Nate almost felt sorry for his father. Distress had stolen the color from his face, and he looked like a different man without the mantle of confidence and authority he usually wore.
“Need I mention again that without the revenue from making backups, Paxco would go bankrupt in a matter of weeks? Is that really what you think is the right thing?”
Nadia gave the thought a moment’s consideration, then nodded. “Yes, I do. Lincoln freed the slaves despite knowing it would have a devastating economic impact, and, eventually, the United States recovered. I figure we’ll recover from the impact of losing Thea, too.”
“You self-righteous little brat!” the Chairman snarled, losing control of his temper for the first time Nate could remember. He shoved his chair back with enough force to knock it over and leaned forward to put his fists on the table and glare at Nadia. She didn’t shrink away from him.
“The United States had to go through a civil war to ‘recover’ from that economic impact. Is that what you want for Paxco? You want to risk the lives of thousands of ordinary citizens,
“You’re forgetting, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman’s face had been pale, but now it was flushed red, and his eyes were practically incandescent with his fury. He stood up straight and reached into his right coat pocket.
Everything seemed to go into slow motion as Nate realized that pocket was hanging lower than the left one and as he remembered his own uncertainty as to where the gun had ended up.
“No!” Nate yelled, leaping from his chair and tackling Nadia to the ground, trying to make sure his own body was between her and the Chairman’s gun.
The gun roared, and Nadia screamed. Nate wrapped his arms around her, trying to shield every inch of her body as the gun roared again, the sound deafening in the enclosed room. There was a third gunshot, then the sound of something heavy hitting the floor, a sound he was aware of more from the vibration in the floor than from actual hearing because his ears were ringing so loudly.
The room fell deathly quiet. Nate risked a peek while making sure Nadia’s head was still safely tucked against his chest. What he saw made his heart skip a beat.
The Chairman stood facing away from them, arm hanging by his side with the gun still in his hand. On the floor lay Dirk Mosely, blood pooling beneath his head. His eyes were open, but lifeless, and there was a bloody hole in the center of his forehead. More blood spattered the floor all around him, spotting the uniforms of the two shocked security officers who stood in the doorway. Nate swallowed hard, hoping he wasn’t about to be sick.
“I couldn’t arrest him,” the Chairman said calmly, as if he hadn’t just shot a man in cold blood. “He was a patriot, and would have done just about anything for the good of Paxco—except spend the rest of his life in prison. If I’d tried it, he would have talked.”
Nate felt Nadia stirring against him, felt more than heard her gasp of horror when she looked up and saw what had happened.
Still eerily calm, the Chairman popped the clip from his gun and checked how many rounds were left. “I need another clip,” he told the security officers, holding out his hand without looking up at them. The two men looked at each other nervously. They’d shown no surprise at any of the secrets that had been revealed today, so they were obviously part of Mosely’s inner circle. But they were even more obviously unsettled by what they’d witnessed. They recovered quickly, however, each offering the Chairman a clip. He took both, reloading the gun and putting the spare clip in his pocket.
He nodded in what looked like approval, then snapped the clip back in.
“If this first taste of blood hasn’t brought you to your senses, Miss Lake, then come with me,” he said. “We can go destroy Paxco’s economy together.”
Without looking to see if they would follow, the Chairman shouldered his way past the two security officers and out the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
When this day was finally, finally over, Nadia was going to collapse into a heap and have a fit of screaming hysteria. But for right now, at least, her body seemed to have run out of adrenaline, and as she gently extricated herself from Nate’s arms and rose unsteadily to her feet, she hardly seemed to feel anything at all. Just a drifty, floaty feeling of unreality, heightened by the ringing in her ears that made all other sounds seem distant. She looked down at Dirk Mosely, dead because of her, and she felt neither triumph nor guilt.
Nadia suspected she was hovering on the verge of shock, which was probably not a good thing in the long run. But for now, she was grateful for whatever it was that kept her functioning. Beside her, Nate looked a little green, and he was breathing like he’d just run a marathon. Nadia took his clammy hand in hers, giving it a squeeze. She would not soon forget how he’d shielded her with his body when he thought the Chairman was going to shoot her.
“Come on,” she said, tugging his hand so he’d follow as she picked her way around the blood that spattered the floor. “We can freak out later. Right now, it’s time to finish this thing.”
The Chairman might be giving in to her demands, but she didn’t trust him for a moment. If all he did to shut Thea down was flip a few switches, she was certain it wouldn’t be long before he’d flip them back. Somehow, she was going to have to make sure whatever he did was permanent.
Down the hall, the Chairman was standing in front of a heavy metal door with a series of electronic keypads and scanners running along its side. He put his eye to the retinal scanner, then placed his whole hand on a fingerprint scanner, and even that wasn’t enough to open the door, because even after the lights on both scanners turned green, the door was still locked. He punched in a long code on one of the keypads, but the indicator light above it remained red. The Chairman frowned and entered the code again, with the same result. He pounded on the door with his left hand in frustration.
“Don’t be childish, Thea,” he said. “You know I can manually override this door.”
There was no response, although Nadia supposed it was unlikely there were speakers in the door.
“Can she actually hear you?” Nadia asked, curious despite herself. The equipment surrounding Thea’s “examining table” obviously included both speaker and microphone, but what was in the electronic equipment of the door?
“I see no reason why not,” the Chairman said, scowling at the door. “She’s obviously made unauthorized modifications to the door mechanism, and she has shown a tendency to enjoy eavesdropping. She has created ears where none existed before.”
“So she’s conveniently locking you out when you intend to shut her down?” Nadia asked with undisguised skepticism. If she were an unscrupulous bastard like the Chairman, she supposed she’d try to stall, too.
The Chairman ignored her and pounded on the door again. “Thea, open this door immediately!”
If he was stalling, then he was doing a pretty good acting job. He looked like he was about to take out his gun and start shooting again.
The Chairman hit the door one more time. “Fine!” He stalked down the hallway toward the room they had just vacated. “I’ll be right back.”
Nate and Nadia shared puzzled glances, wondering what the Chairman was up to. Nadia half expected him to shut the door and lock himself in the interrogation room, but after only a few moments, he emerged again holding a metal key on a chain. Nadia shuddered when she saw the blood on his hands and realized he must have taken the key from Mosely’s body.
If the Chairman was bothered by the blood that both literally and figuratively stained his hands, he didn’t
