Strong arms squeezed her and something popped in her back. She tried ignoring the pain, but that just made her vision swim harder, the shooting stars becoming a river of gold. Blinking, she focused on it, used it, let it drive her, along with the litany pouring from Sampson’s lips.
“You just had to make this tough, didn’t you?” Gasping with effort, he pushed his body into hers, making it impossible to pull her weapon from its sheath. “Angel, huh? You’re no goddamn angel. Fuck. I wanna…hurtyou so bad. Wanna hear youscreamfor leading us around like this. You…useless littlebitch.”
Not just sounds, not just threats, thewordswere fuel to her fire, much-needed oxygen, lighting up muscles that couldn’t function without the extra push.
We’ll see, she thought, suddenly as sure of her own wind-honed edges as she was of the knife’s. She wasn’t the wounded woman who’d come to this place all those months ago. No, this experience—surviving—had turned her into a blade, hard and sleek and cutting.
Grasp, pull, lift, then, with every ounce of strength she could muster, down. The blade slid home, into his back, through fabric and skin, between ribs, right to where his heart should be. If the bastard had one.
“Fuuuuccccc—” The word ended on a wet gurgle.
Realization hit his face in microsecond bursts: surprise, anger, the decision to retaliate…the effort…impossible…
He couldn’t do it.
With his goggles out of the way, his eyes were unavoidable and Angel watched as understanding dawned. He was finished. Ended.
It was justice. For everything he’d done.
But she couldn’t feel pride or relief. She felt nothing but the urgent need to get out from under his weight.
Digging deep for the strength, she shoved him off and lay there, gasping for air. It scraped over her throat, rough as a cheese grater. At least she was breathing.
Was Ford?
Swallowing back a rush of bile when her eyes landed on Sampson’s grotesque shape, she took off, hoping to God and the ice and every higher power she could think of that she wasn’t too late.
Chapter 43
Day 15—Chronos Corporation Headquarters, Stromville, West Virginia
“What do you mean he has disappeared?” Katherine Harper stood stiffly, one hand pressed to the Victorian mahogany pedestal desk in her office. “I pay him a hefty monthly retainer. He cannot simply stop working for me.”
“None of us have heard from him in at least a week.” The young woman on the other end of the phone line was barely competent. When she closed her eyes, Katherine could picture the private investigator’s secretary in some hovel of an office. Chewing gum. Likely playing one of those time-waster games on her mobile phone. Popping bubbles in some game, or building virtual farms.Shooting school children.“He was following a lead for one of your cases, ma’am. Campbell Turner?”
Campbell Turner.The director felt that name in every nerve of her body, even some that she knew without a doubt were long dead.Followed a lead… Hasn’t come back.
She inhaled long and slow. Best not to get worked up over nothing. The girl’s boss could just be a drunken PI on a bender after all. “What, precisely, was the lead?”
“I’m…not sure.”
“You are, I believe, an investigator’s secretary. Perhaps you could do a littleinvestigatingyourself? Have you looked at his email? Checked his telephone messages? Oh, I don’t know, read his files?”
The child on the other end of the line swallowed. Hopefully that gum hurt going down. “Uh. No…ma’am.”
Good God. Fiona as a five-year-old would have been better at this woman’s job. She shut her eyes against the wave of resentment that went through her every time she thought of all of the lost potential.
“Well, then, perhaps you should.” It occurred to Katherine that she was close to yelling at someone who was not her own employee. With another of those deep breaths in, she pulled back and did her best to channel her mother. Sweet, syrupy, all smiles. Even as she stabbed you in the back.
“I would be sograteful, young lady, if you could establish what it was, precisely, that sent your boss wherever he went. That location—or the person with whom he met, for example—would be helpful hints as to his whereabouts. Or a paper trail? Please provide me with that information at your earliest convenience.” She didn’t mean that last part. But people apparently appreciated the false impression that their time was their own.
Nothing but nervous breathing on the other end of the phone, then finally, “Of course.” A pause. “Ms. Harper.”
“Now.” She stretched a thin smile across her lips, doing her best to ensure it could be heard in her voice as well. Mama would have been proud, but even after all these decades, being friendly felt like trying to fit into someone else’s clothing. “Thank youso muchfor the update. I look forward to hearing from you again.”Night or day, she almost added, but that would be too eager. It would set off alarm bells, if she hadn’t done that already. “Soon.”
But how, oh how could she hold this inside when it was so very momentous? The man who’d stolen the original virus—Daddy’s virus—wasn’t far now. They’d find him. She felt it with certainty, in her bones.
Because she just had to tell someone, she broke her own rule of not visiting her daughter during working hours and walked out. Grasping her cane tightly in her hand, she went to the end of the hall, down the stairs to the ground floor, then toward the back of the house—away from the mountain and the company’s headquarters.
