“Then I don’t understand. Everyone who came with us and knew about this has been with us for years, and they fought on our side.” A frown line creased his forehead. “Why would anyone have a reason to do something like that unless it was that bastard?”

“I don’t know, but I want you to try to find out. Go to Meg. See if she figured out how the Desaltis might have found out about what we were doing. Maybe we’re worrying over nothing and one of their spies spotted us. Since they knew their guy watching the Ezzatis’ house was dead, they might have decided to see where we’d go, in case we had actually stumbled upon that map.”

“I’ll do that,” he said. “But there’s one more thing I wanted to discuss with you.”

“What is it?”

“We need to retaliate for that attack and for the ones before. We know the Desaltis had their hands in everything, and they were definitely the ones who tried to steal our drugs. Even if Desmond had a deal with them, that drug belongs to us, and we have to make sure they pay for what they’ve done or others might get an idea that they can take or try to take from us whatever they want and go unpunished.”

“Yes, I think it’s time for us to hit back.” I just had to figure out how to do it without putting too many lives at risk. I didn’t care about our enemy, but I cared about my people or any innocents that might get caught in the crossfire.

“You should come up with a plan and I’ll find out who betrayed us,” Brent said determinedly, and strode away. I headed straight to my room where James was. Brent might be suspicious of him, but for some reason, I didn’t think I had to worry that much about James betraying me. It wasn’t as if he had any friends in here that could send messages for him, and Meg... She’d never betray me, or at least I hoped so.

James was sitting on the bed when I got to my room, and he was reading a book. He must have grabbed it from my closet where I kept all the books because I had no time to read them. His eyes lifted to me, and they were so warm and inviting that I decided to stop in the middle of the room before I threw myself at him and did something incredibly stupid like kiss him. He might be very attractive, but that didn’t mean I had to lose my mind around him.

“I want to hear your opinion on something,” I said, and his eyebrows shot up. “I know I should retaliate against the Desaltis for attacking us, but is this the right time to do it? We’ve already suffered some loses.”