Page 55 of Resurrection

We’re headed into the fourth hour of this stalemate. Does the CIA work the same as the police? “Lawyer.”

The petite brown woman across from me, who the other two guys have been calling Anu, sits straighter in her chair. “You want a lawyer.”

“Yeah.Mylawyer.”

“Might take a while.”

“Or you can get me FBI Kim. I’ll accept one of those two people. But if you’re going to ask me questions regarding Finn Donaghey, then I have nothing to say. I haven’t seen him in months. We aren’t exactly friends.” The fucking dam is breaking.Seal it up, Carys.

Anu exchanges a glance over my head with the other agent who has been pacing and lounging for the last few hours. He can’t decide if he’s super tense or super relaxed.

“FBI Kim?” he clarifies as though confused.

I don’t answer him. There’s nowhere else I need to be. Valeriya is dead. Finn is stuck in Russia. Jay is… well… freaking out because he’s lost me. If they want me to talk, they’ll have to bring me one of those two people. My lawyer is in Chicago. Kim should be recovering from a gunshot wound somewhere in the US, likely removed from the FBI. I may be here a while longer.

An hour later, there’s a knock on the door before it cracks open and a tall, slim, but muscular woman slips in. She’s dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt from an Irish bar, with her leather jacket obscuring the full name on her name tag. Her dark hair is in its usual ponytail, and when her brown, almost black eyes meet mine, they’re both familiar and foreign. She’s the kind of pretty that’s jarring. Her skin causes a shot of envy to slice through me—tanned but without the sun damage and smooth, not a wrinkle in sight. Of course, she is fifteen years younger.

“That was quick.” I let the words sit between us.

She was already in Ireland. Had to be. Otherwise, the CIA has invented time travel.

Kim scans the room. “I asked for the recording devices to be switched off. You never know, though.”

She searches everywhere, checking the corners, and then sweeps under the table, first with her eyes, then with her hands. Her movements are stilted. Is she still injured under her layers of clothing? Finally she slides into the seat on the other side of me and links her dusty-brown hands together before meeting my gaze.

“You wanted to see me?” she says.

An amused smile threatens. “Wanted to see you? Only if you’re rotting in hell.”

“Do you have Finn?”

“Of course not. You realize how I feel.”

Kim nods. “I do.” She unlaces her hands, and her index finger traces a gouge in the wooden surface. “I understand what it’s like to connect that way with someone. The things you’d do to protect them, the lengths you’d go to.” With a brief glance up, she gives a tiny shrug. “You’re worth so much more than someone like him could ever give you.”

“Don’t pretend to know things.” I lean across the table, rage welling up in me.

“The friendship we had was real, Carys. It killed me to report on you.”

“But you did it, didn’t you?” I grit my teeth. “And you’re not dead.”

“Look, I have two things I want to say to you before they come in here and decide this conversation was a waste of time and resources. You’re not going to give up Finn, whether or not you have him. I get that.” She stares at me for a beat. “The PLA has a contact somewhere in your organization, and they have been purchasing guns from you. I don’t think you’re in on the transactions, probably didn’t realize they were happening. I didn’t hear so much as a whisper in the months I worked for you, and the CIA seems to believe these exchanges have been happening for almost two years.”

Two years. Was that when they approached me, and I turned them down? Valeriya? Wouldn’t that be nice? She’s dead—problem solved. My father? Would he go behind my back again? He never had a moral objection to reckless, idiotic extremist groups if they could pay.

I give her a mild look, feigning disinterest while my brain kicks into overdrive. I sit in my chair, crossing my arms. “And the second?”

“Finn”—she hesitates before continuing—“and Lorcan were trafficking women and children while I worked for them. Women, like you and me. And kids… of every age.”

I raise an eyebrow. “And this should bother me because?”

“You can pretend you’re hard-hearted. That’s fine. You do that. But I’m familiar with the Carys under your cold front. Women and kids is the line you said you could never stand for anyone to cross.”

She’s right. I’m surprised she remembers. But I guess that was her job. Gain my confidence, use it against me.

“You want me to track these women and children and help them? Is that your point?”

Kim shakes her head. “No, that’s not the point. We’re cleaning up those messes. My point is—you’re harboring a man who does those kinds of things with no remorse. He let his father be killed with no remorse. He shot me and felt no remorse. He aided in the trafficking of hundreds of women and children and felt no remorse. There’s no goodness in him, Carys. Whatever decency you think you see, that man is an illusion. Smoke and mirrors. You can’t save him. There’snothingin him worth saving.”

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