Percy shifted his weight for a more solid footing, waiting for any tears in Ridley’s defense. “Gone soft for me after all these years, Ridley? I’m touched.”
Focus, he told himself.Play the cards.“If you wanted an intimate kill, why the bomb, old friend?”
Ridley’s brows rose, giving Percy hope. “Know about that, do you? You never cease to amaze.” The gun twitched in his grip with the slightest hand tremble. “What else do you know,old friend?”
Was that fear in his voice? Percy latched on to his opponent’s weakness and went all in.
“I know you’ve been working the system for a long time now.”
Ridley flinched.
Percy was on the right track.
“I know you’ve opened doors for personal gain,” he continued.
If the man got any paler, he’d be transparent.
Now the real gamble. Which card to push? Money? Power?
Both.
“I did some digging after our little reunion the other day, purely for selfish reasons, you understand?” Percy shrugged with as much swagger as he could muster. “Didn’t want you changing your mind about those official orders once I held up my end.” Percy shook his head, careful to watch the other man’s smallest ticks. “What a naughty boy you’ve been, Ridley. Skimming funds, misuse of resources...” He put every ounce of confidence into his final draw. “I’m sure the prime minister will enjoy the report I sent this morning about your activities. Should arrive, oh”—he checked his timepiece—“before the good ol’ boy wakes up for his usual midnight snack, I’d think.”
For a moment, Percy thought he had him. Ridley certainly looked horrified, but that wide-eyed expression slowly twisted into one of confusion.
And then it cleared entirely.
Ridley’s sight on the gun firmed, and the smile he offered was like a slash of a sharp blade across his face. “Nice try, Percy. Marks for creativity and superb guesswork. I have, indeed, been stealing moneyandusing agents for my betterment for years.”His eyes glinted with malice and cunning. “But if you discovered all my sins, you’d have uncovered your own active role in my machinations.”
Percy recoiled. “I’ve never stolen from the department.”
“That’s not what the reports say.”
Fucking hell!“You planted false evidence to incriminate me?” Percy gritted his teeth. The bastard didn’t get to win like this. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll get free of this somehow and Iwillconfess everything to the prime minister, reveal what you’ve done. Incarceration and torture have never frightened me.”
Ridley slapped his leg with his free hand, a crude version of applause. “An unforgiving speech, old friend. Top marks again. I would have believed you too. The man cruel and cold enough to stab his closest friend in the back.” Ridley’s chuckle sounded like a devil’s laugh. “But that was beforeyou’dgone soft.”
There was nothing but cold steel in Percy’s veins now. Given the chance, he felt confident he could shred the worthless git with his bare hands. “Try me, old man. I’ll show you my resolve and guard are as strong as ever.”
But Ridley had one last trick to play. “Your guard. But what abouthers?”
Ridley’s smile had icy dread sinking low in Percy’s belly, especially when he followed Ridley’s gaze to a figure emerging from the treeline, a figure in a familiar blue riding coat.
Danny.
And the man following her out of the woods wasn’t any of the Merrys, not with the gun he held to the back of her head.
“No.” Forget the prime minister, forget the maggot posing as his friend and mentor. This couldn’t be happening. Danny was back up in the tower, safe.
His feet moved forward of their own accord, needing to see for himself that his eyes were wrong.
Ridley’stskfroze him in place.
Smug smile pulling his stubbled facial whiskers to one side, Ridley shook his head. “Should have disarmed me when you had the chance.”
“Should have taken your knife and stabbed you through the eye in your office,” Percy said, though his thoughts were far from the past, far from his present. What mattered was Danny’s future. A future that was seconds from being blown away by the orders of a man he’d considered his friend.
For what purpose? There wasn’t a purpose good enough for what Ridley meant to take from him.
