“It was the deal I made with the Corcasians, in exchange for their cooperation in helping me.” She shrugged. “It’s my inheritance. My right. I want the ghost of my father to know that all the money he’d hoarded so zealously will now go into everything my mother had ever dreamed of. A fund in her name. An estate that belongs to her side of the family.”
Penelope’s inheritance. It made sense. This wasn’t the first time authorities had trained their eyes on Eli Morrison, and even if they couldn’t succeed this time, the evidence was steadily mounting against the man. It was only a matter of time before his assets would be seized.
But Penelope was clean. She hid her tracks even better than her father did, and if she got to the money before authorities could, it’d be hers. And somehow, he knew she would get out of all this without a single shred of evidence tying her to any of his criminal doings, to his death, or to Winter’s.
Or Sydney’s.
“I understand why you’re doing this,” he said. “Truly. But please don’t go through with it. You’re giving your mother’s family blood money.”
“I don’t think this is your call to make,” she replied coolly.
“This isn’t who you want to be,” he pleaded. “I know you meant it genuinely when you said you desired meaning in your life.”
“This is meaningful to me,” she replied.
His gaze fell onto the cube in her hands. A chill rippled through him. “You’re going to ship tons of this chemical weapon into the hands of terrorists.”
“I’m working with Connor Doherty for a reason,” she replied.
He narrowed his eyes. “Then why am I still alive at all? Why am I here?”
“Because you took something from my flat that didn’t belong to you.” She folded her arms. “And I want it back.”
Her bejeweled hairpin. The encrypted data that Sydney had pulled from it and given to Panacea. In a flash, he realized that it must be incriminating evidence of Penelope’s involvement in everything.
“I don’t have it,” he said.
“You know where it is. Or maybe who has it.”
The sound of footsteps against the deck made Winter turn. Penelope looked over.
“Finally,” she muttered.
A man stepped out from behind the nearest row of shipping containers, walking with a calm, easy gait, dressed as properly as ever, his eyes hidden behind a pair of shades. Connor.
Immediately behind him came two men that Winter recognized as former bodyguards for Eli—except this time, they were dragging between them a slight, slender figure, her short blond hair bobbing weakly with her bent head.
Winter couldn’t see the girl’s face, but he recognized her instantly. Terror jolted through his body.
Sydney.
30
Trapped
Sydney looked up as they stopped in the room. Paramecium canisters everywhere, secured against the shelves.
Her gaze darted to Penelope, then to the cube she held in her hand. Images flashed through her mind of Eli Morrison’s death, the way foam had dripped from his mouth as the chemical destroyed the inside of his body. The Paramecium was everywhere now, all around them, as if death had been manufactured and packaged for the shelves and now waited for a chance to be freed. Her skin crawled, and everything in her wanted to pull away from the cube.
Her gaze darted to Winter.
Shot in the chest, a good few inches shy of his heart, with a bullet slender enough to leave a small wound. She could tell just by the bloodstain dotting the white bandages wrapped around his bare chest. Judging from the way he was breathing, the injury hurt but hadn’t pierced his lung cavity—in all likelihood, it had torn into his chest muscle and lodged deep in there.
He’d need attention soon. All that blood loss had made him weak; the coloration of his face was ghostly pale, and a sheen of sweat glistened against his skin. If he went into shock out here, in the middle of the ocean, he’d die even before Penelope’s interrogation could really begin.
It took every bit of Sydney’s willpower not to scream and lunge rightthere, to direct all her strength at reaching the young woman. Instead, she sank into the calm of her mind and lowered her head again. Let herself go slack.
No one with a bad hand ever won by revealing it early.
