“I know you aren’t the genius in the family,” she said. “But haven’t you put it together yet?”
Jacob cleared his throat. “She’s Clayton’s mystery woman,” he said. “If that helps clear anything up.”
Simon worked his jaw from one side to the other and pretended the pop of the damaged hinge released some of the wire-tight tension in his spine.
“I misspoke,” he said, his voice clipped and curt with anger. “I’ve got the what. You stole Harry’s code so you could run some sort of stealth research product behind Dev’s back. You killed Harry. You framed Jacob for it. Sound about right?”
Nora’s eyes flickered, and emotion tightened her lips. “I didn’t kill Harry,” she said.
“He’s dead.”
“That wasn’t what I wanted.”
“No,” Simon admitted. “I know that. You wanted to talk to him.”
“Yes.”
“Since he was dead, though,” Simon continued, without acknowledging he’d heard her, “you went ahead and sent all the information on whatyou’ddone to PeaPod and blamed Dev for it. Next step—and I can’t take credit for working this out, since you actually told me—would have been regretfully stepping up to take over after Dev got forced out of the company.”
“Sounds like he’s got your number,” Jacob said.
Nora tightened her fingers on his arm and dug them in through his shirt. “If I were you,” she hissed. “I’d shut up. None of this would have happened if it weren’t for you. Nobody would have been hurt.”
“If you hadn’tstartedthis, nobody would have gotten hurt,” Simon growled. “Fuck, Nora, we were friends. You and Dev have known each other—”
“Beccawas my friend,” Nora spat. Emotion flushed her face as her voice rose. “I knewBeccasince we were in school. Dev was along for the ride—the plus-one to Becca’s company. Now she’sgone, and what do I have?”
“What did youwant?” Simon asked. Below them, people in the park paused and looked up. He could imagine their curious expressions. “Dev would have given it to you. You just had to ask.”
“Why should I have to ask?” Nora spat back at him. “Why should I ask for him to give me something, when I’d earned it? I broke my back when Becca was sick, taking over the company and being there for the three of them. I went to the hospital, I had sleepovers for Callie whenIhadn’t slept in a week because I was trying to deal with the board. I cooked fucking casseroles. I had to look it up on the Internet to learn how. Then she died, and Dev came back to Syntech and pissed on all my hard work. Every contract I’d sweated blood negotiating, every project that he hadn’t thought up, just shoved into storage. It wasn’t fair.”
Targeting algorithms and a new identity with inky government fingerprints all over it for Lau.
“The DoD deal,” he said. “Nora, you knew Dev wouldn’t agree to that. First time it came up, you knew he’d blackball the deal when he got back.”
She twisted her mouth to the side and hitched one shoulder in a wry shrug. “I thought he might respect me enough to hear me out,” she said. “When he didn’t, I realized that he never would. But I didn’t want to take his company. I wanted to set up my own. With the projectsI’dbeen working on, the contracts thatI’dset up.”
“Using Syntech research and intellectual property.” Jacob shook his head. The long shadows from the bridge flickered across his face like bars. “Trust me—this is my wheelhouse—they never would have let you get away with it.”
It was Simon who corrected him. “She would have,” he said. He watched Nora’s face as he talked—the uneasy mixture of pride, confidence, and shame that set around her mouth. “The DoD isn’t fond of their contractors giving out the details of their covert projects. If her plan had worked, she’d have disappeared, and her projects would have gone with her. Except it didn’t work, did it, Nora?”
“You think I don’t know that?” Nora said. The bitterness in her voice seemed to catch her by surprise. She hesitated and then let go of Jacob’s arm and held her hands up. He stumbled away from her and then stopped as though he wasn’t sure what he should do. The gun rested against the cup of Nora’s palm—small, dark, and nearly hidden. “It wasn’t meant to be like this, Simon. No one was meant to get hurt. I just wanted something for myself. Now I don’t know what to do. No one’s listening to me anymore, and I don’t know how to fix any of this. I need your help.”
It should have been pathetic. Somehow, though, Nora managed to hang on to a certain spare dignity. The bare bones of her honesty kept her back straight. Whatever she’d done that she was ashamed of, she wasn’t ashamed to ask for help.
The dull thump was low enough that Simon barely noticed it. Then something flicked his ear, and Nora jolted backward. Her eyes went wide, as if she’d seen something that surprised her, and she reached up to grab her shoulder. That was when Simon saw the blood, oozing out of the cloth she was squeezing between her fingers.
Chapter Twenty-One
IT TOOKJacob longer than it should to realize what happened. There was nothing cinematic about it—no ear-rattling bang, no dramatic spray of gore—just a jolt and a gasp. Then he saw the blood dripping onto the bridge and put the pieces together.
Nora’s gasp turned into a sigh and a long, slow hum of defeat, and she slid down the side of the bridge. There was something almost graceful about it, in the designer silk drape of her suit and the neat tuck of shiny leather heels under her folded legs.
“Fuck,” Jacob said. His eyes were glued to Nora’s hand as the blood welled between her fingers and trickled down between her knuckles.
“Jake, get down.” Simon grabbed his arm and tugged him down into a crouch. He held his gun in the other hand, tucked discreetly down at his thigh. “We need to get out of here.”
“What about her?” Jacob asked.
