Page 7 of A Touch of Treachery (Section 47 #3)

CHARLOTTE

The strike team members ran up to the building, pushed through the revolving doors, and streamed into the lobby. Once it became apparent the danger was over, they quickly lowered their weapons.

The fire alarm had cut off several seconds ago, but instead of exiting the building, most people had stayed in the lobby. Several folks were looking around, clearly confused, while others had their phones out, filming everything that was happening.

The strike team leader hurried over to Desmond and me. We told her what had happened, and she stabbed her finger in first one direction, then another, ordering her agents to secure the scene and set up a perimeter around the open manhole.

“Come on,” Desmond said. “There’s nothing else we can do here.”

I sighed, then followed him out of the garden, across the lobby, and over to the reception desk.

Footsteps clacked against the floor, and a sixty-something woman wearing a scarlet pantsuit and black stilettoes entered the lobby.

Her short black hair was styled in an attractive pixie cut, and her body was lean and muscled.

A small gold pendant shaped like the letter G glimmered against her golden skin, and a pair of red reading glasses was tucked into the front pocket on her jacket.

Gia Chan was the cleaner supervisor, which made her one of the most powerful people in Section 47. She was also one of the few folks who knew Desmond and I had been assigned to track down Henrika Hyde.

Gia’s dark brown gaze flicked around the lobby, moving from the strike team members to the milling crowd before finally landing on Desmond and me. Her mouth flattened out into a thin line, and she strode over to us.

“Well, this certainly went wrong in a hurry,” she said. “I’ve already gotten three calls from members of the board of directors, wondering why there was such a public incident at what is supposed to be a secure, discreet Section facility.”

I winced. “I’m sorry. I thought my plan would work. This is all my fault.”

Gia shrugged, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “Perhaps. But all we can do now is manage the fallout and spin the story.”

She snapped her fingers, and a woman in a gray pantsuit who’d entered the lobby with the strike team members turned around.

Gia tilted her head to the side, where a large group of people had gathered by the café.

The woman nodded, then went over to the curious onlookers, flashed a badge at them, held up her hands, and started speaking.

“. . . an unfortunate prank . . . disgruntled worker . . . no property or other damage . . .”

She recited the usual Section 47 disinformation, and warm ripples of magic flowed off her body right along with her calm, soothing voice.

The woman was a charmer, someone with magical charisma that could be used to subtly manipulate people’s emotions, like easing an anxious crowd.

After a few seconds, all the people started nodding in time to her words.

The charmer would spin the same lies to the mortal authorities when they arrived. In addition to tracking down criminals, another one of Section 47’s missions was to make sure the general public never realized that people with magical abilities were living among them.

Most paramortals wisely hid their powers, so as not to be ostracized, targeted, used, abused, or exploited, but others weren’t so cautious, and plenty of videos were floating around the Internet that showed combustos liquefying metal or transmuters turning concrete blocks into piles of dust with their bare hands.

Still, despite all that damning footage, most folks didn’t believe paramortals existed, and they chalked up such displays to magic tricks, deepfakes, or artificial intelligence.

The charmer kept talking, although many folks got bored and either headed toward the elevators to return to their offices or stepped into the café to get another coffee.

Sneakers scuffed on the floor, and a thirty-something man wearing a green button-down shirt over neatly pressed khakis came over to us.

His short brown hair and bronze skin gleamed under the lights.

Square black glasses perched on his nose, and he was carrying a padded laptop case in the crook of his elbow.

Diego Benito, one of Section 47’s tech geniuses, nodded at Gia, then focused on Desmond and me.

His dark brown gaze lingered on the green stains on my hands before flicking over to the similarly stained briefcase, which I’d set on the reception desk.

Diego’s nose twitched, as though he’d gotten a whiff of the acrid smoke that was still clinging to the case, and me too.

Gia stabbed her finger at the laptop Bryce had used. “I want to see the security footage. Everything that happened after Charlotte left the lobby with Agent Berriston and Desmond followed the other thieves down to the Vault.”

“That’s when our comms went out,” I said.

Gia nodded. “That’s when we lost eyes on you too. One second, I was watching you both through the lobby cameras. The next . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she flicked her fingers. “ Poof! No more security footage.”

“I tried my best, but someone locked us out of the system,” Diego muttered. “That won’t happen again.”

Anger sparked in his eyes. The computer whiz had been stationed with Gia and the strike team, and he didn’t like being beaten at his own game.

Diego pulled a laptop out of his padded case, sat down, and connected his device to the reception desk computer.

His fingers flew over the keyboard in a quick, graceful rhythm, and he quickly pulled up the security footage.

Gia, Desmond, and I crowded into the space behind Diego, and the four of us studied the different feeds and camera angles.

Everything played out just as it had earlier.

Me heading toward the elevator on the left side of the lobby with Iris Berriston.

The other three thieves accessing the elevator on the right side.

Desmond ambushing the thieves on the lower Vault level, neutralizing them, and leaving them in the storage locker.

My own fight with Iris on the deserted fifth floor.

Then both Desmond and me hurrying back to the lobby.

Gia stabbed her finger at the screen again. “Focus on the lobby this time. I want to see everything that happened here at the reception desk.”

Diego rewound the footage, this time showing only the lobby. For several seconds, nothing happened. Then a shadow fell over the smooth, shiny counter, and a man stepped forward and dropped into the empty chair.

Gia blinked a few times, then bent down, her chin hovering over Diego’s shoulder. “Is that . . .”

“Bryce Finkley,” Desmond growled.

“Who is he?” Diego asked.

Gia drew back. Her lips puckered as though she’d just bitten into something rotten. “A former Section cleaner.”

On the footage, Bryce sat down, fished a flash drive out of his pocket, and plugged it into Iris’s laptop.

He also slid a comms device into his right ear.

Bryce bent forward and started typing. The security camera angle wasn’t quite right, but I could still see lines of code streaming across the laptop screen.

A few minutes passed. Bryce kept working, his lips moving every once in a while as he communicated with the other thieves. The former cleaner played his part perfectly, smiling at everyone who approached the desk and even pausing his typing long enough to answer questions from passersby.

Another minute passed. The lines of code vanished, replaced by a status bar, as though Bryce was uploading something onto the flash drive. His fingers tapped out an impatient rhythm on the desk, then abruptly stopped.

“That’s when I came back into the lobby and spotted him,” I said.

Once again, everything played out as it had earlier, with Bryce vaulting over the counter, plunging into the garden, and escaping through the manhole.

“Bryce never left the lobby,” Gia said in a thoughtful voice. “He didn’t even try to access the Vault level with the other thieves.”

“Which means whatever he wanted was on this computer,” Desmond growled again.

“Diego, can you tell what Bryce was doing?” I asked.

“Give me a second . . .” Diego’s voice trailed off, and his fingers flew over the keys again. “Looks like he—”

Diego’s fingers stilled. His head jerked back, and he blinked several times. “The flash drive he plugged into the laptop contained some serious decryption software.”

A few weeks ago, Diego had given me a flash drive loaded with similar software, which I’d used to hack into Elsa Eisen’s laptop during the Tannenbaum mission. If Bryce had done something like that here . . . well, today’s mission was even more of a disaster.

Diego clicked through several screens, following a trail of electronic breadcrumbs only he could see and understand.

He stopped and let out a low whistle, although I couldn’t tell if it was one of admiration, concern, or both.

“The decryption software breached several Section firewalls. He got into our servers.”

Gia tensed. “Can you tell what information Bryce accessed?”

Diego shook his head. “It was a sophisticated attack, and he pulled up hundreds of thousands of files. I’ll have to examine the decryption software and sort through everything before I can pinpoint what he was really after.”

Gia pinched the bridge of her nose. “All right. Pack it up and return to headquarters. I want an update in two hours.”

Diego nodded, got to his feet, and unplugged the compromised laptop.

Gia went over to the Section charmer. The other agent had calmed the onlookers and was now talking to the mortal cops and firefighters who had responded to the scene.

I picked up the smoke-stained briefcase, which felt as heavy as an anvil. I thought I was being clever by dangling the Grunglass Necklace in front of Henrika, but it had turned into a giant albatross hanging around my own neck.

Desmond laid a hand on my shoulder. “You can’t blame yourself for this, Charlotte.”

“Of course I can, and I absolutely should,” I muttered.

“This was my plan, my mission. I should have realized Henrika would see this as an opportunity to steal more than just the Grunglass Necklace—that she would target Section secrets. After all, the more she knows about Section, the easier it is for her to stay three steps ahead of us.”

Desmond’s hand dropped from my shoulder, and he shifted on his feet. “Henrika wasn’t just after Section secrets—she was after ours too.”

“What do you mean?”

He glanced around, but the other agents were busy, and no one was paying attention to us. “The thieves who went down to the Vault were looking for the evidence from the Tannenbaum mission. Something they thought the Section techs might have mislabeled or overlooked.”

I tensed. “The vials of Redburn?”

Desmond nodded. “Yes.”

Twin arrows of worry and dread shot through my body.

I’d been so certain Henrika would send someone after the Grunglass Necklace it hadn’t occurred to me that she might target something else stored in the Vault.

Of course she would want to recover the vials from the Tannenbaum mission.

She wouldn’t want Section 47 to have any samples of Redburn, lest our scientists find a way to neutralize the formula—or, worse, reverse engineer it.

Desmond’s shoulders slumped, and he kept shifting on his feet, his gaze fixed on the floor.

Henrika had wanted to prove how deadly her explosive was to Adrian Anatoly, a paramortal terrorist, so she’d used Desmond and Graham Walker as her own personal lab rats and blown up an entire beach in hopes of killing the two cleaners.

Even though Desmond had survived the explosions and his body had healed, he still bore deep, ugly scars from the attack on his heart.

My own heart squeezed tight with guilt. Desmond had already suffered so much because of the Redburn formula, and I’d failed him today. “I’m so sorry,” I rasped. “This is all my fault.”

Desmond lifted his gaze from the floor, although he still didn’t look at me. “No. Don’t blame yourself, Charlotte. We both know how smart, clever, and dangerous Henrika is.”

My heart squeezed tight again, this time with shame. I’d been so caught up in my own vendetta against Henrika that I’d forgotten how much Desmond was still hurting. And him not blaming me for my mistakes . . . well, that made me feel worse than anything else.

“I need to talk to Gia,” Desmond said. “See what she wants to do about Bryce.”

I opened my mouth to ask who Bryce Finkley was and why Desmond despised the former cleaner so much, but he spun around and walked away. He went over to Gia, and the two of them started speaking in low voices.

I looked around the lobby again. Several strike team members eyed me in return, their gazes more than a little hostile.

They knew just how spectacularly my mission had failed.

One of the strike team members strode out of the garden carrying a plastic evidence bag that contained the splintered remains of the smoke grenade Bryce had used. I grimaced and looked away.

By this point, the clouds of gray smoke had curled all the way up to the high ceiling and had dissipated into faint wisps, but the sight made even more anger, frustration, guilt, and shame crackle in my chest, like a violent thunderstorm about to spit out jagged forks of lightning.

Once again, Henrika Hyde had gotten the better of me. Even worse, I had no idea what she had stolen from the Section 47 servers—or how she was going to weaponize the information.