Chapter 65
I fucked up, baby. I really fucked up.
—Message from Trey Gunther to Heenali Roy
KAIA’S BRAIN STUTTERED as it tried to absorb the unexpected new input. “When was this taken?” she asked before Bowen could answer.
“Less than a minute ago,” he said grimly, then returned to his call for a short moment. “Lil, send me the location.”
Malachai stirred as Bowen hung up. “I think you’d better explain.”
“We know this man as Trey Gunther.” Bowen’s words made no sense. “He was deeply involved with one of my lieutenants for months.” Her mate’s hand tightened around hers. “She’s the one we suspect of directing Fleet ships your way—and she’s currently AWOL, searching for Trey.” His voice had turned ice-cold during the briefing, the glance he shared with Malachai filled with something Kaia didn’t want to see.
“No,” she said. “No.” There was no way Hugo would’ve sold them all a lie.
Bowen caught her gaze. “I don’t know what’s going on, Siren, and I’m not going to judge your friend before I meet him—but we find out the truth today.” His phone pinged.
One glance and he was moving, tugging her along with him while Malachai prowled at their backs. “His hotel is within walking distance.” Shoving through the door, he began to head down the stairs. “He had to know we’d spot him once he entered Venice. It’s almost as if he came here on purpose.”
Kaia, her heart pounding a staccato beat, could only think of one thing. “Hugo’s alive.” Her other half dived in a dance of joy. “He’s alive.”
Bowen led her out a door and onto the snowy cobblestones of Venice. She’d never before visited this city full of water that many of her clanmates loved, and for a moment on the roof, she’d wondered . . . but now, she barely glimpsed anything of what they passed, the sun glittering off the snow to shatter brightness against her irises.
Hugo was alive.
But there was a dark thread in the joy that she couldn’t ignore. If Hugo had escaped his captors, why hadn’t he let anyone know? And why did Bowen say his name was Trey? Surely that had to be a mistake.
Her breath coming in rough pants, she barely managed to keep up with her mate as he took them through the streets and alleys of Venice. Water and snow sparkled around her. She’d read that Venetian canals had been filthy once upon a time, but that had been more than a hundred years earlier. The residents of the city had funded a massive system that meant you could swim in it without coming to harm.
And why was she thinking about that when Hugo was alive!
Bowen came to a sudden stop, his hand locked with hers. His breath puffed the air, but he wasn’t out of breath any more than Malachai. As for Kaia, she wasn’t afraid, her fear subsumed by the chaos that twisted black tendrils through her mind.
“My man is in that building.” He pointed three buildings down on the right. “Trey—Hugo—is in the small hotel directly opposite.”
“I want to see him,” Kaia said. “Hugo never lies to me.” Yet, if he’d been living a secret life as Trey, he’d told her many lies.
“You’re both sure it’s the same man?” Bowen asked.
Kaia nodded, while Malachai rumbled a flat “Yes.”
“Did he disappear for days at a time from Ryūjin?”
“Yes, but that’s just Hugo,” Kaia pointed out. “He liked to swim to visit faraway clanmates. Then he’d work a chunk and disappear again.” It was no more odd a pattern than any other for a water changeling.
“Trey told us he was a salesman.” Bowen’s eyes swept the alley. “It made sense he’d be in Venice for a few days, then on the road for a couple of weeks.”
Her stomach twisted, her face hot. “I need to speak to him. I can’t believe it otherwise.”
“I know.” Her mate brushed his hand over her hair. “You’d never betray a friend.”
Swallowing hard because he knew her, understood her, she tried to break their handclasp—but Bowen wouldn’t allow it.
“I want to speak to him alone.”
“It’s too late,” Bowen murmured, his eyes on a petite dark-eyed and dark-haired woman who’d just run into the building. “Heenali’s here. No time for stealth.” He moved rapidly toward the door of the hotel, his phone to his ear. “Cassius, can you see through to the room?”
Whatever the answer was, Bowen slipped away the phone and they entered the hotel by the front door. The man on duty at the small desk looked at them with wide eyes. “Third floor,” he whispered. “Room 308.”
Realizing the hotelier must’ve been the original informant, Kaia followed Bowen up the stairs, Malachai at their backs. The door to room 308 was wide open . . . and Kaia heard the sound of a desperate “No!” echoing down the hallway before they reached it.
All three of them slammed into the room—and Kaia lost every whisper of breath in her body.
Hugo was lying on the crisply made bed as if he’d come into the room and decided to have a short rest. But his eyes were open and he was smiling up at the woman who held his head in her lap. Blood trickled from the corners of his eyes. “. . . fucked up.” Husky words.
“Hugo.” Kaia ran to the bed, and this time Bowen let her go.
The petite woman Bowen had called Heenali gave her a savage look before her attention flicked to the door and to the men who stood there. “Bo,” she said, her voice as harsh, “we need medics.”
“I’ve already sent the alert.”
Hugo’s reddened eyes turned to Kaia, the smile in them brilliant. “Kaia.” He gripped at her hand. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you don’t get to be sorry.” Kaia held on tight. “You stay alive and then we’ll figure it out.” She could smell a chemical trace around him. “What did you take?”
He coughed and blood flecked the air. “Didn’t. Was given.” He touched a small prick on the side of his neck. “Didn’t even notice. Don’t know when.”
Heenali brushed his hair back from his face. “Just breathe,” she ordered. “You breathe, Trey.”
“Hugo.” He looked up into the other woman’s eyes, a plea in his. “Don’t hate me. I love you. Came back for you.”
“Hugo.” No hesitation, no anger. “I could never hate you. I love you, you idiot.”
Hugo’s lips trembled. “Was so stupid, lover. Poker debts. Bad. Said they’d forgive if I—” His body racked by a worse spate of coughing. “If I convinced you to move a few ships off-route, made that dossier, spread rumors about Bowen Knight.”
Even as Kaia struggled to accept what Hugo had done, she was listening desperately for the paramedics. When Bowen came to place a hand on her shoulder, she looked up at him. “Where are they?”
“Close,” he said, a darkness in his gaze that told her he didn’t think it would matter.
But Kaia couldn’t believe that, couldn’t imagine her best friend gone from this world. He was foolish and feckless and careless, but he laughed with all his heart and he was meant to be the crazy friend who’d spoil her children and teach them mad pranks.
“I thought you were smuggling,” Heenali said as Malachai came to stand in Hugo’s line of sight. “I didn’t care about a little smuggling if it made you happy.”
Hugo’s eyes were losing focus, but he found Malachai. “I didn’t know,” he said desperately. “Until they sent me that picture of two of our own the night before I left, along with the reports of the ship movements and how they linked up to our vanished, I didn’t know they were the ones taking our people. Didn’t know what was true in the dossier and what wasn’t.”
Kaia’s heart grew cold; his words were so close to what George had said. How many of her clanmates had been taken in, made to play a small role in a much larger and deadlier game?
But Hugo wasn’t done. “Knew you’d figure it out once Kaia gave it to you.”
“You shouldn’t talk so much,” she said. “Save your strength.”
Heenali nodded. “Yes, be quiet.”
But Hugo’s eyes were fixated on Malachai. “Tell Miane I didn’t know.” Tears in his voice. “Please, Mal.”
Malachai shifted to touch his hand to Hugo’s brow, giving the other man the comfort of clan. “I will. I give you my word.”
An exhale before Hugo said, “I tried to fix it. I tried to fix my mistake.”
“What did you do?” Malachai’s deep voice.
“Hacked everything.” His eyelids fluttered. “Ran and hacked. Inserted Trojans earlier. Hated being blackmailed. Hacked them. They found me, but I found him fir—” His words trailed off into nothing.
“HUGO!” The cry came from Kaia and Heenali at the same time, two women who loved this man in different ways. Bowen had been ready to dislike the changeling male for the rumors he’d spread about Bo and for having a place in Kaia’s heart, but all he felt at that moment was pity and sorrow. Hugo could’ve been a younger brother who’d lost his way, he was so oddly innocent in his stark acceptance of his mistake.
Sirens sounded close by, but nothing could save Hugo. Whatever poison had been shot into him, it was lethal—and it had been done stealthily enough that Cassius hadn’t noticed—or it was slow-acting and Hugo had carried it with him into Venice.
Hugo struggled up into consciousness again, his unfocused gaze somehow locking with Heenali’s. “I found him. Tell Miane I found him.”
“Who?” Malachai demanded. “Who did you find?”
“Sold out our people.” Slurred words. “My friend. Your friend.” This time, the coughing was so violent it shook his entire body.
“Who, Hugo?” Malachai demanded.
“Stop it!” Pulling out a weapon, Heenali pointed it at the BlackSea security chief. “Let him rest!”
Bo put his hand on Heenali’s wrist, gently pushed down the weapon. “He needs to do this,” he told his knight. “He needs to go out knowing he put things right.”
A tear rolled out from Hugo’s left eye. “Love you, Heena.”
“Love you more, Hugo.” Dropping the weapon, she crawled to lie in the curve of his arm, her own arm over his waist.
Somehow managing to wrap both arms around her, Hugo said, “KJ,” on a rattling exhale that could have only one end. “Found KJ.”