Page 84 of Natural-Born Cullers

Gray stopped by the table and lifted Simon’s look up with a touch under his jaw. “You okay?” He didn’t look it. Pupils were still wide and dilated. The fresh bitemarks to his throat stole his look more.

“He got out.”

Gray nodded, although it had been a statement, not a question from Simon. “You cut the comms to… sleep with each other?”

“For us to talk to start with.” Simon’s look met his, but there was no apology there. Gray didn’t want to see any, not this time. He knew Light, and Gray wouldn’t make the mistake of misjudging his actions when it came to touching Simon. Not again. He’d have only needed the coffee. Light hadn’t needed to sleep with him.

But he had. Consent was there. And from Simon’s look, it hurt and confused more because there’d been no foul play meant over them touching on Light’s part. Just with the coffee.

Gray lifted his look a little more. “I asked ifyou’reokay.”

Simon pulled away. “I want to know how the fuck he managed to take us all out.” He flicked a look back up to Gray. “He hit internal: both Ray and you lot at the same time?”

He still seemed fuzzy on some of the detail, and Gray nodded. “He’d need to hit both sides of the fence to get out. You also had the key to his ankle tag.” That lay discarded on the table as he crouched by Simon. “What can you remember? Why bolt tonight of all nights?”

Simon shrugged, and a lot of hurt was there. “Maybe he just needed the time since finding out about the deal to pull the chemicals together? He is back with Baseman in the labs. He… he couldn’t let it go.”

Gray shook his head. “It would have taken him a hell of a lot longer than that to get the composition mixed for the carfentanyl and halothane. Baseman would have noticed.” Gray couldn’t see it. Something like that would have taken months to pull together.

And that hit Gray in the gut more.

Yeah, Light had wanted him to take the cullers out, had given him the time to, but it was there, how he’d never really trusted him fully enough to do it. And he’d been right. So all that was left in the end was to run and… react.

“Doesn’t matter,” muttered Simon. “He said we’d both failed tonight.”

Gray frowned. “Over what? Wh—?”

Simon looked sharply at Gray. “Fuck. No. We were…goingto fail.” Hands went to his head. “Future tense. He meant—”

Gray was suddenly forced to stand and back off as Simon shifted and looked under the table, then around the kitchen.

“No, no-no-no,” said Simon.

“Easy.” That came off Raif as he stepped back into the kitchen. “What are you looking for?”

“He didn’t know.” Simon pushed away and headed over for his bedroom, then Light’s. “My fucking laptop.” He came back over to the kitchen, panic tearing through his eyes. “We mentionednothingin front of him.”

“About what?” Raif dipped his head a little, coming down to Simon’s height as if to scare him enough to keep him still.

Watching Simon’s look for a moment, Gray eased away and headed into Light’s bedroom. He looked around for a moment, then—

“Christ… Light.” He went back over to Raif but kept his look on Simon. “His guitar’s missing.”

It hit in that moment.

“He knows about Blood Eagle.” Gray gave a hard sigh. “And if he knows about him, he’ll know Blood Eagle’s after the Controller of the Red Rooms, a potential ex-culler. Or he’ll work that out from the bloody laptop. Please to God tell me you weren’t done on finding their addresses and he’s taken it for that?”

“He wouldn’t need them.” said Simon quietly. “You gave me a copy of culler files to run checks on memetic hazard usage.”

Gray shook his head. “I didn’t give you addresses, just profiles. But if he gets his hands on an ex-culler, he’ll have access to intel on training facilities and—”

“It shouldn’t matter,” snapped Simon. “He can take it, but there’s no way he’d bypass my security. He’s never been around me when I’ve accessed it. I don’t use biometrics like fingerprints or iris scans. I don’t even use randomised locking systems because they can be exploited on a laptop. Codes are in my head and rotated, so at his skill level with laptops, unless he’s bloody telepathic, there’s no way he can access it.”

“He’s taken it for a reason,” said Gray, losing his patience. “If there’s a way in, he’ll find it, but there’s a chance he won’t know what the culler files are. I removed all keywords from those files before I handed them over. But he’s already fucked us all over in ways he shouldn’t have been able to. I want to know how.”

“He won’t have gotten far.” Simon tugged out his phone. “But he’s not thinking one hundred percent straight either. There’s GPS tracking installed on my laptop. He wouldn’t have knocked us out if he wanted us to follow him this time around. That means he doesn’t know it can be tracked.”

Yeah, Simon wouldn’t risk losing his laptop easily. Gray pulled up the personal information on his two cullers as Simon set to work.

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