No sooner had she gone, than Carys set down her half-eaten breakfast and headed for the command center.
She didn’t have to guess where everyone was because a low rumble of voices carried out from the war room at the far end of the corridor. Carys slowed her pace to a stroll as she approached the interior windows and glass-paneled door.
Her father saw her immediately. She waited for his questioning look or even a scowl, but instead, his handsome face eased into surprise. His blue eyes bright under the crown of his trimmed blond hair, he motioned for her to come inside.
She opened the door and stepped into the room.
“Carys,” he said. “Is anything wrong?”
“No, nothing’s wrong. I just . . .” She felt awkward suddenly, but would have felt even more so if she gave in to the urge to turn around and leave now that everyone was staring at her.
Seated around the long conference table with him were her mother and the Boston team of warriors: Nathan and Rafe, Elijah and Jax. Her brother, Aric, was there too. Mathias and Nova sat together across from her parents. Jordana was there too, seated beside Nathan.
And on the video wall opposite the table was Lucan and Gideon.
Her father stood up. “Come in. We were just talking about you.”
On the huge monitor, Lucan’s stern mouth curved into a smile. “Excellent work, tracking down that information on Crowe’s associate, Carys.”
Heads nodded in agreement, both in D.C. and around the conference table in front of her.
Even Aric seemed pleased and impressed. Despite their personal cold war of the past week or so, his green eyes were warm on her. As she stepped farther inside, he pulled out the empty chair beside him.
Carys sat down. It was the first time she’d seen the war room from such an angle—at the table as one of them. Part of the group. It felt surprisingly comfortable.
It felt pretty damn good.
“Gideon’s been putting Hayden Ivers under the microscope since you gave us his name last night,” her father informed her from his seat at the head of the conference table.
“That’s right,” Gideon said on the video screen. “Ivers is human. Runs a private law practice in Dublin, but for more than a couple of decades, he’s only handled confidential clients. Two, to be exact. Anyone care to guess who the second one is?”
“Riordan?” Carys’s father practically spat the name. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Mathias Rowan stroked Nova’s hand as a murmur of outrage traveled the table. “Do you think Ivers could be a member of Opus too?”
“If he is, he’s covered his tracks well,” Lucan said. “Gideon’s hacked into his computers and found a whole lot of nothing.”
“I scoured Ivers’s computers and email accounts,” Gideon added. “I can’t find anything to implicate him in Opus or anything even remotely suspect.”
Carys frowned, finding it hard to hide her disappointment. “What about Crowe’s trust?”
“I could only find a handful of references to the trust document—all taking place after Crowe’s death. But no trace of the document itself. I couldn’t find digital files of any kind pertaining to Crowe or the trust or any other aspect of Ivers’s relationship to Crowe.”
Nathan glanced at Carys and the others at the table. “Ivers knew to leave no trail, even after Crowe’s death.”
Chase grunted. “Given Crowe’s true identity, he obviously warned all of his business associates to be meticulously cautious with his affairs.”
Aric smirked. “Too bad no one warned Crowe to be cautious with his head around helicopter blades.”
Jax, Eli and Rafe all chuckled with him at the reference to the Atlantean’s demise the night of his attempted attack on the GNC peace summit.
Carys looked up at the D.C. group on screen. “There has to be some record in Ivers’s possession. Printed documents, if nothing else.”
Across the table from her, Mathias nodded. “My team in London is assembling at nightfall to pay a visit to Ivers’s residence in Dublin. If he doesn’t prove cooperative, we’ll bring him in for a thorough questioning.”
Lucan flashed the tips of his fangs. “If the human doesn’t want to talk, I’ll be there to persuade him personally.”
“What if he isn’t part of the organization?” Carys blurted. “What if the trail to Crowe’s Opus colleagues goes cold again with Ivers?”
“Then we keep looking,” her father said.
Lucan nodded. “Right now, we’re farther ahead than we were yesterday. We have you to thank for that, Carys.”
“I just followed a hunch,” she murmured, but the validation felt like warm sunshine on her face.
“Keep following your hunches,” Lucan said. “We need them. We need everyone following every lead and working together if we want to flush Opus’s members out of the bushes and take them down. That goes double for our bigger adversary.”
Lucan’s gaze swung to Jordana now. “Have you been able to contact the Atlantean?”
Jordana’s white-gold hair flowed over her shoulders as she shook her head. “I wish it were that easy. When my father, Cass, summoned Zael to find me, he apparently was able to reach him through the power of his mark. This mark.”
She held up her hand now, and the center of her palm began to glow. A symbol emerged, illuminating in the shape of a teardrop and crescent moon. A Breedmate mark, the symbol that had, in fact, originated with the Atlanteans.