“Intriguing.” Hiding his eagerness, Richter plucked up the stick and rose. The firewalled computer he used for data from his various informants was set up on its own desk, connected to a massive monitor embedded into the wall. More than one traitor had left this office in a body bag after handing him a drive loaded with malware, thinking he’d be foolish enough to plug it into a networked computer.
No matter how tight the leash, Richter never trusted an outsider.
This stick held no viruses, just a video file that passed his security scan without red flags. Richter played it.
The monitor filled with an outdoor scene. A sea of tables spilled out from a warehouse’s open doors, each heaped with various items for sale. It took him only a moment to recognize Jaden Montgomery’s open-air market, though it was significantly larger than he’d realized. Allowing the rabble to the south a pressure valve to keep them from the simmering edge of outright rebellion was one thing, but Jaden Montgomery was clearly becoming something more dangerous.
Richter would have to consider that.
The market wasn’t the immediate concern, however. As Richter watched, Rafael Morales strolled across the screen. A few moments later, Garrett Knox himself drifted into frame, his attention fixed on a tall brunette who strode confidently at his side.
Heady vindication snaked through him. For months he’d known the truth, even as the Board shut him down at every turn. The Silver Devils were dead, they insisted. Their bodies had been recovered, their DNA and implants confirmed. When Richter had pushed back against their conviction, he’d received his first ever reprimand. The Board did not want to spend its time chasing ghosts.
The Board did not want to spend its money chasing ghosts.
Of course, he’d done it anyway. What was the point of becoming the dominant predator if you couldn’t secure the resources to do what was necessary, regardless of the foolish whims of the sheep?
Granted, he’d made an error of judgment with James Mason. He’d seemed like the perfect weapon—pure emotional devastation, delivered directly to Garrett Knox’s door. Of course, that devastation had depended heavily on Richter’s ability to break the fool. Who could have imagined that a medic, of all people, would prove stronger than the worst Richter’s team could devise?
They’d wasted months trying to turn him into an obedient killer. Something in him resisted as strongly as if the refusal were coded into his damn DNA. And then that disaster with the transport convoy—Mason had been quick enough to kill the soldiers who were meant to bring him to a secure location. The competent brutality of it had irked Richter most of all. Not so much the loss of men, but the proof that at least some of the deadly lessons he’d attempted to impart to the medic had clearly stuck.
He’d made MD-701 stronger, deadlier, faster, and angrier, and then he’d lost him. Failure upon failure—just like everything involving Garrett Knox and his squad.
It was a good thing he’d kept the entire mission off the books. He would have been hard-pressed to rationalize the millions of credits that had evaporated when Mason had cut free of his trackers and vanished into the city. Richter was already on thin ice with the Board for losing control of the Silver Devils to begin with, not to mention his insistence that they weren’t dead at all.
He shouldn’t have tried to get fancy with James Mason, not when the real solution had been within his grasp the whole time. Not aggressive action, but patience and trust.
His carefully cultivated information network had never failed him.
The Silver Devils were alive, and now he had proof. He could rub the Board’s collective nose in its error, make it clear that Tobias Richter had been the only one to see the truth. Their safety depended on believing in him.
Their lives depended on deferring to him.
“Listen, the chicks they’re running with are good people, okay? There ain’t a Protectorate soldier out there who isn’t elbow deep in the blood of decent folks, so I don’t give a shit what you do to them. But you gotta leave Nina and her girls…”
Taylor’s blustering demands faded to a distant buzz. Matthew Gray had appeared on the screen, stopping in front of a table overflowing with tech. Oh, now there was a betrayal that hurt. The rest of them Richter had had little use for, and Garrett Knox had always been a particular thorn in his side … but 66–793 had been something special. Elite. Cool and unruffled. The best sniper in the history of the TechCorps and an unparalleled weapon.
How many times had Richter stepped in to protect him? That meddlesome bitch Birgitte Skovgaard would have tossed him aside on one of her idealistic crusades to purify the ranks more than once without Richter’s intervention. He alone had recognized Sergeant Gray’s value.
And the traitor had walked away without a backward glance.
On the screen, Gray smiled. An odd expression, one Richter had never seen on him before. He was looking down at a short, curvy woman whose face bore a smile that didn’t look odd at all. In fact, the familiarity of it stole his breath.
With a tap of his fingers, Richter froze the screen. Was he imagining the resemblance because his anger at Birgitte felt so fresh?
Heart-shaped face. Warm-brown skin. Big, brown eyes framed by thick lashes. The elbow-length black braids were new and so was the makeup. Thick eyeliner, shimmering colors. Her face had lost the fullness of childhood, and the cosmetics expertly played up the difference. He doubted facial recognition would have flagged her, though he suspected the cleverly designed sunglasses propped on her head were one of the ways she’d thwarted the city’s surveillance all this time.
Computers could be fooled, but Richter couldn’t. This was not his imagination. It was a damn miracle.
“Where are they?” he demanded, cutting off whatever Taylor had been saying.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Taylor pull out a second data stick. “If you promise me you won’t fuck with Nina or her girls, I’ll give you this. It’s the data on a corp they’re chasing. I figure if you find them, the Devils will come to you.”
Richter turned back to the screen. No, the frozen image wasn’t a miracle. It was the simple result of his incredible foresight. He’d embedded his spies everywhere. He’d earned this. “I’m not interested in Nina,” he said truthfully. “And, of course, I would never do anything to compromise your cover. Your position with Montgomery is extremely valuable to me.”
“Fine.” The second data stick landed on Richter’s desk with a soft clatter. “Don’t cross me on this. I mean it.”
“Of course not,” Richter lied. He would allow the man his bluster today. There was plenty of time later to give the leash another firm yank. The threat of his niece being swept up into a dangerous experimental program would be sufficient, even after Richter broke his promise.
Which he would.
The private elevator door whispered shut, carrying Taylor to the sublevel tunnel system, where he’d vanish back into the mass of foot traffic on the Hill. Richter couldn’t care less. He stepped closer to the monitor and swiped his hands across the screen, blowing up the image.
Marjorie Chevalier stared back at him. Birgitte Skovgaard’s intractable, rebellious data courier. The fact that someone had smuggled her out of the TechCorps under his nose was proof that Birgitte’s rebellion still seethed through the halls of his empire like a poison. The names of every remaining traitor were locked behind those clever brown eyes.