Free INVISIBLE POWER BOOK TWO: ALEX NOZIAK (INVISIBLE RECRUITS) by Mary Buckham Page B

nearest chair and sat in it. “What do you want and why me?” I didn’t ask why she should trust me given her low opinion of me. That I could answer for myself. She didn’t trust me and that was my fault. Good intentions didn’t count as my father would say.
    “We’re involved in a very dangerous mission, Miss Noziak, with stakes you don’t even recognize.”
    Like I didn’t know that? I’d been at the ambush that morning.
    My look must have betrayed me as she offered a half smile and leaned forward, the we’re-all-on-the-same-side ploy. Which I didn’t trust for a nanosecond.
    “Vaverek is a thread in a much larger tapestry,” she said.
    “Figured that.”
    “I assumed you did. But what you don’t know is that so far he’s been our only link to a much larger, and much deadlier threat than his use of synthetic drugs.”
    “Drugs that caused innocents to steal for him.”
    “As well as not-so-innocents to murder.”
    We both knew she meant Dominique, Bran’s cousin, and her assistant. What a kerfuffle that mission had been.
    “So what do you want from me?” I asked again, curling my fingers over the chair arm as if that would keep me from pushing her harder.
    “Our mission in Paris has changed.”
    I froze before I found enough spit to speak. “You trying to tell me we’re not going after my brother?” The words dripped with venom. “After your promise?”
    She leaned back, looking all calm and collected, but at least she shook her head. “We are still seeking the whereabouts of your brother.”
    My heart restarted. “Then what’s changed?”
    “Our original mandate was to find your brother and in doing that find and apprehend Vaverek.”
    She wasn’t telling me anything that I didn’t already know, but seemed to be circling around something else. But what?
    I bit my inner lip until I could taste blood pool in my mouth. “I’m not good about beating around the bush. Tell me what’s going on?”
    “It involves your . . . contact. Bran.”
    Another loop de loop, even as I was impressed at how she tap-danced around exactly what Bran and I were to each other . “What about him?”
    “He’s being brought forward to the Council of Seven.”
    “What?”  Talk about a blow to the gut. The Council was bad news. I had been lucky that they had allowed me to only be imprisoned for life. Being brought to them in person always meant a lot more than a slap on the wrist. Usually they chopped the wrist off. Then the head. But Bran was a celebrity figure, not a peon like myself. His disappearance could cause waves, depending on why they wanted him and what they did with him as a result. “Why was he called?”
    Instead of answering me directly, which wasn’t Ling Mai’s way, she tilted her head, scanning me like a bird to a worm. “Do you remember the Librarian?”
    I racked my brains before the light bulb went off. “Yeah, isn’t she the person who keeps track of who married who, to figure out if their offspring are human or non-human?”
    “That’s one of her mandates. Her other is to gather information.”
    Ling Mai’s point? Then the nickel dropped. “You mean secrets.”
    “Yes, among other data.”
    “And then what? She sell it to the highest bidder?”
    “She is not adverse to making a profit. Though I think she views herself as providing a necessary commodity to the marketplace.”
    “What does this have to do with Bran?” Or me for that matter, but one issue at a time.
    “The Librarian has come across information that indicates the Council believes Bran is withholding information once held by his cousin.”
    “Dominique,” I whispered the word. Like a bad nightmare that psychopath was continuing to haunt me though she was dead. “What kind of information?”
    “It appears that she had more than one drug formula in her possession. A compound targeted specifically at non-humans.”
    The drug we’d traced back to Dominique on our last mission gave her temporary control over