Page 42 of A Touch of Treachery (Section 47 #3)
Henrika gracefully raised her arms out wide, then swept her hands together and pointed at her chest. “That I was going to be the one to do it—to finally cure cancer, leukemia, dementia, and every other horrible disease that robs people of their loved ones far too soon, whether they are mortals or paramortals.”
“What changed?”
Henrika’s hands plummeted to her sides. “Unfortunately, it’s a lot easier to kill people than it is to cure them.” Her mouth twisted. “It pays better too.”
Truth , my synesthesia whispered.
“So you started making weapons instead of medicines,” I accused.
“So I started making weapons,” Henrika agreed. “Turns out I was very, very good at it.”
“Is that why Niles Perran is so jealous? Because you’re better at making weapons than he is? Or is he still pissed that you had a benefactor and he didn’t?”
Something flickered across Henrika’s face, but the emotion was gone before I could put a name to it. Once again, I made a mental note to find out more about Henrika’s rivalry with the other biomagical chemist and exactly who had jumpstarted her deadly career all those years ago.
Henrika huffed with annoyance. “Niles is jealous because he’s just not as good as I am.
Not with people, not with brokering deals, and especially not when it comes to creating new weapons.
” She snapped her fingers as though the most marvelous thought had just occurred to her.
“Speaking of Niles, let’s see what my old rival is up to. ”
Henrika walked behind her desk, hit some keys on the laptop, and spun the monitor around so I could see it. The screen displayed several boxes, all showing different places in and around the hotel. Henrika hit a button, and one of the boxes filled the screen.
On the security footage, Niles Perran was roaming around a conference room, holding what looked like a small metal detector. Niles waved the gadget over a pitcher of water, but he must not have liked the reading, because he glared at the pitcher and moved on.
“Niles is looking for traces of explosives, radiation, and other elements in hopes of finding my lab. Arrogant little prick.” Henrika sneered.
“He’s always been jealous because I’m richer and more successful than he’ll ever be.
Smarter and more creative too. I’ve created a dozen new paramortal poisons over the last decade, while he’s still fiddling with the same old formulas he dreamed up in grad school. ”
She hit another key, and a different box filled the screen.
Steig Helseth was towering over the pretty waitress from the poker game, who had her back pressed up against a column in the lobby.
The assassin’s eyes were fixed on the waitress’s chest, and he was gesturing wildly, even though the woman was clearly trying to squirm away from him.
“At least Niles is trying to find my lab. Steig is completely ignoring my orders about not hunting mortals.” A disgusted look creased Henrika’s face.
“Steig is hoping to lure that poor woman back to his room so he can choke the life out of her and then skin her alive with that hunting knife he carries around like a bloody trophy.”
Henrika tapped another key, and another image appeared.
Oriana Luzzo was standing on one of the outdoor terraces, clutching a gadget similar to Niles’s metal detector.
Oriana discreetly waved the device back and forth over the stone wall.
A light flashed red on the device, and Oriana frowned and moved over to another section.
“Oriana is smarter than either Niles or Steig,” Henrika said, shooting a sour glare at the screen. “She’s looking for traces of magic in hopes of finding my Redburn formula. She even has a boat waiting on the far side of the lake to come pick her up if she manages to break into my lab.”
Henrika tapped yet another key. “And then, of course, there is Desmond, who has been much more entertaining to watch than the others.”
A bird’s-eye—drone’s-eye—view of the hotel appeared. Henrika fast-forwarded the footage, and the two of us watched Desmond climb down an exterior wall, drop to the ground, and vanish into the shadows.
Henrika hit another button. All the feeds vanished, and the monitor went dark. “Do you know what they all have in common, Charlotte?” She answered her own question. “None of them will ever find my lab.”
Truth , my synesthesia whispered.
Henrika had far more cameras at her disposal than I’d realized. She might not be spying on Desmond and me in the honeymoon suite, but she was watching everything else we did.
“We’re not here to talk about the others,” I replied. “You have something that belongs to me: the undercover agent list.”
Henrika’s gaze locked onto the Grunglass Necklace again. “I could say the same thing about you, Charlotte. Then again, you got lucky, didn’t you? If that last card hadn’t been the queen of hearts, I would have won, and I would be wearing my necklace instead of you.”
I toyed with one of the emeralds dangling from the gold band. “What was it you said? Oh, yes. Blind luck makes the game so much more exciting.”
Henrika huffed at me throwing her own words back in her face. She raised her hand, and magic glowed on her palm like a golden ember about to burst into a raging fire. “I could march over there, rip that necklace off your throat, and turn your pretty face into putty.”
Despite the distance between us, the raw, sizzling force of her combusto power blasted over me like a heat wave. Sweat broke out on the back of my neck, and my synesthesia drummed out an incessant, ominous warning.
Danger-danger-danger.
I rubbed my thumb over the purse in my hand, once again thinking about the explosives hidden inside the bag. “That wouldn’t go so well for you.”
Henrika scoffed. “You’re an analyst with a wacky form of synesthesia. You’re hardly a threat to me.”
“That’s what Katarina Tanetsa thought—right up to when I shoved a sword into her back.”
Henrika’s green eyes narrowed, glowing almost as brightly as the golden magic still pulsing in her hand.
“No matter how much you want it, you aren’t going to take the necklace from me.”
“Why not?” Henrika challenged.
“Because you like to win , not cheat. And trying to take the necklace right now would be cheating. You have a weird but pesky sense of honor about things like that.”
Henrika blinked several times, as though my words surprised her, then snorted out a laugh. “I suppose you’re right, Charlotte. For the moment.”
The hot golden magic on her palm evaporated, and she lowered her hand to her side.
I ground my teeth to keep my relief from showing. “Enough stalling. Give me the list.”
Henrika yanked open one of the desk drawers, drew out a silver flash drive, and held it up. “This drive contains your precious undercover agent list. And before you ask, no, I didn’t make any copies. I didn’t even open the drive. I don’t care about the real identities of Section spies.”
Truth, truth, truth , my inner voice whispered. She really hadn’t looked at or copied the information, which had been one of Gia’s and Evelyn’s main worries.
Henrika tossed the drive over to me, and the slight, almost inconsequential weight shocked me. Something with the power to do so much damage to so many people should feel heavier and sturdier, like the Grunglass Necklace ringing my throat.
Relief crashed through me, but it quickly vanished, replaced by suspicion. Why hadn’t Henrika at least copied the information? Why go to all the trouble of stealing the list in the first place just to hand it over so easily now?
Unless . . . the UC list had just been bait to force me to come to the resort.
My mind whirred at the implications. Henrika was enjoying taunting me with her knowledge about the Mexico mission and my father’s death, but I got the impression our conversation was just a small part of a larger, more devious plot. What was Henrika’s true goal?
“I’m not the only one with a twisted sense of honor, Charlotte. Yours is going to get you into trouble someday.” Henrika paused. “Just like it did to Jack Locke.”
I stiffened. “What does my father’s honor have to do with you?”
“It’s the reason he didn’t kill me in Mexico when he had the chance.”
Henrika’s gaze strayed over to the photo of her and Feliciano Salvador. Another shadow passed over her face, and something that looked a lot like regret and longing flickered through her eyes.
Why did Henrika keep talking about my father? He had been sent to Mexico to kill Feliciano, not her. My father had avoided collateral damage at all costs, and he would have never even targeted Henrika, since she was Feliciano’s lover . . .
Unless my father had thought Henrika was a threat.
But why would he think that? And if he had, then why hesitate? Why not go ahead and kill her?
More and more questions popped into my mind, and each one shifted my perception of the Mexico mission. I thought I’d been standing on a mountain of information, a solid foundation of facts, but it was really nothing but a pile of sand, and I was rapidly sinking into the quagmire of the unknown.
Henrika pulled her gaze away from Feliciano’s photo, and her face smoothed out into its usual benign mask. “I honored my end of our bet. Your precious undercover agents are safe and will live to spy another day. Now, get out before I change my mind and liquefy your bones. I have work to do.”
She sat down behind the desk, turned the monitor toward her, and started typing, her fingers stabbing into the laptop keys with far more force than was necessary.
The rare show of emotion surprised me. I didn’t know what memories I had dredged up, but in her own way, Henrika seemed just as haunted by the Mexico mission as I was.
I backed away from her and opened one of the library doors. Bryce was waiting outside. He shot me an icy glower, but I skirted past him, hurried through the foyer, and stepped into the waiting elevator.
The door slid shut, and I caught sight of my reflection in the mirrored surface. The Grunglass Necklace glimmered around my neck, and each emerald and diamond seemed to sparkle in time to the wild theories and paranoid suspicions jangling through my mind.
After fifteen years of wondering what had really happened to my father, Henrika had given me a few more pieces to the puzzle, but I still had far more questions than answers.