Page 62 of Make Them Cry

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Arrow glances up at me, expression tense. “And she trusted the wrong person.”

I push off the wall and start pacing. My whole body’s on fire.

We’ve been playing defense this whole time. Watching for threats, tracking breadcrumbs, building traps. All while River’s closestfriendsat ten feet away with a knife behind her back.

I want to break something.

“She has no idea,” I mutter.

“No,” Knight agrees. “But she needs to.”

I stop pacing. “Not yet.”

Arrow blinks. “Gage?—”

“Not yet.” My voice comes out rough. “We’re close. If we tell her now, she’ll confront Tasha, and Tasha will bolt. Or worse—Regent will ghost. And we’ll lose our shot.”

Knight’s quiet. Thinking. Calculating.

“You want to use her,” he says.

I don’t say anything.

“She’s already bait,” Arrow says bitterly. “Has been for weeks.”

“She deserves the truth,” Knight says.

“She deserves peace,” I snap back. “And we’llgetit. But we do this right. We trap them both. No holes. No leaks. We finish this so River can actually breathe again.”

Silence.

Then finally, Knight nods. “Okay. We follow the data. And we isolate Regent. Find out who he is.”

Arrow pulls up a new screen. “I’ll set up a digital mirror of Tasha’s account. Anything she opens, we see. Any messages, we intercept. If she so much as whispers ‘Psalm88,’ I’ll have a team on her door.”

I exhale hard. “Good.”

But even with all our tech and all our planning, I can’t stop thinking about River’s face when she smiled at Tasha.

The way she leaned in close. The way she laughed like it was real.

The way she said,I’m just glad things are finally going back to normal.

God.

I step outside for air before I do something reckless.

The alley behind Riverside is quiet. The wind smells like rain and copper. My hands shake as I light a cigarette I don’t really want.

Tasha.

I should’ve known.

And I let it happen.

I had River on twenty-four-hour security. I rewired her safe house, coded surveillance backups,slept on a cot in the server room—and I still missed the threat right under her nose.

I close my eyes and think about her.

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