Page 3 of A Touch of Treachery (Section 47 #3)

CHARLOTTE

T he three thieves kept heading toward me. I turned my back and strode away as though I hadn’t noticed them at all, much less the fact that they were focused on me like heat-seeking missiles streaking toward a target.

I reached the reception desk, and Iris stretched her arm out to the side. “This way, Charlotte.”

I fell in step beside Iris. Maybe it was my synesthesia surging up and messing with my senses or just knowing the thieves were behind me, but the scuffing of my sneakers on the floor morphed into a squeaky, disjointed mantra in my mind.

Dan-ger, dan-ger, dan-ger . . .

I ground my teeth and ignored the unwanted noise. I glanced out of the corners of my eyes, looking for shadows coming up on the floor behind me, as well as listening for the quick slap of footsteps . . .

Nothing happened. No shadows, no footsteps, no rough hands yanking the briefcase away.

Iris led me over to the elevator bank on the left side of the lobby and swiped a white keycard over a reader embedded in the wall. A light flashed green, and the door slid back. The two of us stepped into the elevator and turned around, facing out toward the lobby.

I tensed, my fingers curling even tighter around the briefcase handle. Any second now, the thieves were going to storm into the elevator and try to wrest the case away from me . . .

But once again, nothing happened.

Iris hesitated, then swiped her keycard over the elevator panel. A light flashed green, and the door slid shut.

What was going on? Why hadn’t the thieves rushed forward and tried to take the briefcase? Had I done something to spook them?

I frowned at my reflection in the mirrored door.

Auburn hair, blue eyes, pale skin, bright blue suit, matching briefcase.

Everything about me was the same as when I’d left Section 47 headquarters, and I’d followed the mission plan to the letter.

Enter the lobby, sit down, and let the thieves approach me.

But the thieves hadn’t made a move, which meant they had some other plan to steal the briefcase. What was I missing?

I pulled out my phone to ask Desmond what was happening in the lobby, but a message on the screen warned that I didn’t have a signal. Even more alarming was the faint buzz of static crackling through my earbud. My stomach clenched. Someone was jamming our comms.

Iris let out a loud, raspy exhale, and a puff of warm, sour air wafted across my neck.

I looked at the other agent out of the corners of my eyes.

She stabbed a button to take us to the lower Vault level, but her hand trembled, just as it had earlier when she’d been reaching for the landline phone on her desk.

My heart sank right along with the elevator, but I turned toward her. “How did Henrika Hyde get to you?”

Iris blinked. “What?”

“How did Henrika convince you to try to steal this?” I jiggled the briefcase in my hand. “Did she blackmail you? Threaten your family? Or did you just take the money she offered?”

I didn’t bother keeping the disgust out of my voice, and Iris flinched at my harsh tone. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never heard of Henrika Hyde.”

Lie , my inner voice whispered. In addition to pointing out hazards and dangers, my synesthesia also told me whenever someone was lying, whether it was a small, harmless fib ( of course your new haircut looks great ) to an outright whopper ( of course I didn’t eat the last cookie ).

Even without the telltale whisper, I still would have known Iris wasn’t telling the truth. Everyone at Section 47 had heard of Henrika Hyde, thanks to Desmond and me and our run-ins with the weapons maker over the last few months.

I looked at Iris, who stared right back at me. Her tongue swiped out over her lips, and a pink light flared around her body. The seconds ticked by in soft, charged silence, and the pink light intensified, morphing into a bloody red I knew all too well.

“Dammit,” Iris muttered.

She slapped a button on the panel, and the elevator screeched to a halt. The abrupt motion tossed me to the side, and my right shoulder banged against the side of the car. I lost my grip on the briefcase, which tumbled to the floor.

I cursed and reached for the briefcase, but Iris yanked a small gun out of the pocket of her suit jacket.

“Stop right there!” she growled.

I stopped, even as my synesthesia surged up, outlining the gun in an even brighter, bloodier red than it had Iris.

I ground my teeth again. Sometimes I thought my paramortal power was total overkill, since I could clearly see the other woman aiming the weapon at my chest, and I already knew exactly how much danger I was in.

“Pick up the briefcase,” Iris growled again. “Slowly.”

I crouched down. My fingers curled around the handle, and I thought about snapping my arm up and using the briefcase as a weapon, but I resisted the urge.

I slowly rose to my feet. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“What question?”

“How did Henrika get her hooks into you? Blackmail, threats, or money?”

Iris’s dark brown eyes narrowed. “Money, not that it’s any of your business.”

I jerked my chin at the gun in her hand. “You’ve made it my business.”

She scoffed. “You wouldn’t understand. A Legacy like you will always have a place at Section, but people like me don’t have the same luxury.”

Legacy was Section 47’s term for folks with other family members who also worked for the spy organization, either currently or in the past. If your family members did well and climbed up the leadership ranks, then being a Legacy could greatly aid your standing at Section.

But if your family members screwed up, well, being a Legacy could be more of a hindrance than a help.

I’d always fallen more on the hindrance side of the Legacy equation, thanks to my father, Jack Locke, a cleaner who had died under mysterious circumstances on a Section mission roughly fifteen years ago.

“People like you?” I asked.

Iris shrugged. “Paramortals without amazing abilities. Technically, I’m a transmuter, although the only thing I’ve ever been able to do with my magic is make things sparkle.”

A silver glow flickered around her fingers, and the gun in her hand gleamed brightly in response, as though she had just polished it. Strong transmuters could change the physical properties of objects, like turning water into ice, but Iris was right about her limited magic.

“I dreamed about being a Section field agent, but my weak, useless power got me a weak, useless job.” Iris sneered. “I’m nothing but a glorified elevator operator, taking people down to the Vault, and it’s long past time I made a career change.”

“So you took the money.”

“Absolutely. Now, shut up and stand still.”

Iris took a little better aim at me with her gun. I tensed and tightened my grip on the briefcase, ready to snap up the container and put it between me and any bullets that came my way.

The other agent stared at me a second longer, then hit a button on the panel. Instead of descending toward the Vault, the elevator rose and climbed up past the lobby.

“Where are we going?” I asked, worry making my stomach swell like a balloon in my body.

Iris’s lips pulled back into a sly smile. “You’ll figure it out soon enough, Charlotte. But for right now, just enjoy the ride.”

A few seconds later, the elevator stopped and dinged out its arrival on the fifth floor.

The door slid back, revealing a glass wall running the length of a corridor.

On the opposite side of the glass, low white plastic walls partitioned off the space beyond like a giant tic-tac-toe board.

The cubicles were empty, although landline phones, headsets, and wires crisscrossed the floor like a nest of black snakes.

According to the building blueprints I’d reviewed, the call center had recently gone bankrupt, leaving this floor empty of people.

A lone security camera dangled from the ceiling, but it didn’t swivel around, and I couldn’t tell if it was monitoring us—or if Gia, Diego, and the other Section agents stationed outside the building realized just how much trouble I was in.

Iris waggled her gun. “Move.”

I stepped out of the elevator. She followed and gestured for me to stop beside a high wooden table against the glass wall. “Put the briefcase down.”

I did as ordered, although I kept my hand curled around the handle.

Iris backed away a few steps, pulled her phone out of her jacket pocket, and held it up to her ear. “Package secure.”

“Get the goods and get out of there,” a male voice murmured through the phone.

“Roger that,” she replied, then waggled the gun again. “Open the briefcase.”

“Why do you want the case? There’s nothing in it.”

A low, ugly laugh trilled out of her mouth. “Please. I might be a glorified elevator operator, but I get a list of all the items brought to the Vault for storage, so I know you’re carrying the Grunglass Necklace. Henrika wants her property back, Charlotte.”

A few months ago, Henrika Hyde had tried to steal the Grunglass Necklace from the Halstead Hotel in Washington, D.C.

The necklace had belonged to Hiram Halstead, Henrika’s father, who had promised it to her mother, Natasha, as payment for being his longtime mistress.

But Hiram’s other daughter, Petra Halstead, had kept her half sister from getting the necklace.

A furious Henrika had bombed one of Hiram’s hotels, killing her father and forcing Petra into hiding.

“Open the briefcase,” Iris repeated. “Now.”

“Why? So you can kill me a second later?” I shook my head. “No way. If you want the necklace, come over here and get it yourself.”

The other agent rolled her eyes. “Killing you isn’t part of the plan, Charlotte. I’m here to get the necklace and get paid. Nothing more, nothing less.”

I waited, but my synesthesia was silent. Iris was telling the truth. She either didn’t want to or didn’t have orders to kill me. Why not?

During the Tannenbaum mission in Germany, Desmond and I had battled a group of thieves who wanted to steal the Nutcracker Ruby, a ring worth millions of dollars.

Katarina Tanetsa, the group’s leader, had claimed that Henrika had promised her a bonus for eliminating me.

So why would Henrika let me live now? What had changed?

A soft beep sounded. Iris checked her phone again. “Time’s up. Open the case. Or I’ll start putting bullets in your body until you change your mind.”

“Okay, okay. You win.”

I keyed in a code on the electronic panel embedded in the blue leather. The lock clicked, and the lid lifted. I spun the briefcase around on the table so that the open side was facing Iris.

“Raise it up,” she ordered.

I slowly lifted the lid, revealing a large gold chandelier necklace on a bed of pale green velvet. The stunning necklace was studded with large teardrop-shaped emeralds and smaller princess-cut white diamonds, and all the jewels sparked and flashed with a vibrant inner fire.

Iris let out a low, appreciative whistle, then lifted her phone to her ear again. “Secondary objective secure. Heading toward the exit.”

“Roger that.” Once again, a man’s voice echoed out of her phone.

I frowned. Henrika was obsessed with the Grunglass Necklace, and the whole point of this mission had been to leak the fact that I was bringing it to the Vault for safekeeping.

I’d expected Henrika to make a play for the necklace, and I’d been planning to use the thieves to try to discover where she was hiding.

So why would Iris refer to the necklace as a secondary objective?

And why hadn’t the three thieves come here to help her?

Unless . . . the thieves were busy stealing something else .

A chill swept down my spine, and my stomach churned with worry.

Henrika never did anything halfway, and if she had ordered the thieves to target another item at the Vault, then their primary objective had to be something big.

What could be worth more to Henrika than the necklace she had coveted since childhood?

Iris slid her phone into her pocket, although she kept her gun aimed at my chest. “Close the case and hand it to me. No tricks, or I’ll shoot you.”

I closed the briefcase lid and stepped forward.

“Stop!” Iris barked out. “Stay where you are, and push the case over to me.”

I grabbed hold of the briefcase and shoved it forward like I was a bartender sliding a drink over to a thirsty customer. The case slid to a stop at Iris’s end of the table.

She picked it up, then grinned. “A pleasure doing business with you, Charlotte.”

“It’s not business. Not to me. Henrika made it personal.”

Iris shrugged. “Well, that’s between you and her. Me? I’m planning to retire to a nice little tropical island.”

I shook my head. “You’re not going anywhere.”

She laughed. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m the one with the gun.”

“Oh, I knew someone would have a gun.” I grinned. “So I brought a few toys of my own.”

Iris’s forehead creased with confusion, and her gaze flicked up and down my body, trying to spot whatever weapons I might have tucked away in my clothes.

“Execute Command Jewelry Box,” I called out in a loud voice.

Iris flinched, and her entire body tensed.

One second ticked by. Then two, three, four, five . . .

Nothing happened.

Iris’s body relaxed, although her face twisted into an ugly sneer. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, Charlotte—”

Bang!

An explosion sounded, and a cloud of bright green smoke spewed out of the briefcase.