He reached for the coffee. Brought it up to his lips.
Helen smiled.
He threw the cup at her, aiming for her eyes.
She was faster, of course. She was out of her chair as soon as he twitched, and, anyway, the coffee had cooled. All Zach managed to do was splash her suit jacket.
Her brand-new suit jacket.
Her pretty face twisted into a feral snarl. “You little shit,” she hissed. She reached for her pistol, drew it back, ready to beat him across the face with it.
Then she froze. Remembered the cameras in the ceiling. Thought about Control, how he could be watching, even now. She tamped down her rage and considered her options.
Zach, still alive, and still a threat if he got back to D.C. And even more of a threat if someone higher up came to question him. She couldn’t let him go, couldn’t keep him.
Cade. Still out there. Konrad would never meet his end of the deal if he found out. And he would find out eventually, because Cade was a fucking mad dog, he just wouldn’t stop. He’d be back on Konrad by nightfall, if he wasn’t at the doctor’s house already.
The very existence of Zach in this room, the continued survival of Cade out in the world, they were evidence of her betrayal of the Company. She couldn’t let them live. But she couldn’t kill Zach, not without bringing down the wrath of both the Company and the White House. And without the Shadow Company’s resources, she had no hope in hell of destroying Cade.
Then there was Reyes and Ken, and they knew everything she’d been doing. Control would find out she’d triggered the bomb at the safe house, despite his orders.
Too many loose ends; the slightest tug on any of them, and everything would unravel. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to be immortal by now.
Instead, she was trapped.
Then it came to her: she had the solution, right here, in this building. A way to tie it off, staunch the bleeding long enough to get her reward. It would work. It had to work.
Abruptly, she holstered her pistol again, and left the room.
She found Reyes and Ken still sitting in her office.
She snapped her fingers at Reyes. “You got his phone.”
He nodded. She waited half a second, then snapped again. “Well, give it to me.”
He fumbled it out of his jacket, handed it over.
“Get out,” she told them.
Ken hesitated. “What are you going to do?”
She began dialing. “I’m finishing this.”
FORTY-EIGHT
Tania checked her watch. Just after six. Sunrise was supposed to be an hour away, but already the sky above was turning pink. In less than sixty minutes, daylight would start burning over the horizon.
The skylight would focus those rays down into the room. There was no corner they wouldn’t reach. She might be able to delay the inevitable, but as the sun progressed across the sky the whole room would eventually be illuminated.
Then she would die. The blood in her body would solidify. Her skin would wither and crack, and draw about her like a vise. Her eyes would turn to dust. Her bones would split like dry kindling.
She would feel every second of it.
She was going to die in agony.
The door to the atrium snapped off its hinges.
Cade stood there, perfectly calm.
Tania felt the urge to rush to him, to put her arms around him, almost like she was the silly little girl who’d first met Cade decades ago.
Then she remembered the collar and stayed put.
“Good timing,” she said, pointing to the skylight. “I thought you might put the grave robbery together with me if I just chose an appropriate body.”
“What are you talking about?” Cade asked.
“I . . . Bela Lugosi’s grave. I thought you would—”
“I didn’t come here for you,” Cade said. “Whatever you did, I didn’t hear about it.”
Tania’s mouth dropped open. She closed it quickly. Of course he hadn’t. Stupid of her, to expect him to come charging to her rescue.
He never had. He never would.
“Where is he?” Cade demanded.
“Wish I knew,” Tania said. “He left me here to burn. I would gladly watch you pull his intestines out.”
“Why didn’t you do it yourself? It’s not like you to be so reluctant.”
She flicked the collar with one fingernail. “Six ounces of plastic explosive. It’s actually really humiliating, but he—”
Cade crossed the room before she could finish. He reached his hands to her neck, and while Tania was still frozen with shock, snapped the collar in two.
Tania winced for a moment, waiting for the explosion.
Nothing. The two pieces of the collar, broken cleanly at the lock, sat on the floor. Harmless.
“He lied,” she said, her eyes wide.
“It’s what he does,” Cade said, already walking away.
She caught up with him, feeling the empty spot around her neck.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“I didn’t.”
She stopped. “You didn’t.”
He realized she wasn’t moving, so he turned back to her, completely calm.
“There was no alternative. Either you would have died with it on or died taking it off. Seemed like the best thing to do was get it over with.”
“And you would have made that decision with your own neck on the line?”
“Of course,” Cade said, still damnably calm. “The alternative would be to become Konrad’s slave.”
She glared at him. Unperturbed, he walked away.
Tania considered the facts. Cade was right. And he wasn’t lying. He would have torn the collar off as soon as it was placed around his neck.
She understood, suddenly, why Konrad had said Cade never would have let it happen to him.
Cade was already out of the building. She hurried to catch up.
OUTSIDE THE CLINIC, Cade looked to the sky. He didn’t have much time. He might be able to make it to Konrad’s house if he hurried.
His diversion with Tania had cost him valuable time, but he justified it to himself by pretending there was a chance Konrad would be at his clinic.
Laughable. He had to admit it now, even if he couldn’t tell her he’d figured out her message. Holt had outplayed him. Now he was reduced to breaking down doors, looking for Konrad like a blind pig rooting for slop.
His phone rang. The call was from Zach. The boy must have been back in D.C. by now.
“This is not a good time,” he said.
“Someone simply must teach you how to answer the phone.”
It was Holt. Alive. And one step ahead of him, again.
Cade didn’t bother asking how she’d gotten Zach’s phone.
“Where is he?”
“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” Holt said. “Even though you ran out on me. A girl could start to feel rejected, Cade.”
Cade was in no mood. She’d timed the call just right. Sunrise in a short while. No chance of finding her before then. “Where is he?”
She dropped the flirty tone. “Nothing for nothing. We want you to come in. Quietly. Your ass for his.”
“Where?”
“Do we have a deal?”
“Can we drop the charade? Tell me where he is. And I will be there. I know you will try to kill me. And you know nothing will stop me from coming for you.”
“Such a suspicious mind,” Holt said. But she gave him the address: the Federal Building, on Wilshire.
“Be here at sundown. Or we’ll send your boy back to the White House in a box.”
Cade hung up. He had no more time. He needed to find a place in the dark.
Tania spoke from behind him. “You look like shit, you know.”
He faced her. She stood there, waiting.
“Why are you still here?”
She thought that over. “Ask me again later.”
He started walking, tried to bru
sh past her. “I’m working,” he said.
She put out a hand, gently, and stopped him.
“Wherever you’re going, you won’t make it,” Tania said. “Almost sunrise.”
Cade hesitated, unsure of what to do.
“And you’re exhausted,” she added. “You have a place to stay?”
Cade shrugged. “I’ll find a spot in an underpass somewhere,” he said. “Plenty of those around.”
Tania gave him a look. “I think we can do better than that.”
FORTY-NINE
Helen smirked as the phone went dead. She was starting to get the idea that Cade actually disliked her.
Whatever. It wouldn’t be her problem much longer.
She buzzed Ken and Reyes back into the office.
Konrad didn’t know Cade wasn’t dead, and there was no one who would tell him. She might still be able to pull this off.
As for Cade and Zach, she had her own blunt instruments to solve the problem right here, sitting in the chairs across from her.
“Cade will be coming here,” she told Ken and Reyes. “Tonight. I’m depending on you to eliminate him.”
Ken just nodded. Reyes’s face didn’t betray a single thing, but in his eyes Helen could see the panic. He wasn’t as dumb as he looked, she reminded herself.
“We have the tools,” she said. “You will be able to take him out.”
She took out the weapons she’d ordered made when Konrad first told her that she’d have to eliminate Cade. R&D said they might work. Maybe. During the day, with a lot of luck.
But Ken and Reyes didn’t need to know that.
She handed them across the desk to the men.
“Here’s how it will go down,” Helen said. “Ken, you will engage Cade first, with the holy water.”
She pointed to the plastic pump-spray in Ken’s hands now. It would shoot a jet of blessed water, taken directly from the font of a Catholic church. Vampire tear gas.
“While he’s distracted and in pain, Reyes, you will approach from behind and fire the punch into Cade’s back, staking his heart.”
Reyes’s weapon was only slightly more sophisticated. A blank shotgun shell would fire a bolt from the barrel. The bolt was tipped with a hardened graphite point—basically, it would be like stabbing Cade with a wooden stake moving at the speed of sound.
Reyes looked at the bolt-gun, then at Ken, then back at Helen. “Question?” Helen asked him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Are you fucking kidding me? You want us to go up against that thing with a squirt gun and a sharp stick?”
“You questioning my orders?” Helen’s voice was cold.
“Come on, Helen, this is just nuts—”
“Are you requesting reassignment, Agent Reyes?”
That shut him up. “No. No, Agent Holt.”
“Good. Get some rest. Cade will be here at sunset. You’ll want to be sharp.”
“How are we supposed to know when he’s here?” Reyes asked, still surly.
“Man the security cameras. Wait for the bodies to pile up,” Helen said. “Cade’s not particularly subtle.” She stood.
“Wait, what are you going to do?” Reyes demanded.
It was over the line, but Helen figured she’d already pushed him pretty far. “I’m going to deal with the problem in the cell downstairs. Ken? Come with me.”
Reyes sat in his chair and sulked. But Helen knew he’d follow orders. What the Company could do to him was scarier than Cade, at least for now.
SHE AND KEN WALKED to the elevators, down to the subbasement.
Cade would kill Reyes and Ken tonight, she had no doubt. If, by some miracle, they got lucky and the weapons actually worked, it wouldn’t matter. Not to her anyway. Either she’d be long gone or her plan was blown anyway.
That only left Zach. The annoying little prick. Still in the interrogation room. On camera, and in the Company’s records now. No way to change that.
Fortunately, she had a much simpler answer for him: Ken.
Ken was strange. Even Helen could see that, and she was well aware of the kinks in her own personality. On the surface, he was perfect. Tall. Broad shoulders. Blue eyes. Good hair, white teeth, clear skin, the whole package.
But if you spent enough time with him, you’d swear you could hear an echo. There was an emptiness where the rest of a human being was supposed to be. He smiled at jokes, but you always wondered if that was just a learned reflex.
On paper, Ken was equally perfect. Upper-middle-class family, decent grades in college, accepted into CIA in a heartbeat. That’s where he met Helen.
He locked onto her the first day of training. She noticed him, too, but she could admit it was just animal lust for such a healthy specimen.
Ken was old-fashioned, like he’d learned to date from watching movies. He sent her flowers, for Christ’s sake.
Underneath that, there was something more robotic. He seemed to regard her as a missing component, and he was going down a checklist to procure her.
Helen figured out a way to use that, of course.
She spent most of the training course just out of his reach. Then, right before graduation, she stole into his dorm room at the facility and fucked his brains out.
He called, sent e-mails, even letters. She didn’t answer a single one.
But when she joined the Shadow Company and was given her own team, Ken was her first choice. She kept him at arm’s length, never explaining, never mentioning their history.
He’d follow her anywhere; do pretty much whatever she asked. When he got too frustrated, she would arrange for some relief—but only enough to keep him loyal.
She’d pretty much broken him. Whatever emotional deformity he had inside, Helen fit into it perfectly. Someday there would be a bill to pay for that, but for now, he was a good tool.
They stopped outside the interrogation room. She gave Ken a look.
“This is important to me,” she said. “Do you understand? I absolutely do not want him harmed. He’s special.”
Ken nodded, even though she could see the confusion in his eyes.
They entered the room together.
Zach lifted his head off the table but didn’t speak.
Ken took a position by the door. Helen walked around behind Zach.
“Zach, I have a few errands to run, so I’m going to leave you in the hands of Agent Blaylock. He’s going to ask you a few questions. I want you to cooperate with him.”
“I’ll have to check my schedule,” Zach said.
She laughed, and let her hand linger on Zach’s shoulder.
Ken focused on that, then his eyes flicked away.
Good.
“I know you’re going to do the right thing, Zach. There might even be a place for you on our team,” she said.
Zach glared. “I’m positively moist with anticipation.”
Anger clouded Ken’s chiseled features. Helen just laughed again and tousled Zach’s hair.
“Aren’t you cute?” she said. “Be smart, Zach. You want to be on the winning side.”
She walked back to the door. From the corner of her eye, she saw Ken’s attention was completely on Zach now.
She leaned in and whispered into Ken’s ear, just loud enough for the hidden mikes in the room to pick up, “Remember: do not harm him.”
Ken gave her a slight nod.
Helen walked out of the room and went to the security station down the hall.
Inside were monitors for all the cameras in the holding cells. She checked number four, Zach’s room.
She was just in time to see Ken unplug the camera from the wall. The screen went dark.
Helen smiled as she left the building. Ken would do just as she expected. God, what a big dumb animal.
Unfortunately, Konrad wouldn’t be as easy to fool. She just hoped Cade hadn’t gotten to him first.
FIFTY
The opulent room was so far removed from the cheap motel Cade and Zach used as to be on another planet. T
he bellman saw they had no luggage, saw the difference between Tania’s designer clothes and Cade’s rags, and gave them a knowing wink and smile.
Tania paid for all of it with a black AmEx card in someone else’s name. The desk clerk was perfectly obsequious as he handed over their keys.
Tania pulled the blackout drapes, sealing the room completely. It could have been high noon or midnight outside. There was no way to tell.
Cade felt better instantly, out of the light.
So did Tania, clearly. A layer of tension and irritability dropped off her like a cheap coat. The approaching daylight had been getting to them both.
She stretched back on the fifteen-hundred-thread-count sheets of the bed, revealing the tight band of pale, flat skin at her navel.
There was an inevitability gathering in the air, like smoke. Hanging there between them.
She rolled to one side, her hair hanging slightly over her face. “You want to sleep? Or shower?”
Cade thought about it. “No,” he said.
MOST VAMPIRES do not have sex. They consider it human and therefore degrading. But Cade and Tania weren’t like most vampires. They still remembered some of the good parts of being alive.
He pulled off his cheap T-shirt and went to her. She peeled off her top and arched her back up. He pinned her arms above her head.
She locked her legs around him and bit him, hard, on the neck. He pulled free, his blood spilling over her breasts. He lapped it up, licking the salty taste from her nipples, her skin. She latched again, sucked hard, pulled more blood from the wound, let it run out the sides of her mouth and down her neck.
She pulled him down closer to her and then flipped him over onto his back, yanking away his pants.
Then she clasped her legs around him again, hips rocking back and forth, riding him down to the bed.
Cade’s body tensed and shook like he was plugged into high-tension wires. He ran his hands over her, greedy for her feel, her touch. His fingers traced their way down, began working there.
She rode him harder. Her back arched. She tossed her head forward, her hair flying.
Cade’s hand moved faster, thrusting upward, lifting her off the bed. Tania sat on top of him, still sticky with his blood, writhing like the sacrifice on an altar from some long-dead religion.
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