“What did she take?”
“Everything. Documents, videos, signed affidavits, all dating back to the beginning, and the final orders that came through after the project failed.”
Enough to blow up Washington and everyone associated with Grantham. Seeley knew exactly what the world would do to them, to him, if it ever saw what they’d been doing here.
“And what was the plan?” Seeley asked again.
“I don’t know. I just helped get her what she needed, and then I cleared a way so she and Lucy could get out before the army descended.”
Seeley grabbed Krum by the throat and pressed hard. He was losing his patience. “Give me something useful, Krum. For Dana’s sake.”
Krum yanked against Seeley’s hold. “I don’t know anything else.”
“You spent time with her, knew what she was going to do. You had to have overheard something.”
“I work in security. I just wanted to give them a chance.”
“Not good enough!” Seeley released Krum’s neck and grabbed the rod. He rammed it into Krum’s chest cavity. A powerful electric wave raced through the device and into Krum’s weathered body. He lurched and cried out, his voice filling the box with piercing agony.
“If Olivia had the information, why not just release it herself?” Seeley asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Why give it to Lucy? That makes her a target.”
“I don’t know!”
Seeley struck him again, shaking the man’s figure like a rag doll. “I can’t help your family if you don’t help me. You give, I give.”
Krum coughed up blood. It trickled down his chin and splattered on his knee. Seeley was frying his insides. He wailed, cursed, and spat through his coughing. “I don’t—”
Seeley didn’t wait for him to finish. He administered a final pulse with the rod, long and drawn out. Krum screamed and trembled in his chair. Seeley pulled the rod back and let it hang. Krum hunched over and cried like a scared little boy. Blood, snot, and tears mingled on his face.
“We can go again,” Seeley said, reaching back for the rod.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Krum cried out.
Seeley paused as the man whimpered.
“God forgive me,” Krum whispered. “I’m not strong enough.”
“Tell me what you know and this will end.”
Krum huffed through his tears and pain. “Lucy is the only one that can find the location where the information is hidden.”
“What do you mean?”
“Olivia implanted the details in one of her old memories. Like a code that tells her where she needs to go to recover the data. She can’t access it unless she regains her memories.”
Olivia wouldn’t have been so stupid, Seeley thought. All Grantham would have to do was kill the girl to destroy the information.
“There’s a fail-safe,” Krum said, as if reading his mind.
Seeley swore under his breath.
“If Lucy doesn’t recover the information, or if she dies, another source will release it nationally.”
“What source?” Seeley hissed.
“I don’t know,” he said through tears. “I swear, she wouldn’t tell me more.”
Seeley reached backward for the rod.
“I swear!” Krum cried. “She would never risk giving me that information. It’s the only thing keeping Lucy alive!”
Seeley inhaled slowly. This made things more complicated. “How long do we have?”
“I don’t know that either, but my guess, not long.”
Seeley tossed the metal rod away, and it clanged against the floor. “What did you get for betraying your country?”
Krum screamed up at him, “I got to be human! To sleep at night. But then, you probably don’t understand that.”
Seeley already didn’t sleep, and being human was overrated. Humanity made you vulnerable. His humanity had nearly destroyed him, and now humanity would destroy Krum.
“I don’t know anything else.” Krum sniffed. “I don’t know anything else.” Defeated, the man crumpled. His shoulders shook with sobs, his cries silent but suffocating.
All Seeley could feel was his own darkness, so he turned and left the sobbing man behind him. He unlocked the box’s door, then shut Krum inside, still achingly mournful in his chair.
The hallway was silent, nothing but the overhead ventilation system turning the air in and out. Two guards stood on either side of the steel door, staring forward, armed to the hilt. Seeley took a deep breath as he started to release his darkness, a process that was always painful, and turned to the guard on the left. “Kill him.”
The agent nodded, and the two standing watch entered the box as Seeley started down the hall. A few feet away, he heard two pops echo across the stillness. Seeley didn’t pause. He couldn’t afford to. He pressed on, keeping his mind anchored on Lucy. It all had to be about finding Lucy.
TEN
ZOE STOOD INSIDE the bathroom at the end of the upstairs hallway. Shared by the row of simple bedrooms that lined the hall, the bathroom had a shower/bath combo, two sinks, two mirrors, and a single toilet. A good size, but probably chaos in the morning, depending on how many beds were filled.
She splashed her face with water and stared at her reflection in the mirror. The world would see a grown woman, but Zoe could still see the terrified little girl she was trying to forget. This house was different, but the feelings were the same. She’d been here before. Under the care of Heath, in a past life, doing whatever she needed to survive. Heath had found her when she was trying to rebuild her life, trying to become someone else. He’d helped her create a world where she could live without the stain of her own failures. The failures of her parents. Her mother.
Lucy had a dozen questions. How did Zoe meet Tomac? What was a runner? Was Tomac a bad guy or a good guy? Were they safe here? All questions that required Zoe to open up and risk letting that terrified little girl out of hiding. What if she couldn’t get her back in? But Lucy was a puppy with a bone, and she couldn’t let it go. So Zoe had given simple answers.
Tomac and I met when we were kids.
A runner is a job where you deliver and retrieve things. The kinds of things you don’t want to get caught retrieving or delivering.
Tomac is both a bad guy and a good guy. It all depends on who you are.
Safer here than out there, but don’t trust anyone here.
When you remember your past, I’ll tell you more about mine.
That last statement had come out with too much anger, and she could see she’d hurt Lucy’s feelings. Zoe had excused herself to the bathroom, where she was practicing calming breaths that were supposed to help her re-center, according to Jessie. It wasn’t working though. She dried her face on a hand towel and sat on the closed toilet.
She knew she should make amends. Lucy was too innocent to be blamed for her curiosity, but Zoe was too stubborn for her own good. Lucy had awakened the constant whispering of her past, and that made Zoe angry. Being here, in this house with Tomac, had amplified the whispers to screams.
Zoe tried another deep breath, then huffed and dropped her head into her hands. She pressed against her closed eyes with the palms of her hands, the pressure blotting out the noise. Zoe missed her past-less life. Lucy wasn’t even aware of what a gift she had, not being able to remember.