Taken (Ava Delaney #4) Read Online Free Page B

with a firm shake of her head.
Callista drew back with a careless shrug.
    The siren had
to send away a couple of admirers before we could talk. I still
wasn’t sure why I was there. Callista didn’t seem so certain either
because she kept glancing at me curiously.
    “Can I even
trust you?” she asked Esther.
    “Illeana saved
my life. I’m not going to do anything that harms her memory or her
name. I can promise you that. I just need to know what was going
on.”
    Callista leaned
forward. “I knew the job would kill her. She knew it, too. She was
working two sides. At some stage, they would collide, and she would
be stuck in the middle.”
    Esther covered
her mouth, her eyes widening with horror.
    “It’s not what
you think. She was investigating something internal. Something
within the Council, or maybe just the Guardians. She didn’t tell me
much, for my own safety, and I can’t understand most of the
paperwork.”
    “Do you know
anything? Anything about what she was trying to do?” Esther asked.
Being a Guardian was everything to her. She had to believe in the
Council to do that job. If something was going on… she might not
get through it.
    Callista
glanced from me to Esther and back again. “What about her? Can I
trust her?”
    “She’s not
loyal to the Council,” Esther said. “And I trust her.”
    Callista looked
away for a few minutes, watching people sway on the dance floor.
Her singing had left a sultry atmosphere, and she smiled as she
observed the effect. “So easy to make them happy,” she murmured.
“My sister told me that she was trying to find whoever’s in charge
of the slave markets, and she felt as though she might die because
of it. She prepared for her death. We live a long time, but she was
ready to die.”
    “Who was she
working for?” Esther asked.
    I was on the
edge of my seat, waiting to hear more.
    Callista pursed
her lips and let out a soft sigh. “I wish I knew. She wasn’t alone.
But she didn’t trust anyone. She was so paranoid by the end.” She
turned to me. “You’re the one, aren’t you? The one who killed that
beast.”
    I inclined my
head slightly, unsure if I should confirm or deny.
    “Thank you.”
She closed her eyes for a moment. “Her spirit can rest.”
    “I want her
paperwork,” Esther insisted. “All of it. I can figure out what she
was trying to do, maybe keep going with it, so it wasn’t for
nothing.”
    “Leave it be.”
Callista took a long swallow of her drink. “If the beast didn’t
kill her, this would have. At least the way my sister talked.” She
slammed her glass on the table and leaned forward. “I hear talk.
Talk of change and disruption. I think I might get out of here
while I still have the chance. If you were smart, you’d do the
same. But I’ll send you my sister’s things. Do what you will, but
know that none of my sisters will appreciate a blackening of our
family name.” She made her way out of the bar, hips swaying. All
eyes were on her.
    Esther stared
after her, chewing on a badly bitten thumb nail. She glanced at me.
“What do you think?”
    I shrugged.
“She could be wrong.”
    “Or Illeana was
working on something she didn’t feel she could trust me with.
Why?”
    How was I
supposed to answer that one? “Well, Aiden’s your brother, and
he’s—”
    “I got this job
because I’m good at it, not because of my brother,” she
snapped.
    I held up my
hands. “I was going to say that he would have to report everything
to someone higher up. Maybe she didn’t trust whoever that might be.
Maybe she didn’t want to get you into trouble. Maybe this really
was something dangerous. If you didn’t know who to trust, who would you tell?”
    I didn’t tell
her that I was on essentially the same mission as Illeana. I didn’t
tell her how strange I thought that was. We could have worked
together and gotten things done a little quicker. Unless I was on a
dead-end mission that Gabe already knew would lead to