“For God’s sake,” muttered the new man. He was a typic with salt-and-pepper hair, the only detail Peter could fix on as he worked to keep the contents of his stomach in place. “Where’s my handkerchief…”
He was wiping the blood off Peter’s face when Peter found the jagged piece of his ruined molar and spat it out. “Is that atooth?”the man snapped at the now-visible Morse, and at that point Peter lapsed into laughter that even to his ears sounded crazy.
The man with the salt-and-pepper hair pursed his lips. “Blackwell?—”
“He just killed two women.” Peter glared first at Morse, wearing his omnipresent dark glasses, and then at the typic. “And you’re upset about atooth?”
The man took a step back and considered him, one eyebrow raised. “You do realize”—his lips twisted into a thin smile—“thatyoukilled those women.”
The rage that would have propelled him to answer intemperately three minutes earlier had ebbed. Stupid to have screamed at Morse. Dangerous to have brought up the vice president and his daughter. Myopic to think this couldn’t get worse just because he saw no way out alive. He had to think twice before he said another word.
He looked the man in the eye and, with a knife-edge calm, said,“No.”
The typic shrugged. “Yes. Here’s the position: Three hundred thousand people, give or take, saw you murder your sister-in-law this morning and kidnap the old woman. In a day or two, everyone will find out that Washington police mishandled a tip about how you posed a danger to Lydia Harper because of your growing obsession with her. And as you might recall, your former colleagues did try to warn the world that you were disturbed.”
He paused, either for effect or a response. Peter simply glared at him.
“Now, I don’t think a messy trial and execution would be in the country’s best interests,” the man said, even more smoothly than before, and Peter suppressed an eye roll because there wasn’t a chance in hell they would let him beput on trial and say his piece. “So that’s why I’m here. To lay out a mutually beneficial plan.”
“No.” Peter left thefuck youunspoken, but he thought his tone made it abundantly clear.
“I thought I told you never to turn down a proposition until you hear what it is.”
He stared at the man, taken aback.“Whitaker?”
Lt. Gen. Whitaker, head of the Pentagram’s weapons development program, smiled that thin smile again. “You will come back to work on Project 96. You will see it through to completion as quickly as possible.”
Peter shut his eyes, blocking out the smile and the bland face, feeling bile rising up his esophagus. Whatwasthis?
Good God, did they kill Lydia because he would then be unable to turn them down?
But in fact, hecouldturn them down. Because he refused to go along with this. He absolutely refused.
“No,” he spat. “I’d much prefer the trial and execution.”
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t clear,” Whitaker said pleasantly. “This isn’t a choice.”
“Actually, it is.” Peter swallowed to try to clear the metallic taste of blood from his mouth. “You can tell me to work on the weapon all you want, but there’s nothing you can do to make me. I’ve already been dosed with ayayak root, as you probably heard from the police, so that won’t work again. Torture can leave people utterly unable to function, so you can’t risk that. And I’d rather die, so threatening to kill me is useless.”
“Oh, we’re not doing any of that,” Whitaker said, waving an insouciant hand. He turned to Morse. “If you would?”
The wizard strode past them, Peter tensing for something awful. A different drug? A more subtle sort of torture?
He heard a drawer open. The click of a button. A whirring sound.
A picture snapped into view on the blank wall in front of him, blurry at first, then clearer. He and Beatrix sat at their kitchen table, the remains of a meal between them, his hand on hers, her face visible but not his—a view from a hidden camera attached to the ceiling.
“I do want her. I do. God, I do. But I swear I don’t love your sister. I love you, wife mine,” he heard himself say. Tinny, distant, but his voice. Words that probably came out of his mouth at some point, in completely different sentences, stitched together.
“Prove it to me,” Beatrix replied, her lips moving in concert with the words, a snippet of something she must actually have said.
“Anything,” he said.
“Oh? What?”
“Anything.I’ll—I’ll kill her if you want me to.” A pause. “Should I? Should I … kill Lydia?”
Beatrix smiled her crooked smile, made horrible in this fabricated context. “Yes. Oh, yes.”
