Deception

Chapter Nineteen RACHEL

“Rachel, wake up!”

My eyes snap open, and I reach for my knife even as I recognize Quinn’s voice. The dregs of another blood-filled dream cling to me as I roll over and realize Logan isn’t beside me.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, pushing myself off my bedroll and reaching for my cloak. “Where’s Logan?”

“He’s at the east edge of camp. Someone murdered the guards.” His expression is stoic, but I’m learning to listen for the things he refuses to show, and I hear the horror in his words.

I stare at him for a second, and then I move. “What about the people within the camp? Are we surrounded? Is it Carrington?”

“Everyone else seems to be fine. No one’s in the Wasteland close to camp. And I don’t know if it’s Carrington,” he says as he follows me out of my tent. “Would the Commander quietly kill the guards and then pull back?”

I sidestep a bundle of supplies. “No. He’d attack with every soldier at his disposal.” The wind tugs at my hair, and I yank the strands out of my face. “Highwaymen wouldn’t do this either. They’d kill the guards, loot the camp, take some female prisoners, and then run into the Wasteland again. Are we sure no one—”

“No one is missing. No shelters look disturbed. Thom and I looked inside each of them.”

I shake my head and lengthen my stride, my knife held steady in my hands. Let whoever killed our guards come for me next. I’ll be ready.

We reach the east edge of camp a moment later. The metallic sweetness of drying blood blankets the air and creeps across my tongue. For one terrible moment, my nightmares blend with my waking life until I can barely tell the difference. I cup my hands around my mouth and nose before the smell makes me gag. Or worse, scream.

Logan has enough to worry about without adding me to his list.

He looks up as I approach. A single torch, staked to the ground beside the bodies, burns brightly, washing Logan’s face in orange and gold. His lips are tight, his eyes hollowed out. I reach for him as he stands.

He leans into me as I wrap my arm around him.

“Someone murdered the boys I’d asked to stand guard.” His voice is weary. “Just walked right up to them and slit their throats.” He chokes on the last word and scrubs a hand over his eyes.

“I know.” My words are gentle, at odds with the pounding of my heart. “It must be an enemy camped in the Wasteland. Someone . . .” Who? Who would benefit from killing our guards and leaving the rest of us alone?

“The Wasteland is empty,” he says, and Quinn nods.

“How do you know?” I make the mistake of looking down and seeing a bloody smile carved into each boy’s neck. My knees shake, and a strange buzzing fills my ears as I remember Oliver’s blood pouring over my hands while I sat in silent impotence.

“Rachel?” Logan asks, pulling me away from the bodies. “Are you okay?”

It’s just blood. Not Oliver. Not someone I had the chance to save. I swallow hard and force myself to look Logan in the eye. “I’m fine. Now, how do you know someone isn’t surrounding the camp while we stand here talking?”

“Because Quinn and I walked around the entire perimeter. We went fifty yards into the Wasteland. It’s empty.”

I pull away from him. “You came to the camp to wake Quinn but didn’t wake me too?”

“Quinn was already up. I met him while I was walking the southern section of camp. I’d already awakened Frankie and Thom so they could gather the second-shift guards and get into position.”

“Wait. You knew a killer was out there, and you decided to go find them by yourself?” I stare at him.

“Would you rather have me take the few guards we have around the camp and leave our people totally unprotected?”

I snap my mouth shut before I say yes. Yes, I’d rather have Logan protected and alive than everyone else in our camp. It’s selfish of me, I know that. But I’ve lost everyone else in my family. I can’t stand the thought of losing him, too.

Instead, I say, “Next time you want to lecture me about putting myself in danger without having an acceptable exit strategy, I want you to remember this.”

A muscle along his jaw flexes. “It’s not the same.”

Shaking my head, I glance at the sky. At the faint violet rim that is slowly spreading along the eastern horizon. “It’s almost dawn. These are first-shift guards. This happened several hours ago. Why didn’t you get me?”

“You needed sleep,” Quinn says.

I turn on him, and the fear that courses through me for Logan snaps out at Quinn instead.

“And what were you doing in the southern section of camp? That’s a long way from your shelter.”

“I was having trouble sleeping,” Quinn says, and the quiet hurt in his voice makes me feel small inside. He crouches beside Donny’s body, his dark eyes guarded. “I wander the Wasteland when I can’t sleep. It helps to clear my head. You can check with Willow if you don’t believe me.”

“Why wouldn’t I believe you?” I ask, though I already know his answer. Didn’t I just question him like I thought he might have something to hide?

“Because someone killed these boys, and everyone else was sleeping except for me and Logan.”

“Not everyone,” Logan says, and the cold fury in his voice sends a shiver down my spine.

Placing his hand on Donny’s head, Quinn tilts the boy’s chin toward the sky and examines his neck in the flickering light of the torch.

I choke and look away.

“The killer used a short blade, easily hidden,” he says. “The deepest part of the cut is on the left side of the neck where he first stabbed his victim. The wound then decreases in depth as the knife slides across the throat.” He considers the other bodies for a moment. “Looks like the work of the same man on each boy.”

Sweat beads my upper lip and covers my palms. I want to throw up. I need to throw up. I tilt my head back and drag in a shaky breath, trying not to think of bloody knives sliding across tender throats.

Logan presses a hand to the small of my back.

“Most people are right-handed,” Logan says. “If a right-handed man attacked someone from the front, he’d swing his knife left to right for maximum speed and velocity. The wound would start on the right side of the victim’s neck.”

“So our killer might be left-handed.” Quinn rises.

“Or he killed them from behind to avoid blood spatter on his clothing.”

“He punctured the artery on the left and made a long clean slice to the artery on the right. That isn’t easy. He knew exactly where to strike and how much pressure to exert so he wouldn’t get caught up in the trachea, the ligaments, or the esophagus. He’s done this before,” Quinn says.

“Wouldn’t it be hard to sneak up on them since they were all facing the Wasteland? Especially if he needed to get behind them before killing them?” I ask.

“I walked right up to Donny before he saw me,” Logan says.

“But all eight of them?”

“Maybe he didn’t have to sneak.” Logan is wearing his I’m-three-facts-short-of-figuring-out-the-entire-thing face. “Maybe he just walked right up to them.”

“And no one ran? No one screamed for help to alert the others?” I ask as Quinn moves toward us, his eyes on the pale pink sky.

Logan’s voice is flat. “They wouldn’t scream for help if they didn’t realize he was an enemy.”

“Someone we know?” Quinn asks, wiping the tips of his fingers on his pants. “No offense, but the list of potential professional killers born and raised in Baalboden begins and ends with the two of you. We’re dealing with an expert here.”

I don’t want to know what was on his fingers. I refuse to look at the faint dark stains marring his pant leg. Instead, I step to the side and stare at the huge white rock rising just behind the camp while I gulp in deep breaths of damp morning air.

“Still, we have to look at every possibility. Are we absolutely sure every survivor in our camp was a citizen of Baalboden before the fires?” Logan asks, and a chill sinks into me. “When we blew up the gate and escaped the burning city, it was chaos. People running into the Wasteland, convinced the Cursed One could find them anywhere. People still staggering out of the city long after we thought everyone inside must be dead. How hard would it have been for someone to pretend to be one of us?”

“But why would anyone want to?” I ask.

Logan makes a rough sound. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m just looking at all of the possibilities and seeing which one, no matter how unimaginable, lines up with the facts.”

“Wouldn’t you recognize a stranger in the camp?” Quinn asks.

“No,” I say. “Baalboden was a city-state of thousands. We have only one hundred and—” I can’t complete the number without subtracting the boys lined up on the ground beside us, and I don’t know how to calculate their loss and still sound strong enough to face this. “We have a small group. Many of us had never met until the fires.”

“Well, that just made this more difficult,” Quinn says. “What if it isn’t someone in the camp?”

“Then we’re back to guessing who could possibly have something to gain by killing our first-shift guards and leaving the rest of us alone,” Logan says.

My eyes stray to Donny’s face. His cowlick dances in the morning breeze, and I suddenly find it impossible to swallow. I tear my gaze from him and look at the rock instead. Something mars its pale surface. I take two steps forward and strain to see as the sun slowly spills across the horizon behind me.

“Rachel and I discussed it briefly on our way here.” Quinn’s voice is calm, but I catch an undercurrent of darkness beneath it. He isn’t as unaffected by these deaths as he’d like us to believe. “She said this isn’t the Commander’s style, and we both know highwaymen would have pillaged the camp.”

I take one more step toward the rock as the darkness dissolves into the rosy gold light of dawn, and horror washes over me.

“Agreed. So either we have an unknown enemy lurking in the Wasteland, we have a stranger masquerading as a Baalboden survivor, or it truly was one of us.” Logan’s voice shakes with anger. “If it’s one of us, these boys welcomed their killer because they thought he was a friend. No wonder he’d be worried about blood stains. Along with the wristmarks, we’re about to personally check every inch of clothing in this camp.”

“Logan.” I push his name past lips that feel cold and stiff. “Look.”

Logan and Quinn turn to face the rock, and we all stare at the message painted across the stone in huge, bloody letters.

Your debt is still unpaid. Who will be the next to atone for your crimes?