Page 71 of Broken Princess
“I’ll kill her. I’ll fucking kill her.”
“Dad, stop. We need to help Willow before we do anything to Mom. We might’ve been too late to help Chloe, but we can still do this.”
He slumped down and let out a long, exhausted sigh. “We’re all going to prison. Forever.”
I reached over to shake one of his shoulders. “If you help me find Willow and expose all of this shit to the world, you might be able to get some sort of deal with the prosecutors. You probably won’t avoid prison, given everything you’ve done for the Order, but it’ll help.” I stopped and hesitated for a few seconds before going on. “Trust me, Dad… Chloe would want us to do this.”
He finally looked up. “What can I do?”
“Mom’s right hand man has her. Jamie Torrance.”
“Jamie Torrance?”
“Yeah. He’s on the shadow council. He’s basically Mom’s lapdog.”
“Why does he have Willow? I thought you said your mother auctioned her off.”
I quickly told him the rest of the story, along with everything Rowan and I had discovered.
“We think she’s on an island,” I said. “But there are hundreds of them up there, and we have no idea where to start looking.”
“I don’t understand what you expect me to do,” Dad said, brows furrowing. “I agree with your friend Rowan. Hire a professional to tail Torrance.”
“We will if you can’t help us,” I replied. “But I think you can, and I think it will be much faster.”
“How?”
“You know how Willow and I were both totally convinced that you were Q?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“We aren’t the only ones who thought that. Half the Order thinks it’s you. You’re the head of the high council, and you’re mega-rich and powerful. There’ve been rumors floating around for years about how you’re probably Q.”
“I know,” he said stiffly. “I don’t see how that’s relevant here, though.”
“It’s relevant because you can use it to your advantage.”
“How?”
“A few of the lower Order members are friends with Jamie Torrance. They have no idea that he’s secretly a member himself, of course, seeing as he’s on the shadow council, but I bet they know a lot about him and his life in general. That means they might have an idea of where he’d go if he wanted to hide.”
“So you want me to talk to them and try to find out?”
I nodded. “Yes. Act like Jamie has crossed the Order somehow, and you need to figure out any places he might go to hide in the future,” I said. “If the questions come from you—the guy everyone assumes is Q—they won’t hesitate to answer. They’ll probably be too scared of crossing you to ever say no.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said reluctantly. “If your mother finds out…”
I cut him off. “She won’t. Just strongly hint that you’re Q and that the conversation has to remain between you and them. They’ll be too scared of reprisal to let anyone else know the conversation even happened.”
“I suppose so.”
I leaned forward again. “Dad, I really need you to do this. I need to be able to trust you, too. Can I count on you?”
He replied in a low murmur, staring at a clock on the wall. “You said earlier that Chloe would want this.”
“She would. Before she went into the coma that night, the last thing she tried to do was help Willow. She warned her to get away from Q.”
He nodded slowly. “Okay. I’ll help you,” he said. “Just tell me who to call.”
