Page 68 of A Touch of Treachery (Section 47 #3)

DESMOND

M y father trailed me through the level-five bullpen and into the elevator. The bodyguards started to follow us, but for once, he waved them off. The two of us rode in silence to the fourth level, then entered his office. The door shut behind me, and the familiar buzz of the soundproofing rang out.

The General marched over to the liquor bottles on a table, poured some whiskey into a crystal tumbler, and threw it back.

His fingers curled around the empty glass as though he wanted to smash it against the wall, but he merely dropped it back onto the tray instead, making the other glasses rattle around.

“Fucking Lockes,” he muttered. “That Legacy family has always been a thorn in my side. Always thinking they knew what was best for Section. What was good and just and right. As if there are such things as good and just and right . There’s only evil and more evil and less evil.”

“Finally, something we can agree on,” I drawled.

The General snorted, then poured himself another glass of whiskey. He threw it back just like the first one, then looked at me. “For a moment there, I didn’t think you were going to come with me.”

“You’re my father.”

He eyed me. “Is that the only reason?”

I walked over and tapped the photo of my mother on his desk. “I came because of her.”

My father stared at the photo. A shadow passed over his face, grief filled his eyes, and the same emotion flickered in his icy aura. For all his many faults, my father had truly loved my mother, and he still felt Iylena’s loss as keenly as I did.

The General pulled his gaze away from my mother’s photo and set his empty glass down on the desk. “I need to start working my sources and calling in favors to get ahead of this accusation.”

“Is it true?” I asked, careful to keep my voice neutral. “Did you really fund Henrika’s research? And give her the three-million-dollar ransom payment for Jack Locke to help start her company?”

My father looked at me, and I stared right back at him. After a few seconds of silent contemplation, he leaned down and hit a red button on the desk. A second, softer buzz sounded, and a telltale tingle of electricity swept across my skin.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“A small electromagnetic pulse. One that temporarily disrupts cell phones, along with spy cameras and listening devices. Basically, anything electronic that could be used to record this conversation.”

“You don’t trust me?”

The General peered down his nose at me. “Verify, then trust. Especially since we both know you are emotionally compromised where Charlotte Locke is concerned.”

I shrugged. My father could say whatever he wanted about my relationship with Charlotte. I knew the truth of what it was.

The General studied me, his eyes cold and assessing. Then he jerked his head in agreement. “Yes, I did fund Henrika’s research.”

“Why?” Once again, I kept my voice neutral.

His gaze dropped to the photo of Iylena. “I did it for your mother,” he replied in a soft voice.

Surprise shot through me. I hadn’t expected that.

“When your mother first got sick, I reached out to all my contacts to make sure she would have the best treatment possible—the best chance possible to get well.” He clasped his hands behind his back, his eyes dark and distant with memories.

“Okay, I can understand that. But how does Henrika fit into the equation?”

The General kept staring off into the distance. “We tried everything, but Iylena just kept getting sicker.”

My heart twisted with memories. I remembered my mother’s decline all too well. How she had stopped eating. How thin she had become. How her hair had fallen out in clumps. How pale and waxy her skin had become.

“One of my contacts came across an experiment Henrika had done. Something about using a specific formula tailored to an individual’s DNA to target and kill cancerous cells and leave healthy ones behind.

” The General waved his hand. “I didn’t understand it back then, and I still don’t understand it now.

But your mother was slipping away, and I was running out of options. ”

“So you set up Seashell Imports and gave Henrika a grant. I can understand that too. How did it all go so wrong?”

The General started pacing back and forth behind his desk. “At first, Henrika’s research was extremely promising. But as time went on, it became less and less so. At least when it came to healing people. But eventually, I realized Henrika’s formula could have other, more practical applications.”

I did try, you know . . . to be good. To make some great medical breakthrough that would help people. I tried—for years, I tried .

I hadn’t known what Henrika had meant when she’d said that in the lab, but I did now. “Weapons. You saw the potential to turn Henrika’s research into weapons that could kill paramortals.”

The General shrugged. “Of course I did. Section 47 is always looking for advantages over our enemies. Henrika had already taken my money, so she was already on my payroll. Besides, if I hadn’t approached her, someone else would have.”

As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. Eventually, someone else would have found out about Henrika’s research, seen its deadly potential, and sunk their hooks into her. The General had just beaten everyone to the punch.

“So what went wrong?”

My father’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “This is starting to sound like an interrogation.”

I barked out a bitter laugh. “What? Do you think I’m wearing a wire?”

I yanked my shirt up so he could see my bare stomach and chest. I also pulled my phone out of my pocket and tossed it onto his desk, right next to the photo of my mother. A message on the screen warned that the device had malfunctioned and couldn’t be used.

“Satisfied?” I demanded.

Some of the suspicion leaked out of my father’s face, and he gestured for me to take a seat in front of the desk. This time, he poured us both a glass of whiskey, then dropped into his own chair. The General sipped his drink, but I didn’t touch mine.

“Henrika produced several weapons for me. Pink sulfur smoke bombs, some poisons, a few truth serums.” Anger crept into his face.

“But she got greedy. Henrika wanted more money, more control over what she developed and when and how it was deployed. She actually had a sliver of a conscience, if you can believe that.”

He shook his head, as though being worried about how her weapons were being used was a great failing on Henrika’s part.

“She also wanted to branch out into other areas, like cosmetics and skin care, which would have invited much more attention and unwanted scrutiny. When I said no, she threatened to expose our arrangement.”

“So you sent Jack Locke to Mexico to kill her.”

The General scoffed. “Of course not. Jack Locke never would have taken such an assignment.”

My heart lifted with a bit of unexpected hope. “So Charlotte is wrong, and you didn’t try to kill Henrika.”

My father barked out a laugh. “Don’t be a fool. Of course I tried to kill her. I just sent someone else to do the job. Thomas, another cleaner on the Mexico mission. Thomas had orders to kill Henrika, while Jack Locke was supposed to eliminate Feliciano Salvador.”

His mouth twisted. “But something went wrong. If I had to guess, I would say that Locke’s conscience got the better of him the way it always did.”

His nostrils flared, and his icy aura pulsed with anger and disgust. That tiny bit of hope crumbled to dust in my chest.

I’d been on similar missions where different cleaners had different targets and objectives, so I could guess what had happened. Jack Locke had been ready to do his job and eliminate Feliciano Salvador, but he had balked when the other cleaner had wanted to kill Henrika as well.

I would have balked at that too. I had balked at that, when Bryce Finkley had killed an innocent hostage to complete our mission.

“Whatever went wrong, Thomas was killed, along with all the other cleaners, except for Jack Locke. That stubborn bastard couldn’t even do me the courtesy of dying.”

My father glared into his whiskey glass for a moment before looking at me again. “Eventually, Section received a ransom demand for Locke. His mother, Jane, was still working here. Somehow she found out about the ransom demand, went behind my back, got the money, and sent it to Mexico.”

Jane Locke, Charlotte’s grandmother, had borrowed the money from Leon Chase, Gabriel’s father and another Section cleaner. Leon had been the one to actually deliver the ransom, although the General didn’t seem to know that, and I certainly wasn’t going to tell him.

“Then what happened?” I asked.

My father shrugged again. “I sent another team of cleaners to eliminate Salvador once and for all, and I went with them to personally oversee the mission.”

“And make sure Henrika was killed too.”

My father arched an eyebrow at my snide tone, but I wasn’t about to pull any punches now.

He harrumphed and continued his story. “Someone must have tipped off Salvador, because he knew we were coming. There was a massive firefight at his villa. When the dust settled, Henrika and Salvador were gone, and Jack Locke was dead. A few weeks later, another team of cleaners tracked down and eliminated Salvador, but I never did figure out who shot Locke.”

I snorted in disbelief.

“It’s the truth,” the General snapped. “No matter what Charlotte thinks, I didn’t kill her father. Someone else did. Probably Henrika, if I had to guess.”

“And the ransom money?” I asked. “How did you wind up with it?”

“So many people were dead and injured. It was chaos. I picked up the briefcase with the ransom money and set it aside with the other evidence from the mission to turn in when I got back to headquarters.” He sighed.

“But then I got a message from Henrika. She wanted the money in exchange for her silence.”

“So you gave it to her.” Once again, I couldn’t keep the snide note out of my voice. “Charlotte was right. You did pay off Henrika to keep quiet.”