Page 194 of The Wicked
Upper looked up and shot me a frown. “No? We are letting him go.”
Chika’s eyes fell on me. “Listen, if I even wanna save my job, or keep my boss off my neck, I gotta cut now, fam.”
I shook my head. “I am sorry about your job, school, and life, but you’re in this now. You are part of the narrative, and you’ll go with us when we want to get the paintings.”
“You want him to put his life on hold for us?” Milk asked, looking at me with disbelief.
I got to my feet and paced the room. “I know it’s insensitive—”
“It’s beyond insensitive, Zahra,” Upper said. “He has been kidnapped for days.”
“We didn’t kidnap him. We don’t know who did. We need more time to study our situation before we let him out with our protection.” I looked at Chika. “It’s for your safety and our gain, Chika. A win-win situation.”
“I see a point in that,” Dog said.
Upper shook his head. “What about Marino’s people? If they catch wind of this—”
I shrugged. “They won’t; we’ll be careful.”
“A word, Zahra,” Devil said, heading for the kitchen.
With a sigh and a disapproving stare from Upper and Milk, I followed Devil to the kitchen.
“Let me guess; you don’t agree with me,” I said.
Dark eyes watched me. “It’s not that, Z. I just need to know why you’re brushing away the fact that some unknown person out there gave us this much means to get information about the painting. Something big is obviously at work here.”
“Devil—”
“They kidnapped someone, Z. All the way from London and dropped them in our laps, for free, just like that. It doesn’t happen. It’s above our damn pay grade, and as much as I hate to say this, I think we should tell Marino.”
“No.”
“Zahra—”
“We are not telling them until we confirm the source is legit. Until we find the paintings.”
He frowned, confused. “Why? Is there a loophole I don’t know about?”
I bit the inside of my lips. “There are no loopholes; I know as much as you do, D. Just trust me on this; if there’s one thing we can hold against Marino to guarantee our safety out of this, it’s our leverage with this information.”
He didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t counter it.
“Guys,” Upper’s voice called from the living room. Devil and I locked gazes before we exited the kitchen.
“What happened?” Devil asked as we watched Upper frown at the laptop screen.
“I didn’t get the person who gave the info, but I traced it down to a region.”
“In Italy?” I asked.
“Yeah… Sicily, that’s where it came from. Everything else is blocked by an adaptive firewall, and it would take me forever to bypass it because it just keeps regenerating.”
“I don’t know about this, guys. Who the hell knows us from Sicily?” Milk said.
“Or maybe it was a cover route?” Dog asked.
“No, their cover route was China, but I broke it. It’s Sicily. Real name unknown, direct location unknown, almost like it’s not even on the map,” Upper said.
