Burning Willow

XXIII

"I did." He said. "Right before we left, I hacked into Anderson's main server and changed the location on the police contract."

"Why would you do that?" Chase frowned. "I thought..." He shook his head. "Since when do you keep secrets from me, Daniel?!"

"He'd known we'd gone rogue." Daniel explained. "But Gregori, in his own way, wanted to believe we were still loyal. And I needed to get close enough to him to find out what he was going to do next."

"And did you?"

"Yeah." He smirked. "The day that Kylie went to the grocery store... I hacked into his laptop through a VPN server. Most of his files are on the main computer though, but his laptop is heavily encrypted which means there might be something."

"And did you figure out what?"

"Not yet. But I know his plan somehow involved Kylie's dad. Why else would he want her?"

"Want me?" I squinted. "What on Earth.... Okay, you're going to tell me everything. Starting from the beginning."

"Zev and I." There it was. That name again. "Used to work for Gregori. He was ex-military officer turned politician. Quite popular in the lower states. But his way wasn't exactly the right way. A few years ago, Zev got in trouble with the law... which is how Gregori found him."

Zev – I really didn't know what to call him anymore – folded his arms across his chest.

"We would do small things for him, like hacking into a server, or drug deals and raids, stuff like that. But then... Gregori started conducting these experiments. He tortured people. Blackmailed and threatened them. Zev and I decided to leave when we saw him put a bullet in one of our friends' heads."

"That was around the same time I met Inspector Anderson." Zev shook his head. "He was the first person that treated me like an actual human. Somehow, I grew to trust him."

"Leaving UFL wasn't easy. Our last case was..."

"It was about you." Zev completed, turning to me. "Our last case was kidnapping Zachary Brien's daughter and holding her for ransom. Accepting the case was the only way we could leave Chicago and go to New York."

My heartbeat quickened. "Stepdaughter." I corrected. "And oh God, Matt—"

"Your stepbrother is fine." Daniel said. "You were easier to get, because you... Gregori thought it was easier for us to get close to you."

"And you did." I said sternly.

"And we did, but for other reasons. For one, we had to find out what Gregori was planning to do with you. That was only possible if he thought we were still loyal. But then you got mixed up with Freya and Chelsea's murder, and things went downhill."

"Freya was an undercover cop." Said Zev. "She was working with Inspector Anderson, and Gregori found out, so he had Roland kill her. Chelsea – she used to work with Anderson too, but not on the same case. She resigned when she got pregnant with Milo."

"Why'd they kill her?" I asked softly.

"I think that was an accident. The kidnapper might have recognized her as a cop." Said Daniel. "The night of the ball was when Gregori was supposed to kidnap you. We were supposed to do it, but Gregori knew we had gone rogue when he found out I stole his flash drive. So when he attempted the kidnap, I changed the time and location on his servers to make sure he wasn't at the right place. But he sent backup."

"What was in the flash drive?"

"The flash drive contained the original plans of his experiments. The only one that worked."