She wanted to touch him, just hold his hand, ever since the moment she met him.
The only distraction this morning was the thought of Jamie, and the opportunity to hold his hand, even if it meant giving him pain.
The pain would teach him, and serve as a reminder to her, as well.
Everything beautiful can be destroyed.
She was thinking of Jamie, but no surge of adrenaline followed. Only a strange melancholy.
She could be strangled to death here, and Jamie might not even know or care.
Jamie.
With his mangled fingers.
There she found the answer, and knew it was time to simply let go.
Jamie pushed down on the door handle.
For a moment, there was nothing.
No telltale click.
Or hiss.
Or beep.
He pushed the door open a few more inches.
Nichole was straddling him now, and David saw that it wasn’t paint on her arms at all. She had bloody stumps where her hands should have been. Okay, there was one hand, kind of just hanging there. Her skin smelled like Chinese food. The sickeningly sweet aroma distracted him from the fact that Nichole wasn’t wearing a shirt, and that her pussy was pressed up against his chest. Clothes separated their flesh—and there were those mangled hands—but still, she aroused him. David never thought he’d experience this kind of intimacy with Nichole, who’d been out to destroy him ever since she’d started working for him. Which was a shame. He’d always found her deliciously screwable.
“You have one chance,” she said, a tiny bead of blood hanging from one corner of her mouth. “Tell me how to get off this floor.”
“I could so eat you out right now,” David said.
Nichole’s eyes widened, and then she leaned forward. For a moment there, David thought she was going to give him a little kiss. Right there on his forehead.
But she was reaching too far up and behind.
Nichole pressed her elbow against the grip of the gun that she had positioned next to David’s head. She stuck out her tongue.
I quit, she thought, and thrust her tongue hard against the trigger.
David Murphy died not knowing his mission had been accomplished.
He was still thinking about what Nichole’s pussy would look like. He was thinking well-trimmed, but a little loose. Used. He’d heard she’d been messing around with the mail guys for years. Which she had been. He’d watched some of it. Got off on it.
David wore a waterproof watch he never removed, even during sex or masturbation. Lovers would tease him about it. What, are you going to time me?
He had worn it ever since he first rented the thirty-sixth floor of 1919 Market Street, and installed detonating devices on the thirtieth floor. And installed the trigger in his wristwatch.
The watch was one of those that monitored your pulse. Constantly, quietly, efficiently.
But it wasn’t exactly one of those kinds of watches. He’d had it modified so that it had room for the trigger. If his pulse stopped, a signal would travel to the detonating devices six floors below. If David Murphy was to go, everything was to go.
And so it went.
The moment the door opened, there was an explosion.
Jamie screamed and hurled himself backwards, slamming against the opposite wall, then slid to the ground and tried to scuttle away like a crab.
Jesus H….
That wasn’t a chemical bomb.
The crazy bastard, he rigged a real explosive to the door.
But not here. There was no fire or smoke. The explosion sounded like it was somewhere else in the building.
Was the bomb set somewhere else?
Christ, was David planning on bringing the whole place down?
Twenty floors down, Vincent Marella dreamed he heard an explosion. He woke up to find that his eyes were bleeding and he could barely breathe.
He also heard a man scream.
Amy released her grip momentarily—there was an explosion, somewhere, and it seemed to puzzle her.
That was all that Ania needed.
The lid of one of her wrist compartments flipped up easily. The blade slid down and landed in her palm. She had taken a chance, releasing her grip on Amy’s wrists to dig out her weapon. But what was true love without risks?
Ania used her injured arm to brace Amy’s body and her right hand to slide the blade into the hollow of Amy’s neck.
Then she sliced down, directly between Amy’s breasts and down her stomach to where her belt used to be.
The bullet that had ripped through David’s brains also struck one of the large conference room windows, spiderwebbing it. That was a nice bit of luck, Nichole thought. It wouldn’t take much to push the rest of it through. Not to call for help. She was too high up to seriously entertain that. And with the explosion down below, well, attention would be scattered, to say the least, for the time being.
Nah. Nichole Wise, code name Workhorse, was thinking long-term.
If she could sever the stubborn piece of flesh attached to her hand—and a jagged edge of the conference room window might do the trick—she could drop her hand out the window. Thirty-six floors down, wave good-bye. It might take a while, but at some point, some investigator would stumble across it, bag it, and eventually do a fingerprint check. Langley would pop up. Questions would be asked. And maybe the story would finally be told. The story of her miserable years undercover at Murphy, Knox.
Maybe she’d end up a black star, chiseled into the slab of white Vermont marble that was the CIA’s Wall of Honor:
IN HONOR OF THOSE MEMBERS
OF THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES
IN THE SERVICE OF THEIR COUNTRY
Buddy, you don’t know the half of it, Nichole thought.
Then she died.
Keene paused by the sea to watch the waves. He wasn’t looking forward to the conversation he was about to have.
Farther down on the beach Keene saw another dog—not a three-legged one this time. It was a fully equipped black Lab, and he was running into the crashing waves. A young red-haired mother, no more than thirty, was standing there with two preschoolers, both with reddish-blond hair. They were jumping and laughing at the dog, who rushed into the waves, stopped to relieve his bowels, then raced out of the water again before another wave could wash over him. Speed defecation. Keene had to admire that. The owner needed to be commended. He wondered if the children were trained that way, as well. Go on. Run into the water, kids. Go potty.
Keene’s mobile rang. It was his second source.
“I didn’t think I’d hear back from you,” Keene said.
“I didn’t think I’d be calling.”
“What’s going on?”
“There’s a lot of activity here on my end.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.”
There was a pause.
“Look, just come out with it. Can’t be any worse than what I’m already thinking.”
“Your man is behind it all.”
“What do you mean?”
“David Murphy is a straw man. A burnout case. Your man McCoy plucked him from the wreckage, started to run him. Build him up again. But McCoy was behind everything. Including the financing of a particular tracking device that has been causing us much trouble as of late.”
“I see. You just find this out now?”