Page 127 of Lock Up the Darkness

“She committed suicide about three years ago,” I added. “The things Carson did to her… it’s hard to live with that. She was broken Badly. Possibly beyond all the others.”

“What if she wasn’t?” Asher posed. “What if she wasn’t broken? What if it was all an act to gain this inside track? What if she was helping Revenant and feeding him all that vital intel to shut down the sites? Her apparent suicide occurred right when he went to ground. The coincidence is too strong. Not to mention, it was death by fire. There were only dental records to identify her remains, which could’ve been falsified.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jonah breathed.

Asher went on, “He mentions a source, but it’s all coded. His codes have fucking codes. Substitution ciphers only being the start of it.”

“Did your dad pass that on to you, teach you any of it?” I asked Aurora.

She shook her head. “Absolutely not. He wanted me far away from anything to do with the dangerous nature of his work.”

“But you can crack them, right?” Jonah asked Ash. “You’re good at that shit, got a gift for it. It used to be a hobby of yours.”

Asher nodded. “If I can crack it, I can figure out not just if it’s actually Amethyst, but also how he contacted her. And I can replicate it. We can meet with her and acquire the intel for ourselves to finish what Revenant started.”

“We can end this, bring those fuckers down,” Aurora breathed.

“You really think you can crack it?” I asked him.

“Like Jonah said, it’s a gift.” His fists clenched. “Besides, this is what we’ve been waiting for, a way through to them, a way to break their hold on us, to break them. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“How long do you need?” Aurora asked.

“A few days, give or take.” Asher eyed me and Jonah. “I’ll need you to cover me. With Hexwood U and our fathers.”

“You’re sick as a dog, got it,” Jonah said.

“That won’t be enough, you’ll have to make me sick,” Asher said.

“What? No,” Aurora said. “Inject you with the flu or something? I know that’s what you mean, because you’re crazy enough to go down that road. No way.”

“We can’t risk our fathers suspecting a charade is being perpetrated. It has to be real,” Asher told her.

“I’ll take care of it,” Jonah said.

When Aurora moved to continue her protests, I took her hand. “It’s not the first time. We’re old hat at this. Trust me. Trust us.”

It was enough to get her to ease up, albeit with a grit of her teeth and harsh glares at each of us.

“Everything else needs to proceed as normal,” Asher went on. “All of you head back to classes. Killian, gear up for that big game, Jonah you need to maintain the pretense of Aurora being our plaything. Keep everything else on track while I handle this.”

He fired up a smoke and took a long drag, his swirling silver eyes shining with something I hadn’t seen from him in hell knew how long.

Hope.

He wasn’t the only one.

As twisted as this was gonna be through going the dollhouse route, the payoff outweighed everything else.

Fuck, I could almost taste it on my tongue.

This would change everything.

It would finally free us all.

27

~Aurora~

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