The Gender Game 2 by Bella Forrest (positive books to read txt) 📗

“How do you mean?” she asked, her voice devoid of interest. Yet she had asked, meaning she was interested. That was a good sign.

“Well, she was your defense student, right?”

She gave me a tight nod. It was easy enough to give me that information; after all, it was well-known. “I trained with Violet for years,” she said curtly.

“Was she one of your more promising students?”

Her face went flat again, but there was a minuscule tightening. “All of my students show promise in a variety of ways. Violet was no different.”

“She was able to hold her own against me.”

Ms. Dale smirked at me, giving into her apparent pride and disdain for me. That was a good sign—it meant she could be broken. “I trained her well.”

I nodded. “It makes me wonder what your plans were for her had she finished her training.”

Shrugging, Ms. Dale watched me, her brown eyes glittering. “It would be up to her, really. You see, in Matrus, we allow women to choose their own path.”

“Yeah,” I retorted. “While allowing your men limited options in professions.”

“At least our men have professions,” she replied calmly, picking at some invisible lint on her blanket.

I felt disappointed—I had hoped that going after Matrus would get her irate, or at least irritated, but she was too good for that. It made my belief that she was a spy even more palpable. I decided to call her on it.

“You’re a spy,” I announced, studying her face.

She rolled her eyes, presumably in exasperation, but it was all behind that careful mask she wore.

“You also know something you aren’t saying about that letter.”

“What letter?”

I sighed, tapping my fingers on the table next to me. “Don’t play stupid with me, Ms. Dale. It’s insulting to both of us.”

“Oh, that forgery that Violet tried to present as Lee’s confession?”

It was my turn to roll my eyes at her. “I think you and I both know that it wasn’t a forgery.” Ms. Dale fell silent. I studied her face, and nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

I turned on my heel, prepared to walk away, when she bit on my bait. “What makes you think it’s not a forgery?”

I half turned, and shot her a disbelieving look. “You really think that Violet forged it?”

She paused, and then inclined her head a fraction of an inch. I started laughing, letting the sound fill up the room for several long seconds, before letting it die in heaving gasps.

I held up my hands. “I’m so sorry, Ms. Dale. Clearly, I was wrong. I mean—if you can’t figure out why it’s the real deal, then I was clearly mistaken. You go back to sleep.”

“Of course I know why it’s real, you idiot, I—” She paused, her mouth agape, and I felt a supreme sense of satisfaction roll over me. I was going to be smug for the next few days, but I’d earned it.

I crossed over to the foot of her bed, letting the smile play across my lips. “You recognized something in that letter. Something important.” I pulled it out of my pocket. “It was toward the beginning.” I scanned the first paragraph nonchalantly, while she watched, her face pulled back in that mask. Yet her eyes were glistening, probably in anger for what I had gotten her to confess.

“I bet it’s one of these names here,” I drawled as I watched her. Again, there was that tightening, like she was barely keeping her skull from leaping out and snapping at me. “One of his accomplices, maybe? Chris Patton? Duncan Friedman? Seb Morrissey? Jacob Venn?” Her face remained blank as I listed the names, and I felt an instant irritation. I scanned the rest of the letter. She had reacted to the names jab, but none of them had inspired anything.

I froze as I started scanning the letter again. “It’s Desmond, isn’t it?”

This time, Ms. Dale’s eyes flicked away, staring at a fixed spot on the wall. I paused as I pondered that. Desmond was Lee’s middle name, according to Violet. So why had Ms. Dale reacted to that?

I stared at her, the question on the tip of my tongue, my mind trying to understand what Ms. Dale was telling me with her silence. I stalled myself, my mind not willing to reveal my ignorance, but it was puzzling. There was no reason for her to react to her own spy’s name. None whatsoever.

Unless the Desmond in the letter was the name of another person, and it was coincidental that they shared the same name.

The realization hit me like a ton of bricks, and for a second I felt a rush of elation, until I realized that I still had no idea who the Desmond in the letter was.

But Ms. Dale did. I studied the older woman while I ran through everything in my head. That meant that Lee wasn’t necessarily crazy, he just happened to be working with someone else whose name was Desmond. It was a coincidence, nothing more, but it had thrown Violet and me completely down the wrong path.

I wanted to hit myself for being so quick to jump to assumptions. Desmond, whoever he was, was a player in this, and I was betting Ms. Dale knew who he was and what he wanted. I could work with that.

Placing my hand on the foot board of the bed, I leaned over. I started to say something, when a sound down the hall stopped me.

Ms. Dale and I exchanged looks as a loud clanging sound came from the room with the airlock. There was a banging sound, and then silence. I backed out into the hallway, pulling my gun and feeling like an idiot for not barricading the airlock door.

The hand wheel on the hall began to turn but stopped with a clang. Then it moved in the opposite direction, and there was a slight thud as something impacted with the door. I saw the rod I had shoved in the mechanism start to fall.

Violet