Ian looked ready to both cry and kill her where she stood. Like Matthew. “Van, you not only betrayed Matthew, you betrayed me. Me, Van. I’ve known something was up these past couple of weeks. I’ve suspected you really weren’t who you said you were, but I didn’t want to see it. I told myself you were for real, you’d never betray me, betray us. Did you set me up in Londonderry?”
What had she done to make him suspect? It didn’t matter now. She said, “Darius has gotten into your head, too, Ian? Don’t you see? Darius tried to drive a wedge between us, has been since he came to us in Tahoe. He’s the outsider; he’s the one we don’t know. He brought you that case full of money, blinded you, Matthew, made you accept him. You’re the one to blame here, Matthew, you were the one who brought him right into the fold. He’s got to be the one who’s betrayed us.”
Matthew stared from her to Ian, then he burst out laughing. “Darius, betray us? Now, that’s rich, Vanessa. Darius isn’t who you think he is, but I know, I know.” He paused, his eyes flashed bright and excited. “Darius is the devil and he never betrays one of his own souls.”
All over.
Vanessa pushed off the wall, kicked the Beretta out of Matthew’s hand.
She grabbed an empty beer bottle from the table, cracked it, leaving jagged edges. She stood facing them. Could she get to Matthew’s gun? Six feet away, she could do it. She started to move, stopped cold.
Andy was pointing her own gun at her, and said, his voice a crazy singsong. “Put the bottle down, Vanessa. You’re such a pretty little liar. I kind of liked you.”
She lunged at him, ripped at his face with the beer bottle. Matthew yelled, “Don’t shoot, Andy, don’t shoot! Get away from her, get back!”
Andy jumped back.
“Vanessa.”
She slowly turned to see Matthew smiling at her. “Good-bye, Vanessa.” And he raised his Beretta.
“No!” Ian lunged at Matthew and Matthew shot him in the heart. Ian stared an instant at Vanessa, then slowly slid to the floor and slumped over onto his side.
Matthew looked down at Ian. “You fool.” He looked at her now. “I think he loved you more than he did me.”
He aimed the Beretta at her, smiled, and shot her.
18
KNIGHT TO B6
Back to Federal Plaza
Mike left the safe house in Bayonne a little before two in the morning, hyper, full of adrenaline from the explosion, and rage pounding through her from the murder of three of her friends.
She drove Louisa’s pool car, and the sucker was fast. There was next to no traffic at this dead-night hour and she made it back to Federal Plaza in record time, and who cared if she broke a few traffic laws along the way?
As she drove down the ramp and into the silent garage, she wondered how long the adrenaline would last before she bottomed out and keeled over. No, the rage would keep her upright and alert.
She parked the car, tossed the keys to the agent stuck on night duty—Prother was his name—and he gawked at her. She’d forgotten what a mess she was. She nearly smiled, waved him quiet. She stopped the elevator at the twenty-second floor and hit the kitchen, pulling out sodas and apples from the refrigerator. Her last meal had been too long ago and there was a long night to get through.
She found Nicholas and Gray in the conference room, papers spread out on the table, both tapping furiously on their respective keyboards. She set down the sodas and apples. Nicholas didn’t break stride. “Thanks. You okay?”
When the words wouldn’t come out, he looked up at her.
“Mike?”
“Of course. Fill me in.” She slid a Coke to Gray, opened her own.
Nicholas said, “Gray and I managed to stop the cyber-attack on the oil companies. I recognized the signature of a German hacker, but Menard told me he’d been killed a few days ago.”
“This has already gone international?”
“Yes.”
She pushed hair out of her face, jerked it back into a ponytail. How odd, even her scalp hurt. “Someone’s covering their tracks, then. You think your hacker friend was hired to do the work, then eliminated when they didn’t need him anymore? But who did it, Nicholas? He was killed in Germany and COE is here.”
Nicholas smiled at her. “Our question exactly.”