Captive - Aimee Carter

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like it might have hidden the secrets to Daxton’s real identity.

      I straightened and looked around. The walls of his large office were covered ceiling to floor in bookshelves, each one fuller than the last. The ones closest to the door looked neat and organized, as if they hadn’t been touched in years. The closer they got to the desk, however, the more disorganized and cluttered they became. Was it possible he’d hidden something in a book?

      No—I wasn’t thinking about this the right way. Daxton would never leave something like that out where anyone could accidentally run across it. He would put it someplace hidden, but secure. Someplace no one would dare to look. Someplace only he would have access to.

      Which meant it had to be in this office. After my little stunt trying to kill him, he was the only one with access, even though he pretended he’d lost the memory of that incident. No one else had been allowed in his office without his personal guards present, not even Greyson. This was his most private room in Somerset. If the evidence still existed, it was in here.

      I began to touch everything. The chairs, the couches, the fireplace, the lamps, the end tables—nothing in the office got past my hands. But the harder I looked, the less confident I became. Just because I would have kept some sentimental token of my past didn’t mean he would. What if he really had destroyed it? Then what chance would the Blackcoats have of gaining the support of the Shields and the Ministers of the—

       Click.

      I stilled. My hand rested on the gold frame of the Hart family portrait painted a year earlier, before the deaths of the real Daxton, along with his wife and elder son. On the very edge, where the portrait met the wall, there was a sliver of space that hadn’t been there before. Underneath my thumb, I spotted a tiny button that blended in perfectly with the frame.

      My heart sped up as I nudged the frame open. Surely enough, the massive portrait concealed a steel safe—or at least I thought it was a safe. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a square sheet of metal imbedded into the wall. There was no dial, no number pad, nothing.

      I searched for any sign of how to open it, but once again, nothing. That made things difficult. Frowning, I brushed my fingertips against the metal, feeling for any slight indents that might give me a clue.

      Instantly blue light appeared, forming a square in the center of the safe. I waited for something else to happen, but the blue square didn’t change. Did it want a handprint? No symbols had appeared, and a handprint was the only thing that would reasonably fit in that square.

      It didn’t matter what it wanted. My handprint was Lila’s now, and somehow I doubted Daxton would have granted her access to whatever was inside the safe. I clasped my necklace so hard that it left indents in my palm. Time to see how good Greyson really was.

      I passed the silver disk in front of the sensor and held my breath. If it didn’t work, would the sensor just ignore my attempt to break in, or would half of Somerset be alerted? I glanced at the opening in the ceiling. It would take me several precious seconds to scale the bookshelves and make it up there. If there were guards outside waiting, or if Daxton was anywhere nearby—

      The light changed from blue to white, and to my astonishment, the safe popped open. Apparently Greyson was that good after all. I opened the door and, with trembling fingers, removed the collection of a dozen files inside.

      Several of them were nothing but papers I couldn’t read and maps of places I had never been. Another was what looked like a report detailing the car explosion that had killed the real Daxton and his family, leaving Greyson alone. But as interesting as they might have been, it was the thickest folder that I cared about.

      I flipped it open, and my real face greeted me with a smile. It was my school picture, clipped to a report card I couldn’t read. I must have been seven or eight—I still had freckles from staying out in the sun too long, and I was missing my front tooth.

      Tearing my eyes away, I flipped through the other pictures. There were more than I could have ever imagined, detailing every important moment of my life, including what looked like the day I was born. I squinted at the typed pages that filled the folder to bursting, hoping in vain that the words would make sense for the first time in my life. But they remained a mystery, and the only clues I had were those pictures.

      Some of them were noticeably older than the others, yellowing around the edges and slightly discolored. This wasn’t a file Augusta had compiled after I’d been Masked as Lila—she’d been keeping tabs on me throughout my entire life. But why?

      I frowned. As badly as I wanted to know, I had another more important question right now, and I was holding the answer in my hands. There was only one file left I hadn’t looked through, and I opened the pages, careful not to touch whatever was inside.

      It was slimmer than mine, but still full of the same things—papers I couldn’t read, what looked like a copy of the test everyone in the country had to take on their seventeenth birthday, and certificates I didn’t recognize. And at the bottom of the pile was a single photograph.

      Two young men with light hair and dark eyes stood side by side, sporting carefree smiles I envied. They both wore black uniforms, and insignias on their lapels announced their high ranks. One of the men looked strangely familiar, but they both resembled one another in a way that only family could. Brothers? They had to be. They had the same nose, the same eyes, and the same dimpled chin, and the way they slung their arms around one another made it obvious they were more than comrades or patrol partners.

      Which one had been Masked as Daxton? I glanced back and forth between them. Did I recognize the man on the left because I subconsciously associated him with Daxton, or had I seen him before? And the man on the right—he shared Daxton’s eyes, the only part of the human body doctors couldn’t modify to resemble someone else’s. Then again, they both did.

      The soft sound of footsteps outside the door pulled me from my trance, and I snapped the folder shut and gathered the rest. As silently as I could, I tucked the unnecessary folders back into the safe and closed the portrait before climbing up the bookshelves toward the grate, my file and Daxton’s tucked securely in my arm.

      Once I settled back in the ventilation system, I took a deep breath, my mind spinning. Benjy would tell me what was in my file. He would read it to me, and I would know within the hour what secrets Augusta had kept from me.

      But if I went to Knox instead, it was the other file that would give me leverage. It could buy me a way to keep Benjy safe outside of Somerset. Something this valuable to the Blackcoats—it could be the ticket to everything we both wanted. I couldn’t change my past, but my future was wide-open. And I wanted it to be as far from D.C. as possible.

      My mind made up, I crawled through the vent, pushing the files along in front of me. If Knox wanted to know who Daxton really was, then I hoped he was in the mood to bargain.

      By the time I dropped back into my suite, I held only my thick folder. It had taken me another twenty minutes to hide the fake Daxton’s file where no one would ever find it, not without my help, and the only way Knox was going to get it was if he helped me first.

      Now that that was done, I turned to unlock the door that led out into the hallway, wondering if Knox was still standing there or if he’d given up and returned to his suite by now. Either way, we had to talk before I left, and I wasn’t going to wait until morning.

      “You know you’re not supposed to crawl around the vents anymore.”

      I jumped and whirled around, the folder nearly slipping from my grip. Knox sat in front of my fireplace, his dark eyes gleaming with annoyance and a glass of something I wasn’t so sure was water in his hand.

      “Have you really been waiting this whole time?” I said casually as if this wasn’t weird at all. I crossed the room to Lila’s desk and set the file down.

      Knox rose. “Where have you

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