Chapter 202 ~The Hidden Rogue~

Chapter 202 ~The Hidden Rogue~
Darius's POV

The boy's eyes finally lifted from the floor and found mine, and whatever he saw there made him flinch. "I don't know anything," he said, his voice cracking halfway through the sentence.
"You haven't been asked anything yet that would require you to give that reply," Tony said evenly. "Just answer what's put to you."
The boy's throat worked as he swallowed, his hands twisting themselves into a knot in his lap. I said nothing, content to let Tony carry the weight of the questioning while I watched every small betrayal his body offered up. The way his shoulders had crept toward his ears. The way his knee wouldn't stop its restless bounce beneath the table.
"Marcus." Tony's tone stayed level, almost gentle, something he hadn't shown the others. "Walk me through the nights you worked as a volunteer. What time did your shift begin? What did you do?"
"I don't remember," the word came out barely above a whisper. "I wasn't feeling too well during that period so it left me disoriented."
"That's not true because no one will have let you work in the condition you're describing. Even if you did, it would have been reported." Tony explained but the boy didn't recant his statement.
“Look, you can't leave unless you clear us up on everything that happened so make this easy for yourself and answer. Did you interact with any of the prisoners directly during that time?" Tony asked.
"Whatever you're hiding," I finally spoke, hoping to intimidate him into speaking, "it isn't worth what's about to happen to you if you keep sitting on it."
It worked. Almost too well at that as Marcus's defense collapsed. His eyes immediately welled up with tears. "Please," he said, his voice shaking. "I didn't have a choice. I was scared, and I didn't know what else to do."
I leaned forward slightly, keeping my voice as level as I could manage despite the tightness building in my chest. "What exactly did you do?"
The boy pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes for a moment before dropping his hands back into his lap, and when he spoke again his voice had gone small and hollow, like he was already resigned to whatever came next.
"I helped her get out," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, but he said if I didn't do it, they'd kill me the second they got the chance. He said rogues don't forget things like that."
Something in my chest went cold and still. "Who told you that?"
The boy's eyes darted toward the door again, then to Tony, then finally settled somewhere on the table between us. "Tyson."
“What does Tyson have to do with this?” I asked, monetarily confused.
“He was the one that asked me to get Camille out of her cell.”
I wasn't as surprised as I probably should have been. Of course, Camille had found someone else willing to do her bidding now.
Tony's jaw tightened, though his voice stayed steady. "So Tyson, a prisoner, threatened you and you believed it would amount to something. How exactly could he pose any harm to you from behind a locked cell?”
The boy flinched at the question, his eyes darting toward the door again. "He wasn't going to be in there forever. Everyone knew he and his crew were planning to escape eventually. It was only a matter of time, and I couldn't take the chance that he was bluffing. If I said no and he got free later, he'd have made good on it. I know he would have."
That explained a great deal about how hard Tyson had pushed against the idea of the rogues being separated and reassigned to different packs. If they'd been planning on escaping and returning to their usual ways, scattering his people across multiple territories where they'd be monitored would have made that impossible.
"You helped Camille escape," I said, watching him carefully and he nodded, tears slipping free now, running silently down his face.
“Did you have an accomplice? Is that how you got her out of here?” I asked. "Because I don't believe for a second the patrol guards simply let someone walk past the border because you asked them to."
The boy's eyes dropped to the table, and he didn't answer right away. "I didn't help her out of the pack," he finally said.
My eyes narrowed as the pieces finally clicked into place. “So the clothes found near the border were placed by you.”
The boy nodded quickly. “That was part of it. Tyson said they needed a diversion so it would look like she had already left the pack. She was moved into one of the rogue holding cells. She's been there this whole time, hiding among them."
I sat with that for a long moment, a little impressed by their way of thinking. Nobody would have thought to search among the rogues, not when the connection between Camille and Tyson hadn't even been confirmed until this conversation.
Then something else occurred to me and I felt my jaw tighten as the full weight of the timing settled over me.
I stood up abruptly, my chair scraping hard against the floor, and turned to Tony. "Have we started shipping the rogues out to their assigned packs yet?"
If Camille had been hiding among the rogue population this entire time, there was a very real chance she was no longer inside our territory at all. She could already be gone, shipped out under our own authority, disguised as one more nameless rogue among the dozens we'd sent scattering across the neighboring packs ourselves.
Tony's expression shifted instantly, matching the urgency I could feel building in my own chest. "Yes, it started a few days ago. A group is scheduled to move out today. Some units may already be at the main border waiting for final clearance.”
The boy looked between us, confused and still frightened. I did not spare him another glance, already moving toward the door with Tony trailing behind me.