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Iris pulled a gun from behind her back and fired, hitting Simon between the eyes. He dropped to the floor at Olivia’s feet.
Iris stood smiling in the midst of the chaos. The fact that she’d gunned down a man in cold blood didn’t seem to faze her one iota. Simon had been evil, without a doubt. He had used Rio to kill Layla, and then when Rio was no longer useful, he’d killed him, too. And he’d come close to killing Olivia.
But this woman, this entity who’d given birth to her, was something else altogether.
“What?” Iris said, staring at the guns that Olivia and Hawke were both pointing at her. “You’re going to kill England’s most-prized spy? The woman who survived her own autopsy?”
She shook her head, her eyes deadly serious. “I don’t think that’s something either of you want to take credit for. You won’t like the outcome. And you, Olivia? Holding your mother at gunpoint? Have you lost all sense of who you are?”
“I know exactly who I am, Iris.”
“No, you don’t, darling, but that’s okay. Although, after all I’ve done for you, a modicum of gratitude would not be inappropriate.”
“What exactly have you done for me, Iris?”
“Other than give you life? Well, let’s see. I got you away from that sick bastard.” She nodded at Simon’s body.
“How did you do that?”
“By arranging for you to go to America.”
Olivia didn’t doubt that for a minute. She’d always wondered how a young, relatively inexperienced agent with almost no field experience had been selected to join an elite US black ops team. She hadn’t questioned it, though, because she had so desperately wanted to get away from anywhere where her parents had influence. Little had she known that their influence spread much farther than just MI6.
“And I kept you from being assassinated when Gonzalez put out a hit on your team.”
“By making it appear that I was a traitor?”
“You’re alive, aren’t you? And, just a few days ago, I saved you from dying.”
Ash had said that Omar Schrader, his asset, had implied that no one would believe him if he told them where he’d gotten the antidote. He would have been right, considering they’d thought Iris was dead.
“So how did you fake your death?” Hawke said.
“You don’t really expect me to give away all of my secrets, do you?”
From what Olivia could tell, her mother had only ever been a conglomeration of secrets. And how stupid was it, with all she knew about Iris and the mountain of information she still didn’t know, that she was actually glad she wasn’t dead?
Iris huffed out a little sigh. “All right. I’ll admit I had a bit of help. You’ll likely learn soon that a couple of your medical people in Arizona have disappeared. They were of great assistance.”
“Did you kill them?”
Iris shook her head as if disappointed in Olivia’s question. “Seriously, darling?”
Olivia shrugged. “It’s a reasonable assumption. Murder doesn’t seem to faze you.”
“I think you’d be surprised what does and does not bother me. But that’s a conversation for another day.”
“So where do we go from here, Iris?” Hawke asked.
“You’re going to let me walk out that door.”
“Uh, yeah, I don’t think so.”
Iris gave her lilting little laugh. “Really, Nicholas. I allowed you to capture me once. I don’t plan on doing it again. I gave you the intel. What you do with it is up to you.”
“You allowed me?”
“Of course. Do you think I just happened to meet with Gonzalez’s people that night? I had the intel fed to you so you would come to the meeting place and take me.”