Half an hour later, we’d gathered with Gideon, Rowan, and Anthea in Wylder’s office, and I was just wrapping up explaining what I’d overheard again.
“Ezra said he’s called Jasper in for a meeting this morning,” I finished, my gaze darting to the window to check for any sign of dawning sunlight. That morning was creeping closer way too fast for comfort. “He’s going to ‘expose’ Mercy then. We’ve got to figure out some way to stop it, fast.”
Gideon rubbed his eyes, but when he dropped his hand, his face was set in an expression so coolly determined I wouldn’t have wanted to face off with him, lung condition or not. “I didn’t think he’d make a move this quickly. I might have caught on otherwise.”
I stared at him. “You knew Ezra was going to turn on Mercy?”
He shrugged as if anyone with half a brain cell would have known. “He talked to me briefly the other night after the… corpse incident. Whoever’s been targeting Mercy here, it’s made him see her as a liability.”
“He wasn’t convinced she was more useful to him than trouble to begin with,” Wylder grumbled. “He doesn’t think much of the gangs in the Bend or of women.” He cut his gaze toward his aunt with a slightly apologetic grimace.
Anthea just shook her head. “Oh, you’re not saying anything I don’t know. I wondered when he insisted on sending her to Jasper—whether it was really because he thought she’d handle him best and not because he was hoping she wouldn’t and it’d be an easy way to take her out of the picture.”
“He didn’t seem all that happy about her success.” Wylder sighed. “She’s a wild card. He prefers to only work with people he can fully control and anticipate. The way she handled Jasper and came back unfazed probably made her seem like not just a liability but a potential threat to his authority too.”
Silence descended on the room. We knew what happened to those who had earned the wrath of Ezra.
“Jasper did like Mercy, whatever happened that night,” I ventured. “Would he definitely believe this story?”
“I can’t imagine she won him over enough that he’d forgive a murder attempt,” Anthea said. “She has a reasonable motive, and with the phone and the way Axel set her up to look as if she’d had an opportunity to steal it from his man, the circumstantial evidence is awfully convincing. And think about it—if Jasper wants to say it wasn’t Mercy, he’d be accusing Ezra of lying. Whose favor do you think he cares more about?”
Even I knew the answer to that question without needing to think about it. I scowled at the wall. “There’s got to be something we can do.”
“Everything revolves around the phone, doesn’t it?” Rowan said. “If we can get rid of the phone, then there’s only a motive, no evidence of any kind.”
Wylder nodded slowly. “He’d have it in his office, most likely. Possibly the audience room if he’s planning on meeting Jasper there. But either way the room will be locked, and he’ll have tucked it away somewhere secure inside. And he’s an early riser no matter how late he was up. We can only count on an hour or two before there’s a good chance of us getting caught.”
Shit. My nerves jangled with apprehension and a prickle of what might have been panic. “So let’s get moving, then!”
“Hold on,” Gideon said evenly. “If we barge in without planning carefully, we’ll only get caught. We need to take a few minutes to decide our best possible approach. Starting with, how are we going to get past those locked doors?”
A small smile curved Anthea’s lips. “I think I can help with that.”
After a brief, intense discussion, Wylder and I ended up being the ones to tackle Ezra’s office, while Rowan and Gideon headed to the audience room. Anthea’s bedroom was near her brother’s, so she was playing look-out, ready to alert us the second he got up for the morning. But she’d lent us some tools.
I shifted my weight from foot to foot as Wylder fiddled with the lock picks from his aunt’s personal kit. “Do you figure she’s done a lot of breaking and entering before?” I whispered.
Wylder let out a low chuckle. “I’d be surprised if she hasn’t done at least a little. There’s a reason my dad takes good care of her, and it’s not just because she’s family. He protects his valuable assets.” There was a trace of bitterness in his voice.
“Mercy’s fucking valuable,” I muttered.
“But she’s too much of an unknown. And—” Wylder shut his mouth, and the door clicked open.
We slipped into the office. Not wanting to risk one of the sentries noticing the light under the door, Wylder set his phone facing away from it to cast a thin glow over the elegant room. “I’ll take the desk,” he said. “You check the bookshelves first.”
I went to the built-in shelves and ran my hands over the rows of books there, making sure the pages moved under my fingers and that none were secret containers. Then I felt the backs of the shelves for loose spots that might have held a hidden compartment.
No such luck, and no phones just lying around either. Wylder rummaged through the desk drawers. He stepped away with a frustrated sound.
We started nudging and tugging at every other object in the room, careful not to shift anything so much that it’d be clear it’d been moved. My heart had started to sink when Wylder let out a soft cry of victory. He’d raised the top of the ottoman by Ezra’s wing chair in the corner and was now lifting a phone out of the storage box inside.
I pulled the vial of clear liquid that Anthea had given us out of my pocket, some kind of concoction she’d had just lying around that would erode the metal and destroy the phone. Wylder set the device in the sturdy box she’d given us for that purpose, and I poured the stuff over it.
With a sizzling hiss, the screen melted, the metal warping, until nothing was left but a solid gray lump that could just as easily have once been a pair of fancy sunglasses or something.
A surge of relief swept through me. The phone was destroyed; there was no way Ezra could use it now. But we also needed to make sure he didn’t find out who’d taken it.
We ducked out of the room, Wylder resetting the lock behind us, and hustled back to his office. Wylder texted the others on the way to let them know the first part was done. “Might as well let them get a little more sleep if they can,” he said.