Page 28 of Fighting for Scarlett

If Scarlett had passed they would have been shouting it from the rooftops.

All that anger that had been dimming these last twelve hours as he listened to and watched Scarlett insist she was innocent over and over again suddenly flared back to life.

Of course she hadn't passed.

Of course she wasn’t innocent.

She was a liar and a manipulator just like his former stepmother had been.

“She failed,” he growled, surprised at how much that seemed to hurt. Maybe there had been a part of him that needed to know the only woman to ever have made him feel anything at all was not a traitor.

Anger sparked in King’s gray-blue eyes. “Only one question. And not any to do with her guilt.”

“Then what?” he demanded, completely confused. If she had passed when asked about her guilt, what had she lied about?

“A question regarding her torture,” King replied.

There was genuine pain in Chaos’ voice and his light green eyes when he spoke. “When asked if she gave up any information while being tortured there was a slight indication that she wasn’t being completely truthful.”

What did that mean?

Had Scarlett gone there intending to sell information or not?

If she hadn't, had she given intel up under torture?

Did this mean she was guilty or innocent?

And why the hell did he care so much?

CHAPTER SEVEN

January 14th

5:13 P.M.

“You're free to go.”

Scarlett startled as the suit entered her interrogation room, this time leaving the door open behind him and uttering the words she’d been longing to hear.

Only they didn't mean as much as she’d thought they would.

Maybe because it was clear from his expression, he still thought she was guilty of making a deal with the notorious weapons trafficker to sell the Reactivator.

Rubbing tiredly at her temples, where a headache raged, Scarlett nodded and shoved to her feet. She was still dressed in Tate’s borrowed clothes with no shoes on her feet. In the hours she’d been locked in there she’d been given nothing more than a couple of bottles of water to drink. The last time she’d eaten was the sandwich that Dora had snuck in for her, and the painkillers from before they got on the helo had long since worn off.

Tired, in pain, hungry, and defeated.

Yep.

That pretty much summed it up.

Since she didn't know their names and had nothing to say to them even if she did, Scarlett merely shuffled on her ruined socks toward the door. Her body was stiff, muscles cramped from hours of just sitting, and right now, she didn't even care that the last time she’d been in her house she’d been shot and kidnapped, she just wanted to lock herself away from the rest of the world.

When her purse was shoved into her arms, she stared at it surprised. Must be more exhausted than she thought if she hadn't even considered that she would need her phone, keys, and wallet if she was going to get home.

Somehow, she made it to the lift and out onto the street. She used her Uber app to arrange a pickup and thankfully, the driver seemed too shocked by her disheveled appearance to attempt conversation.

Conversation was the last thing she wanted. Company too. While she might have needed her team and Prey family to rally around her earlier, now the sting of their betrayal ran too deep. Her team were the last people she wanted to see right now. If they thought she was capable of betraying not only them but their country, by giving an enemy an edge in war, then they had never been true friends to begin with.

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