Page 101 of Tell Me Why
Isabella nodded.
“We all agree that this is within his skillset, do we not?” she asked.
Daryll frowned dramatically, then shrugged.
“I suppose so,” he said. He looked at Tell. “You think you can get it set up?”
Tell blinked at Isabella, who raised her eyebrows.
“Yes,” Tell said. “I just need to know where I’m sending them and to who.”
The corners of her mouth turned up.
Bingo.
Tell went backto the apartment by himself. He begged off as needing to go find a feed and get himself situated again, but the truth was that he was exhausted and needed to sit and actually think in a cool quiet by himself for a time before he attempted to do anything else.
Daryll had handed over to them a list of every player in the trade.
And their headquarters, as far as he was aware.
He didn’t know where production was happening - and that would be part of what Tell needed to get, but it was a massive step in the right direction.
Just massive.
Somehow, Isabella hadn’t been able to get this information out of Daryll before now, and now Daryll just wrote it all down and handed it to Tell.
The man was shaken.
More than even Tell would have read off of him.
Isabella had known, and she’d pounced. She’d known that Daryll would view himself as a terrible spymaster, and he wouldn’t let her dirty her hands at it, either, but Tell? Tell was an underworld creature, as far as Daryll was concerned, and sneaky enough that spy work just seemed like a natural fit.
In fairness, it was entirely accurate, just not the way Daryll was going to anticipate.
Tell sat in the kitchen with a cup of yogurt between his hands, just staring.
There were a thousand possible paths and they shifted before him like a rug made of snakes. By the end of today, he would pluck one of them and that would be his choice, but for now, he let all of them justexist.
There was a tapping noise, and Tell frowned, shifting and trying to figure out what he had just heard.
It repeated.
It was.
It was the window.
He walked across the living room and looked out to find Isabella.
Hanging from the upper sill of the window.
Tell tipped his head to the side to look at her, and she glowered at him.
He snorted and opened the window, taking a moment to figure out how to dismantle the screen so that she could climb in.
“Not exactly at your most dignified,” Tell said as she slid through to the floor and turned to close the window behind her.
“Daryll thinks I went to check the perimeter,” she said. “I’ve been antsy and anxious for days.” Definition of irony. “We need to talk.”
