Jacob pulled his phone out to scan a couple of the pages. He had three images uploading to the cloud when he heard a key in the lock.
“Shit,” he mouthed. “Fuck.”
He shoved the papers back together, set the boozy cup back on top, and scrambled off the couch. His hands shook with the sudden jolt of adrenaline… and fear. Mostly fear. The bruise on the back of his hand was still livid enough he could see it through the latex glove.
A quick list of escape options ran through his brain as he glanced around the room. The balcony caught his attention for a second, and then he snorted. That was it. No more action movies. They gave him ridiculous ideas.
Jacob scrambled over the arm of the couch, dashed into the crescent-moon kitchen, and went down on his knees behind the counter. His kneecaps cracked against the hard tiles and made him bite back a curse, but at least it gave him more than one exit if he needed it.
At eye level there was a stack of pill boxes—allergy medication, thyroid, a bottle of B12, and syringes. Jacob stared at them but didn’t really see them as he listened to the door open and someone come into the room. It was the voice that caught his attention at first, an accent far from home and with a vaguely familiar smoky contralto. Then the name on the medications came into focus.
Nora Reyes. In the months Jacob had spent infiltrating Syntech, he’d never had any reason to focus on her. He’d done his research, though. She’d been the deceased Becca Porter’s roommate at college and Devon’s lab partner. Porter had hired her right after Syntech was founded and rescued her from the life of an associate lecturer.
The image of the paper Simon had found at Clayton’s house flashed through Jacob’s head.Useful for no project.“No” wasn’t a negative. It was a nickname.
“Simon, where the hell are you? I need to talk to you,” Nora said. She sounded sharp and clipped the words off between her teeth as though she were angry or nervous…. A lighter flicked, and she sucked in air. Collecting herself…? “It’s all gotten out of hand. This wasn’t what it was meant to be like. I just wanted… needed…. I need to talk to you. Call me back when you get this. It’s important. Please.”
Jacob shifted forward and tried to peer around the edge of the counter. He needed to get out of there and call Simon—let him know what was going on. A small disruptive part of his brain tried to ahem its way into the discourse—or wecouldblackmail her—but that was not the part of his brain he wanted to listen to today.
Tomorrow…. Well, tomorrow’s bad ideas deserved their chance to make their case.
He couldn’t see Nora. In his head he mapped out the apartment and moved a static mental cutout of the dark-haired woman from one spot to another. She could have walked over to the windows. It was a good view to brood over. If she was, and if she was alone, Jacob could maybe get to the door and out without her catching him. She’d know someone had been in the flat, but not who.
A sharp metallic click interrupted his thoughts. It was an indictment of the last few weeks that Jacob immediately knew it was a gun. His balls tried to squeeze back up into his groin and fought his dropped stomach for space as he froze.
“We haven’t met,” Nora said, a bitter half laugh trembling in her words, “but you, Mr. Archer, have been a royal pain in my ass.”
Jacob closed his eyes for a second. He wished he’d taken the time for a piss after he finished his coffee. It wasn’t exactly dignified, dying with wet pants. He opened his eyes, sat back on his haunches, and turned around.
The dark elegant woman, whose photo was currently taking up space in his phone’s memory, was standing in front of him. She’d lost five inches in height because she left her shoes behind in favor of sneaking up on him with silk-muffled feet, and there was a small classy-looking gun in her hand. It was aimed at Jacob’s head, and her hand was rock steady all the way to her shoulder.
He didn’t think she was bluffing about knowing how to use it.
“You haven’t exactly made my life easier,” he said. “You framed me for murder.”
Her mouth twisted, and the generous red curve turned into a thin, sour line. “You deserved it. Harry wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for you. None of this would be happening if it weren’t for you.” Her voice cracked when she said Clayton’s name, but her eyes were dry as she jerked the gun. “Get up. You put yourself in the middle of this. Now you get a front row to how it ends.”
Chapter Twenty
MARION, TEXAShad one thing going for it. No one gave a man in a bloody suit carrying a bag from the convenience store a second look as he limped into the bathroom. The lock was broken. Simon wedged the door shut and kicked the scarred chunk of wood under it with the heel of his shoe. The exertion of doing that broke a sour sweat on him, and a wave of dizzying nausea washed over him.
He leaned on the sink, flexed his fingers against the cracked china, and waited for the sickness to ebb. Once it did he turned the cold tap on full, cupped his hands under the stream, and splashed it over his face. Icy rivulets ran down his chest and funneled along the line of muscle to his stomach. It cleared his head, slapped the dopey distance of shock out of him, and made him realize he was thirsty. He licked the water off his lips to cut the dust on his tongue.
His reflection in the fly-spotted mirror looked combat ready, with dust caked on his skin and blood sprayed over his cheek and temples. It set his nerves on edge—made them hot and itchy under his skin and made his muscles ache with trigger-ready eagerness. His therapist would call it paranoia, but with Shaw in the wind, Simon called it good sense. But then he supposed that’s what he’d say if he were paranoid.
There’d been no sign of Lau on the circuit of the town that Simon had bribed his yawning chauffeur to take. He was either on his way to Syntech to blow the whistle or he was on the run. Simon couldn’t blame him either way.
There was also the off chance that Shaw had Lau. Simon hoped not, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it anymore.
He stripped his trousers off. Blood had glued the fabric to his leg, and it tore away the thin scab over the wound as it peeled off. Simon grimaced and drew his lips back from his teeth at the needle of pain that wriggled through the meat of his thigh. Fresh blood oozed sluggishly from the broken-open wound.
He grabbed the rough first-aid supplies he’d grabbed from the shelves—gauze pads, oversized Band-Aids, and antibiotic cream. He covered the worm-track wound with a blob of white cream from one end to the other, and it went pink around the edges as the blood mixed with it. Simon slapped a pad over it, pressed it down with his palm to spread the cream, and secured it with Band-Aids.
Blood and stained water ran down his leg. Simon used a handful of paper towels from the dispenser to roughly wipe his leg off. Then he shook out the jeans he’d grabbed on his way through the store and pulled them on. The cheap denim clung to his wet skin, and stains showed dark against the prefaded fabric.
It would do.
The bin at the door was knee height and smelled like vomit and baby shit. Simon lifted out a handful of trash, dumped his bloody bits and pieces in, and covered them over. He washed his hands quickly in the sink, dried them on his hips, and wrestled the door open again.
