Page 19 of Heir of Ashes

“On what?”

“Many things.”

“Like?”

“Like what he is, how strong, how many like him they’ve had a chance to experiment on before, his cooperation, the environment, the scientists present, among other factors.”

Logan was thoughtful for a moment, eyeing me with sympathy. “What did they do to you?” he asked in a gentle tone.

I swallowed and glanced down at the table. I wished I was the one facing the door. I didn’t want to talk about my past, but his simple question stirred a desire to share some of the misery and horrors I’d been through. Michelle had been a good friend, but I couldn’t tell her anything without sounding deranged. The journals I’d started back in my early days in the PSS had brought some relief, but after the third had been confiscated, I stopped bothering.

Now Logan was offering me a chance to talk to someone who might understand what I went through. But as much as I longed to do that, he was just not the right person—at least not yet. Maybe he was offering friendship, and it was tempting, but I didn’t know him well enough to start talking about my deepest secrets, my deepest fears.

“It’s in the past now. It doesn’t matter anymore,” I said, but the long silence told him otherwise.

“Suppose my friend is really strong, to a degree they have never seen before, and he’s very uncooperative. What would they do to him?”

“It’s hard to speculate. I haven’t actually seen their subjects firsthand, but I know for sure they’ve experimentedon probably every preternatural out there. I don’t really think there’s anything they haven’t encountered and thoroughly researched before.” I knew this for a fact because I’d read about the preternatural types in Dr. Maxwell’s journal. The only thing that I knew for certain was rare was myself, and even I had no idea what kind I classified as. I was sure I was no were, vampire, zombie, ghoul, witch, or any other thing that could shape-shift. Unless being able to shift hands into talons meant I was some shifter with extreme limitations. But a shifter who couldn’t shift was weak and according to the PSS, I was far from that. Unfortunately, Dr. Maxwell’s journal didn’t mention anything about me. That was a different journal altogether, one I thought I’d grabbed when we left that day from the PSS for my last driving lesson. Ruling out all of the above left me with few options, some of which I had tried to research on the internet among creatures of myths, but nothing I came upon seemed right.

“What is he?” I asked, not because I wasn’t curious, which I certainly was, but to gauge whether he was something special in the eyes of the PSS.

It took Logan a while to answer, and when he did, I thought he was changing the topic. “The Society described you as a dangerous specimen to be treated with caution and aggression and if faced with no other choice, to be terminated on the spot to ensure the threat is nullified. I believe they would consider my friend just as dangerous, if not more.”

His words took me aback. I replayed them in my head, but their meaning didn’t change. My eyes narrowed. “You speak from experience. As if they’ve approached you with this information.”

“I went there to demand my friend’s release. They offered me your contract instead. I declined.”

I considered him for a moment. They had tried to hire him to come after me. If he was helping me now, it meant he had refused. Maybe they were holding his friend as leverage, pressuring him to take the job. Or maybe he’d accepted it, invented a story about his friend, and now was trying to lure me into a trap: get me to accompany him on a raid to the place where he was supposed to deliver me. I gave him a level look as the possibility that I had been fooled rolled over me like ice and fire, burning me from the inside, coldly numbing my emotions to act and kill if need be. The shock of what I was capable of doing came and went without a hint showing through.

“You declined?” I prompted.

He shrugged. “Yes.”

“You’re a hired assassin.”

Logan’s lips twitched, but this time it wasn’t in humor so much as displeasure. “I’ve been called many things, and ‘hired assassin’ isn’t one that I appreciate.”

“That doesn’t change what you are. A horse is a horse, no matter what you call it.”

His eyes chilled a few degrees. “Some might call me assassin, but I don’t go around agreeing to any job offered without consideration. You can assume whatever you like about me, but I never lose sight of my moral compass.” He smiled at me then, but the smile did not reach his gray eyes. “If I ever sign a contract, sugar, I go all the way through with it.” He gave me a meaningful glance, as if the statement meant something to me, then he added, “Which is something we can’t say about you, can we now?”

“Oh? And how did you deduce that about my character?”

“Isn’t that why the Society is after you? Because you took the money, stole from their archives, and skipped out on your contract? Didn’t you ‘behave’ so that when they let their guard down, you could take what you wanted and run away?”

I pursed my lips and considered him. “That’s the story they tell you people?” I snorted. “All of you hired mercs are just fooled by a bunch of scientists to do their dirty work, and you think you’re so tough and smart?”

I could see I had insulted him. Well, he’d just have to deal with it. “Why should I even believe you? What if this whole thing about your friend being in the hands of the PSS is just a ruse to get me to go with you? Say like, you heard about what happened to the last mercenaries that came after me and decided to change tactics? Make everything up and just have me follow you on my own?”

Logan’s face grew darker with every word, but his eyes remained cold. “Woman, I don’t care what you think about me, if you call me an assassin, a bloody mercenary, or a freaking monster.” He leaned forward, his eyes practically frosting me over, his voice low. “When I take a job, I go about it straight. I can shoot you looking right into your eyes or wait for you around a bend and jump you from behind. But if I take a job, I don’t fool around with it.” He leaned back in his chair, his cold gaze raking over me. I didn’t flinch. “If I was hired to come after you, believe me, Eliza Daniels, you would have known.”

I believed him. I might be naïve, and I admit it sometimes—to myself only, of course—but I believed him, and God help me, I hoped I wouldn’t add fool to my list of flaws. I didn’t apologize though. Pride and ingrained skepticism wouldn’t let me.

“You think the PSS is keeping your friend as leverage? So you’d have no choice but to agree to come after me?”

He shrugged, his expression thawing a degree. “They denied having him, so no, not as leverage. All that matters to me right now is that they have him and I want him back.” There was a long silence before he spoke again. “If you didn’t break your contract, why are they coming after you?”

“I was kidnapped a long time ago. I escaped; they want me back.”

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