The Rogues Who Went Rogue
Chapter 83

In her holding unit, Kate crawled under the sheets before deleting the messages of the day out of habit. She then extracted the SIM card and hid it in her bra. The practice tonight was horrible for her. She just received news from the person she had been conversing with, and it was

worrying

###

her.

On another end, Hailey just got Jade to hack into Kate's phone before the signal was lost. Hailey blinked and asked in frustration, "Really? Now?"

"What a time to be taking out the SIM card," Jade replied.

"Well, she's not supposed to have a SIM card to begin with," Hailey noted, then added, "We should persuade the duke to report her to the queen. She's hiding something."

Jade, who watched Kate when Hailey couldn't during manipulation practice said, "That would be the direct thing to do, but I'd personally ask the boss to refrain from taking any action for now. This rogue might know something that we need."

"We snatch her phone, use it as evidence of betrayal, the queen uses the Authority on her to vomit whatever shit out, and boom! We get everything."

"Really? What if there's something in there that none of us have thought of?"

"That's kind of the point of the Queen's Authority, Jade."

"No, Hay. This is the point: the Authorities only work with very specific commands. They tell us to sit, we sit. They tell us to kneel, we kneel. They tell us to go to battle and not die, we go to battle and...hope not to die. But if they say something generic, like 'tell me the truth', 'tell me everything you know"," Jade threw his hands in the air before he proceeded to say, "It'll be basically the same as not asking."

"Give the queen more credit, Jade. She'll know how to phrase those questions. Even we can, like 'tell me the truth about this text', 'tell me everything you know about this creature you've been contacting""

Jade's hands raised at chest level and calmly explained, "In no way am I saying that the queen is dumb, Hay. But if we converge the truth to the text, information will be limited to the text. If we narrowed it to individual creatures, information will be limited to them. We may be looking at a network here, one that Kate herself might not even know yet." "Kate?"

"The rogue's name, Hay. Who do you think? You've gotten better at eavesdropping but it still needs work. Anyway, the point now is that we must remember even the smartest creature will not be able to know or predict everything correctly. Take our boss, for instance, he didn't know the Kyltons had brains to do sh*t and look what they'd been doing for almost two decades. He's one of the smartest creatures we know, and he didn't know he was being used."

Hailey recalled the debacle and murmured, "That was a very careless mistake on his part, to work with someone without knowing who was at the top of the chain."

"And it's a mistake that he won't repeat, but the point remains: even the smartest creatures will not know everything. The queen may be smarter than most, but we can't expect her to know the exact questions to ask. We should extract whatever we can from her phone the next time the SIM card enters before making a move."

Hailey sighed in frustration and impatience before she concurred, "Fine. I'm going to bed. Tell the boss."

"Wait, me?"

Hailey smirked and copied his line from earlier, "Who do you think?"

Jade chuckled in response before he noted the obvious, "I'm not one of his favorites."

Hailey proudly declared, "I am, but I'm sleepy and I might not be as convincing as you are in putting this point forward. If you impress him enough, he might promote you to the 'favorites' position."

"I highly doubt there's room for me up there but yeah, I'll link him."

"Tonight," Hailey insisted.

Jade shut down the computer and shot her a smile when he confirmed, "Tonight."

After Hailey left, Jade linked Greg, who got on the same boat as him even before Jade finished explaining. Jade couldn't help himself from asking, “Will you be...telling the queen about this, Your Grace?" Maybe that was why he wasn't one of the duke's favorites. He tended to ask questions that were, perhaps, better off left unasked.

Greg was asking himself the same question. After a moment of flicking the pen in his hand, he said, "I have to. This is a cooperation, not a solo project amongst ourselves."

"She wouldn't...stop us, would she?"

"I hope not."

"Boss, that's not assuring at all."

"I can't speak for the queen, Jade. She's smart enough to know that what we want to do is the most strategic way forward, but she's forgiving enough to offer this rogue a chance to explain herself."

"The latter way is too soft and may be ineffective. How do we know Kate won't lie?"

"Exactly," Greg sat up and said, "I'm sure the queen will weigh in all these factors before deciding."

Jade sure hoped so. "Alright, then. You know her better than we do anyway. Night, boss." "Thank you, Jade. Goodnight."

Greg's eyes cleared, and he continued flicking his pen in his office as he returned his attention to the penned-down information he received from the teams he deployed. Those he sent to wolf territory to ask rogue wolves about seeing vampires confirmed that they saw nothing. Good. That meant the bloodsuckers' abduction problem was within the bloodsuckers' own territory. As for his watchers, however, it wasn't all good news. In fact, there was no news at all!

After the team he sent to examine the passageways accessible from Halo and Vent's businesses led to nothing, they took the initiative to begin watching J.J. and Bundy again. The two loud talkers were still not loud-talking like they always did before the present threat came up. Greg still couldn't understand why J.J. and Bundy had not done anything besides visit bars with a low profile and then check-in to random inns for the usual two-day-one-night stay. Dormant Little Red hadn't progressed or regressed either. This wasn't just getting odd, it was getting frustrating.

He linked Lepak, who began watching Red again, 'Tomorrow, whisper some nonsense into the bartender's ear and tip him ten bucks. After that, leave. See if you can feel Red staring at you.

'As you wish, Your Grace.'

He then linked Nani, who swapped with Quinn in watching J.J. and Bundy with the same instructions.

All that was left to do was wait.