To Gemma, he said, “I will explain all of this to you, I promise. But we have to tell them now.”

“I trust you.”

He rushed into the parliamentary room. Most of the DPS members were there, and everyone was talking at once. This was not the friendly gab they often had before a meeting. Everyone looked worried and confused.

Barnabus didn’t have time to slowly get their attention. He popped two fingers in his mouth and whistled as loud as he could manage. They all turned. Surprise, shock, even horror appeared on a few faces. Most of the DPS had not been told that his death had been staged.

“What are you doing here?” Fletcher asked.

“The Kincaids came to resurrect our graves. We hadn’t been able to get out of the churchyard without being caught, so we were waiting.”

“They discovered the empty caskets?” Brogan guessed. “That might explain why we’re all getting warnings from every urchin in our network.”

Barnabus shook his head. “The coffin they opened was one of ours, but it wasn’t empty. They’d pulled a body out.”

A heavy and uncomfortable silence settled over the room.

“Who was it?” Fletcher asked.

“The Mastiff.”

He could see they all meant to ask questions, but there wasn’t time. “The Mastiff was not the mastermind we believed him to be, pulling the strings and giving the orders. All this time, he was answering to someone else. He was acting on orders. And that someone was waiting nearby, watching the resurrection, enjoying the whole thing.”

“Did you figure out who?” Stone asked, obviously understanding the significance of that.

Barnabus nodded. “It was Serena. We were all convinced she was a victim, but she is the head. She is directing all of this. And she knows everything. She knew the coffins would be empty. She knew when we would be escaping.”

Barnabus looked around the room. “As Serena, she learned where my safe houses are and who runs them. She knows Hollis is in the DPS because she saw him at the gambling house while she was pretending to be held captive there. She knows Ana and Fletcher were part of that operation. She knows Brogan’s involvement and that Vera is connected to him, which could easily lead her to Mr. Sorokin. And”—he swallowed against the lump in his throat—“she quoted the DPS’s creed. She knows it by heart.”

“How could she possibly?” Elizabeth asked.

“She knows too much to not have someone on the inside here. Someone in our meetings. Someone part of us,” Barnabus said.

That sent all their gazes to everyone else in the room.

“The Mastiff said his network overlapped with ours,” Fletcher recalled. “There’s a traitor among us.”

“Baz.” He turned at the sound of Gemma’s quavering voice. She held out a slip of paper. “This was on the bench by the door.”