Dr. Ava Korona Himeros. Discovered by the IPB through questioning Blackmore Sr. in the late ’90s.
“Holy fuck.”
Ty glanced between us as though trying to read between the lines of what we were talking about.
“Ty, you are new to all this, it seems,” Himeros went on, “so let me just explain for a moment: your boyfriend here, in his long career of taking out very influential, very powerful people, included my mother, a scientist who had done such great work through her experiments.”
“Your mother was a Nazi,” I said without hesitation or concern. “And you’re way too young to be her son.”
I’d clearly struck a nerve, because he approached and struck me with his blade, slicing across my cheek.
I used the opportunity to bow down close to my hand and work at the safety pin. My fingers had recovered, giving me the chance I needed to slip it from my shirt and hide it in my palm.
As I straightened back up, taking a breath, Himeros continued, “The only woman who ever gave a damn about me. The one who raised me. The only maternal bond that means anything in this world. As for her political alliances, my mother may have followed the system of her time, but she was nothing more than a scientist, like myself, of human nature, of understanding the way people worked. It’s so hard to let true science prosper in this world when we object to things on the grounds of ethics, because if we limit ourselves, how are we ever to hope to understand true humanity—the depths of it, the horrors? You objected to how she continued her experiments?”
“She was a serial killer, stealing lives from innocent people.”
“Who are any of you to judge, when all your organizations prey upon the innocent? Was the CIA innocent with MKUltra? Were they innocent with the Thornton Project? Every day, each institution schemes against the others and the citizens of this country and their own allies as they work toward their own political and financial interests. Not my mother, though. She was a genius, a goddess not understood under the current system, but one day, humanity will look back at all she has uncovered, at all we uncover, and appreciate her work.”
He wasn’t just a madman. He was evil. Just like his mother before him.
“So yes, I am here for vengeance, Liam.”
“You came for me, Jamie, and Spencer for killing her. But you also went for Blackmore because his involvement with the trafficking operation is what led us to discover her. Two birds, one stone?”
“Yes, you’re picking up on it fast. Spencer played the pivotal role. He never sold secrets to Blackmore Jr., but through my planning, I had it appear to be so. I posed as him and had them believe they were working with him before having my contact whisper suspicion and fear in Blackmore’s ear, leading him to kill the real Spencer in his condo in Toronto, then go after you and Agent Kerson. My plan was two-fold: Spencer was to take the fall as the mole, and Blackmore—”
“Would take the fall as the killer.”
“He wouldn’t have had to,” Himeros insisted, “had he done his job as he should have. Not if he’d been clean in his work. I saw it as giving his family the honor of a second chance. If he weren’t as careless as his father before him, he would have been spared. Now he’ll likely wind up with the same fate. Although, to my disdain, I have to say I expected it to take longer than this for the IPB to discover who was responsible. No tidier than his father before him. Such a shame to live by such a poor example.”
It was apparent he hadn’t expected us to catch on, meaning that Spencer really had been the one to leave us that clue on his back. He was innocent, and this guy had conned Junior into doing his dirty work so he wouldn’t have to take the fall.
“All fit together too easily,” I said. “One issue: I knew my friend Spencer and that something wasn’t right.”
I was chatting him up, trying to buy us time as I shaped the safety pin, slowly, making sure his gaze was averted so he wouldn’t catch on to my work.
“But as you saw,” he continued, “with a mole identified and Blackmore taken out, it was easy for the IPB to walk away. No prying eyes would ever come looking for me.”
“They sure as fuck will now.”
“But I have my victory regardless. All parties will be punished. And I am far tidier than Blackmore, so it’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
“You’re a sick fuck,” I said. “Just like your mother—that perverse, twisted, fucked-up quack.”
Himeros flashed his teeth like some sort of animal, trying to intimidate me, before he slapped me with the back of his hand, the side of the blade scraping across my cheek again, drawing more blood.
I was trying to get him riled up. Get him to hurt me again.
I figured he could just as easily kill me too, but he didn’t bring me all the way there to say that much and then kill me, no. He had other plans in mind, and I wasn’t eager to see whatever they were.
I bowed over again, giving myself time to finish making adjustments to the safety pin.
Our only hope, it seemed.
As I pulled back up, he was heading over to Ty, clearly unaware of my deception.
“How can you be with such an asshole?” Himeros asked Ty. “I hate a man who can’t respect science.”
