stood there, serene and patient. After the space of a few heartbeats, Kai glimpsed the doctor’s smile. “There, you see? I have obtained the necessary release from the emperor. You may open the door.”

Kai’s jaw dropped as, amazingly, the guard turned toward the cell door, swiped his wrist across the scanner, and punched in a code. A green light flashed and the door opened.

“Thank you kindly,” said Dr. Erland, passing the guard. “I’ll ask that you give us a bit of privacy. I won’t be but a minute.”

The guard complied without argument, shutting the door and meandering in the direction they’d come from, leaving the screen empty.

Kai glanced up at Huy. “Has that guard been questioned?”

“Yes, sir, and his statement is that he remembers denying access to the girl, and then the doctor left. He was confounded when we showed him this footage. He claims to not remember any of it.”

“How is that possible?”

Huy busied his hands by buttoning his suit jacket. “It appears, Your Majesty, that Dr. Dmitri Erland glamoured the guard into allowing him access to the prisoner’s cell.”

Hairs prickling beneath his collar, Kai slumped back in his chair. “Glamoured? You think he’s Lunar?”

“That is our theory.”

Kai stared up at the ceiling. Cinder, Lunar. Dr. Erland, Lunar. “Is it a
conspiracy
?”

Torin cleared his throat, as he did whenever Kai mentioned some off-the-wall theory—although it seemed like a perfectly legitimate question to Kai. “We’re in the process of investigating all possibilities,” said Torin. “At least now we know how she escaped.”

“We have other video that shows the prisoner glamouring the guard on the next shift,” said Huy, “and being shown to a new cell. In that footage she has two feet, and a different left hand from the one she entered the prison with.”

Kai shoved himself out of his chair. “The bag,” he said, pacing toward the windows.

“Yes. Dr. Erland was bringing her these tools, we must assume with the intention of assisting her escape.”

“That’s why he left.” Kai shook his head, wondering how Cinder really knew Dr. Erland—what they’d really been doing all those times she’d come to see him at the hospital. Plotting, conniving, conspiring? “I thought she was just fixing a med-droid,” he murmured to himself. “I didn’t even question—stars, I’ve been so stupid.”

“Your Majesty,” said Huy, “our few resources not searching for Linh Cinder have been dedicated to finding Dmitri Erland. He will be arrested as a traitor to the crown.”

“Please excuse the interruption,” said Nainsi, the android who had once tutored Kai as a child, but had now taken on the more significant role of personal assistant. The android who had malfunctioned—was it not even four weeks ago?—and led him to his first meeting with Linh Cinder, back when she was nothing more to him than a renowned mechanic. “Her Majesty, Lunar Queen Levana, has requested an immediate appoint—”