“Why did you arrange a trap for us here, Collingwood? Not to arrest us, certainly. You tried misinformation, blackmail, threats, but they didn’t work, did they?”
He moved round in front of the government man, ducked so he could be sure of eye contact. “Richard loves his wife—enough to ruin himself for her. You counted on that. But you didn’t count on the fact that Charlie loves her parents too much to allow them to go down without a fight.” He straightened, looked down at the bowed head without emotion. “If you’d done your homework, you would have known you had to take out Charlie—and me—right at the start, instead of leaving us until last. And you’re foolishly still hoping you can come out of this on top, aren’t you? So, is Elizabeth alive or not?”
Collingwood lifted his head, pulled his lips back as much in a snarl as a smile. He’d bitten his tongue and the blood stained his teeth.
“I don’t know. Could be,” he said, panting. “We were waiting to see what we could get out of the girl before we killed the old lady. Hell, we were going to kill the whole fucking bunch of you, anyway. Medical research lab is always working with bodies. What’s a few more?”
My father had moved in again, to lean over his shoulder. I couldn’t see exactly where he had his hands, but from the set of his shoulders, I could guess.
“Don’t,” I said, finding my voice. It came up rusty. “Please don’t. We have what we need. We have the information. He’s finished. It’s over. You cross the line and there’s no coming back. Please, don’t do this to him—to yourself.”
My father twisted, flicking his eyes back to meet mine. Same color, same shape. Same blood between us, binding us together. What else had I sucked out from his genes? What would I, in my turn, pass on?
“Do you hear that, Mr. Collingwood?” he said softly. “My own daughter thinks I’ve become a monster. Well, at least you have the satisfaction of knowing that, whatever I am, you helped create me.”
His arm, his hand, slid forwards. Collingwood threw his head back and his body jerked, horror and utter disbelief in his eyes in the split second before they rolled back in his head and he fainted.
My father carefully withdrew the knife and wiped the blade clean. He neatly folded it up and handed it back to Sean with an absent nod, like he’d just borrowed a handkerchief or a pen. He peeled off the gloves and dropped them on the floor. They were bloodied to the wrists.
“You may as well let him down,” he said, straightening his cuffs. “He won’t be going anywhere.”
In the corridor outside, Terry O’Loughlin was sitting next to the groggy security guard. She had both hands pressed over her ears and her eyes tight shut and she jumped when I staggered over and touched her shoulder.
“Is it … over?” she said, pale as winter. “Is he dead?”
“Yes, it’s over,” I said. “And no, he isn’t.”
My father paused and looked down at her. “Whereabouts on the second level is the research lab?” he said, and the clipped note was back with a vengeance.
She gathered those lethal legs underneath her and pushed to her feet. “I’ll show you,” she said, doggedly undaunted.
“Just tell us, Terry, and we’ll find it,” Sean said, his voice quiet. He jerked his head. “What started in there isn’t over.”
Her jaw hardened, just a little. “And I helped start it,” she said. “So I won’t shy away from seeing it end.”
Sean stared at her a moment longer, then nodded like she’d passed some kind of test. His eyes flicked to me. “And are
“I’ll be fine,” I said, knowing he’d sense the lie but have no choice other than to run with it. And even as I spoke, Vondie’s words came back to me, cruel and bitter as a blade.
Sean moved in close, crowding me. “You’re suffering, Charlie,” he said tightly. “Do you think I can’t see it? If the damned Vicodin will help you get through this, just take it and don’t be so bloody stubborn.”
“I—.” I stepped back, still trembling but gaining steadily. “I’m fine,” I repeated.
He handed me the Glock he’d taken from Collingwood, watched me close my fist around it. I didn’t expect that a man of Collingwood’s experience would carry a weapon unready, but I brushed my index finger over the loaded chamber indicator anyway, just to be sure, dropped the magazine out to verify a full load, slapped it home again, and returned his stare, defiant. “Let’s just get this done.”
“All right.” He stepped back, his face shut down. “Okay, Terry, lead the way.”
She took us up a utility stairwell to the next floor, through a maze of corridors that all looked the same and went on for miles, past labs and huge soulless open-plan office spaces. The place had the sterile smell of air conditioning over new carpet and old sweat, laced with the thin pine scent of industrial cleaning fluid.
We moved as quietly as we could, Sean ahead, Terry directing him, my father behind her, seeming almost unaware of his immediate surroundings, me covering our rear, my limbs returning to me with every stride.
Working weekends was obviously not company policy at Storax. We encountered nobody, saw nothing except the empty cubes of office drones, containing cluttered desks and dead computer monitors. Did these people have any idea what the company that employed them had been working on? If the check arrived each month, did they care?
Terry halted. “The lab’s up ahead,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Through the next set of doors. On your left.”
“Good,” Sean said. “What’s the layout?”
Terry shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never had cause to go in there before. Maybe if I had …” She broke off, frowning.
“You’ve done more than enough, Terry,” Sean said. He smiled. It was the kind of smile that, when he directed it at me, had a tendency to make me go a little stupid. It seemed to have much the same effect on Terry. “You’d best stay here. I doubt they’ll let you close enough to punt their bollocks into their throats, in any case.”
“Excuse me?”
“He means you probably won’t get a chance to kick them in the balls,” I supplied as I came past her.
“No, I guess not,” she said, looking faintly embarrassed. “But I’ll stay close. I reckon, when this is over, you might just need a good lawyer. And I have a feeling I’ll be making a career move.”
I glanced at my father. “You should stay here, too,” I said abruptly. “We can’t protect you when we go in there. Trying may get us all killed.”
“I don’t expect you to protect me, Charlotte. I expect you to do your job,” my father said, coldly imperious.
I stared at him blankly for a moment before I saw the underlying thread of panic.
Was this acceptance at last? If so, why did it feel like it had all come too little, too late? And why did I feel he’d turned into someone whose approval was the last thing I wanted.
He nodded to Sean, a stiff jerk of the head. Sean nodded back. Then we were moving forwards, the pair of us, strides matching. I’d seen Sean kill and it hadn’t affected the way I felt about him. But seeing my father primed to do the same had sickened me to the soul. Ironic that it was probably a mirror image of how he felt about me.
I shut it out, shoved it down deep, and did the only thing I knew how to do well—prepared to kill two strangers without even knowing their names.
We went through the doors into the research lab totally in sync. Low left, and high right, angled so we were covering each other’s back.
As soon as we were through the door, we saw them. Buzz-cut and the limping pickup driver. I had the Glock
