Henry lifted an eyebrow. “Wow,” he said to Natasha. “She really is your daughter.”
Natasha made a rude gesture at her husband, to which he responded with a low chuckle.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m glad we’re all up to speed,” I said, attempting to wave away the taut string of stress that lingered between Natasha and Henry like a persistent spider’s web. “But what do we do now? What’s our next step?”
“What do you mean?” asked Henry.
“To take down the Raptors,” I clarified. “I mean, you have a plan, right?”
At the window, Natasha bristled but remained firmly planted by the sink, unwilling to join the conversation.
“Nicole,” said Henry gently. “I didn’t evacuate you from the Waverly campus so that we could rendezvous and formulate some harebrained scheme to eliminate the Raptors. I did it so that you would be safe, once and for all.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re done,” stated Henry, his fingers cutting across the counter in a movement that mirrored his tone of finality. “No Waverly. No Black Raptor Society. Nothing. Your assignment now is to wait this thing out. Stay hidden. Stay safe. I’ll report back to the Bureau and take care of everything else.”
“Forgive me if this comes off as a little rude, Henry, but I don’t know you,” I reminded him. I pointed to Natasha. “Or her, for that matter. Blood doesn’t make you family. I appreciate the rescue and the safe house, but it’s not enough. I still have friends who are at the mercy of the Raptors, and even if I didn’t, there’s no way I would just let Catherine Flynn continue on her quest for world domination unhindered. Now, Natasha, where are the tapes?”
For the first time since I had returned to the kitchen, Natasha redirected her attention away from the front yard, her eyes wide as she watched, not me, but Henry.
“What tapes?” he demanded.
I rolled my eyes, officially fed up with the way all of our conversations were reminiscent of a terrible rendition of an Abbott and Costello sketch. “The tapes,” I said, ignoring the look on Natasha’s face that pleaded with me to shut up, “of Catherine Flynn’s murders while she was still attending Waverly. She’s been after them for years.”
“And you have them?” Henry asked of Natasha.
“Well, Flynn certainly doesn’t,” I said before Natasha could answer. “Natasha set up a fake scavenger hunt to throw Flynn off the tracks. Where are the real ones?”
Natasha stared at both of us, her face a mask of resolute calm.
“Well?” prompted Henry.
“I don’t have them.”
“Then where are they?” I asked.
“Gone.”
My frustration had begun to overflow again, but the uneasy feeling that burned in the pit of my stomach told me that frustration was the least of my worries. “What do you mean they’re gone?”
“I destroyed them. Years ago.”
“Why?”
Before Natasha could answer, the front door slammed, startling all three of us. Through the window above the sink, we watched Wes—dressed in a pair of Henry’s jeans, a borrowed flannel shirt, and his own police jacket—sprint out to the red pickup truck and climb into the driver’s seat.
“What the hell—?” I pushed by Henry and ran out to the front porch, but it was too late. Wes threw the truck into gear and peeled out, the muddy tires kicking up an arc of dirt as he executed a rough U-turn and took off down the driveway. I turned to Henry who, along with Natasha, lingered in the doorway. “Do you have another car? Can we follow him?”
“There’s a Triumph in the shed,” he said with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders. He wrapped an arm around Natasha. To my surprise, she leaned into him. Even though they had kept so much from each other, they were still a team.
“I can’t ride a motorcycle!”
“Out of luck then, kiddo,” he said gruffly, watching the red truck turn on to the dirt road.
“But he’s still injured!” I protested. I shielded my eyes from the glare of the sun, following the path of the truck as Wes drove back toward the center of town. “How could he be so stupid? Where is he even going?”
“Looks like he’s on a mission,” replied Henry. “Nothing much you can do but wait for him to get back.”
The feeling in the pit of my stomach intensified. I had no reason to doubt Wes, but with all the insanity that he had to put up with because of my last name, it was any wonder he hadn’t left me yet. “What makes you think he’s coming back?”
Henry chuckled. “Because I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
Though Lauren had freed herself of the zip tie, she felt immobilized. The expansive meeting room was more oppressive than the tiny cell that Lauren had been waiting in for hours. Innumerable pairs of eyes stared at her, rooting her to the high-backed chair, as the Raptors awaited her reaction.
Lauren consulted her aunt’s expression. A single tear had carved a pale path through the layer of bronzer on Catherine Flynn’s face. For a woman who often exhibited no emotion, Flynn’s stoic display of grief was convincing, but Lauren, unlike the other Raptors, was highly practiced in seeing through Flynn’s facades.
“You’re lying,” she said through clenched teeth.
“I can assure you, Lauren, that I would not lie about my own brother’s death,” said Flynn, her voice trembling.
“You could win a damn Oscar, Aunt Catherine,” whispered Lauren.
Flynn cleared her throat. “Could everyone leave us, please? I’d like to have a word alone with my niece. Hastings and Dashwood? The two of you may stay.”
As the Raptors began to clear the room, a tremor began in Lauren’s hands. She hid them beneath the table, keeping her chin tucked so that the Raptors shuffling by wouldn’t see the tears on her eyelashes. Some
