All In
Page 79

I wanted Nightshade behind bars. I wanted answers—but when I let myself, I wanted this more. Dean and Lia and Michael and Sloane—home is the people who love you most.
Forever and ever.
No matter—
“Guys.” Michael stood frozen at the back door. Behind him, I could see Sloane, dark circles ringing her eyes.
I knew, then, that there was news. The thudding of my heart, the roar in my ears—I knew there was news, and I was terrified to let Michael say a single word.
“They got him.”
Nightshade.
The man in the picture.
They got him.
“The woman?” I heard, as if from a distance. My voice. My question. “The little girl?”
Michael shook his head, which I took to mean that they hadn’t been with Nightshade.
The Pythia. The child.
My heart raced as I thought of the man I’d seen, the man I’d remembered.
You killed Judd’s daughter. You killed Beau. You know why that symbol was carved onto my mother’s coffin.
“What aren’t you telling us?” Lia’s voice was low. “Michael.”
I couldn’t read Michael the way he would have been able to read me, but in the second it took him to reply to Lia’s question, his expression was enough to knock the breath from my lungs.
“Nightshade stuck Briggs with some kind of needle.” Michael looked from Lia to Dean to me. “Injected him with something. They don’t know what.”
My mouth went dry and the roaring sound in my ears surged. Poison.
One last trick up Nightshade’s sleeve. Your grand finale. Your au revoir. I’d been worried that the FBI wouldn’t catch him. It hadn’t occurred to me, even for a second, to worry about what might happen once they did.
Undetectable. Incurable. Painful. I didn’t want to remember what Judd had said about Nightshade’s poison, but the words kept repeating themselves in a loop in my head.
“Cassie.” Judd appeared, his face grim. “We need to talk.”
What else was there to say?
Undetectable. Incurable. Painful.
Sloane’s lips were moving as she silently went through a list of every poison known to man. Dean had gone ashen.
“He claims there’s an antidote,” Judd said. Our guardian didn’t specify who “he” was. He didn’t have to.
Nightshade.
“And what does he want?” Dean asked hoarsely. “In exchange for that antidote?”
I knew the answer—knew it based on the way Judd had said my name, the number of times I’d seen Nightshade, the time he’d spent watching me.
My mother fought, tooth and nail. She resisted whatever it was you people wanted from her, whatever you wanted her to be.
I looked from Dean to Judd. “He wants me.”
I stood on one side of a two-way mirror and watched as guards escorted the man I’d identified as Nightshade into the room on the other side. The man’s hands were cuffed behind his body. His hair was mussed. A dark bruise was forming on one side of his face.
He didn’t look dangerous.
He didn’t look like a killer.
“He can’t see you,” Agent Sterling reminded me. She looked at me, her own eyes shadowed. “He can’t touch you. He stays on that side of the glass, and you stay here.”
Behind us, Judd placed one hand on my shoulder. You won’t put me in the same room as Scarlett’s killer, I thought. Not even to save Briggs.
I tried not to think about Briggs and instead focused on the man on the other side of the glass. He looked older than he had in my memory—younger than Judd, but significantly older than Agent Sterling.
Older than my mother would have been, if she’d lived.
“Take your time,” Nightshade said. Even though I knew he couldn’t see me, it felt like he was looking directly at me.
He has kind eyes.
My stomach twisted with unexpected nausea as he continued. “I’m here when you’re ready, Cassandra.”
Judd’s grip tightened slightly on my shoulder. You’d kill him, if you could, I thought. Judd wouldn’t have lost a single night’s sleep over snapping this man’s neck. But he didn’t make a move. Instead, he stood still, with me.
“I’m ready,” I told Agent Sterling. I wasn’t, but time was a luxury we didn’t have.
Judd met Agent Sterling’s gaze and gave a curt nod. Sterling stepped to the side of the room and hit a button, converting the two-way mirror in front of us to a clear pane.
You can see me, I thought as Nightshade’s eyes landed on mine. You see Judd. Your lips curve slightly. I kept my face as blank as I could. One last card to play. One last game.
“Cassandra.” Nightshade seemed to enjoy saying my name. “Judd. And the indomitable Agent Sterling.”
You watched us. You get off on Judd’s grief, on Sterling’s.
“You wanted to talk to me?” I said, my voice unnaturally calm. “Talk.”
I expected the man on the other side of the glass to say something about Scarlett or about my mother or about Beau. Instead, he said something in a language I didn’t recognize. I glanced at Sterling. The man opposite us repeated himself. “It’s a rare snake,” he translated after a moment. “Its venom is slower-acting than most. Find a zoo that has one, and you’ll find the antivenom. In time, I hope.” He smiled, and this time, it was chilling. “I always have had a certain fondness for your Agent Briggs.”