The Insiders (The Insiders Trilogy 1)

He was saying this, asking if I was okay with it.

I nodded.

He added, “Matt is going to curse, look angry, but he’s just terrified about what almost happened to you.”

Another nod.

I didn’t want to think about that, either.

“Your father is going to bark orders, probably fight with your mother, and get irritated with Matthew. It’ll be because he has no idea how to talk to you, but he’s just as scared as Matt about what almost happened to you.”

Again with the reminder. Did he have to go there? But I nodded a third time.

Kash gentled his tone. “Torie is here for you. That’s her job. If you need me, tell her. She’ll get me. If you need space from your mom, she’ll scurry you away for a breather. She’s informed me she’ll do anything you need except perform sexual favors, unless it’s on a specific guard that she’s had her eye on. She wanted to make sure I quoted her exactly with that. You okay with all of that?”

Oh boy. I was smiling, just slightly.

He took it as a fourth nod, and his tone hardened next. “The police will need a statement from you. You passed out from the drug Quinn gave you, and they tried to question you at the hospital when you were checked over. You weren’t even lucid. The detectives weren’t happy when the lawyers pushed back, saying you needed to know what you were saying before saying anything. They’ve been impatient, and that’s saying it nicely. But in the end, they just want to make sure they have a good enough case to make Quinn do time.”

Quinn. Time.

It was now sinking in what she’d done to me. I felt a woosh inside of me, a wave crashing over my mind, and I was back there.

Rafe. Clemin. Arcane. They were coming for me.

Quinn. How she grabbed me.

I winced now, feeling it all over again.

Kash tensed, then cursed under his breath. He was gone, and I cried out. I didn’t want him to go away, but he was saying something in the hallway. Then the door was shut and he was back. The bed dipped under his weight and he pulled me back into his arms. He rolled around me, as if his entire body could cushion the nightmare ripping through my mind. It couldn’t. He couldn’t. But I was grabbing on to him, too, as if he could.

I was sobbing. Or someone was. It was probably me. I heard myself outside of myself, and I knew it was inevitable.

I was sinking once more.

FIFTY-SEVEN

Everything happened as Kash had warned me.

Chrissy fussed.

Torie was my guard dog, complete with her own drool.

Matthew couldn’t sit still. He kept going in circles around the room.

Peter was a mess. He was sniping at Matt, then bickering with Chrissy, then asking Kash questions in a serious voice. He’d stop, stare at me, and his mouth would tremble before he’d bark something at Matt and the cycle would start around again.

The detectives were nice. I’d expected gruff and impatient, but the session with them was just long. The lawyers intervened at times, but not much. Everyone wanted the same thing: to make sure Quinn paid for what she did.

Quinn. Man.

Over the next two weeks, I didn’t really let myself think of her.

The day the detectives finally got my statement, once I wasn’t a blubbering mess, I stuck to the facts. If they needed more detail, I gave it to them. They were surprised at how much I did remember, until Peter said I had his photographic memory. Their eyes got big, and I swear their ears perked up after that. That just meant more questions, though, and it was a long time later that night when they finally left.

Kash told me the next day that my father had found enough damning evidence—text messages, emails Quinn thought she’d deleted, burner phones, fake accounts, and so much more—to put the picture together. Piecing it together with what she’d said to me, it turned out that Quinn thought Peter had always been in love with my mother, even back then despite what she said to me. She thought her days were numbered if Chrissy or I came back into his life, and she was desperate enough to reach out and then hire the Arcane team.

Peter confessed that he might have exaggerated his fondness for Chrissy when he talked to Quinn about the past. He didn’t elaborate on why he did this, or if it was true presently or not, and when I asked Chrissy what she thought, I was given a pat on the arm and told that I needed rest.

That’s the answer I had gotten for most things over the last two weeks.

In that time, a therapist came to Kash’s new loft, which is where we were the first night I woke after the attack. He had moved out of his last place because the media knew his address, so this one was more secret. Even I didn’t know where we were, because I hadn’t left his place. Not once.