by Sophie Lark
He planned to go to Morris’s place next, wherever that might be, but he felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. He pulled it out, his heart soaring when he saw Holly’s number on the screen.
But when he answered, he heard Morris’s voice.
“I was so disappointed not to see fireworks this afternoon,” he said.
“Where’s Holly?” Black demanded, struggling to keep his voice calm. “If you hurt her, I swear to god I’ll—"
“Now, now,” Morris said. “Let’s keep this civil.”
Black’s heart was racing, his stomach churning. His mouth was so dry he could barely speak.
“Where is she?” he said.
“I can tell you where she’s going to be, at eight o’clock tonight. Come by yourself. I promise you, if you tell anyone, or you try to bring that cop friend of yours along, you’ll never see her again. You won’t even know what happened. There won’t be a body for you to mourn. You’ll spend the rest of your life, regretting and wondering.”
Black’s stomach rolled so hard he thought he would vomit. But he swallowed it down, determined not to give Morris the slightest ounce of satisfaction.
“Where will she be?” he said.
“I’m taking her to the place where you let my mother die,” Morris said.
Then he hung up the phone.
19
When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend.
William Blake
Black took a cab to the old NSC building. Though it had been shining and new only sixteen years earlier, it was now looking decidedly more run-down. The parts of the building that had been replaced after the blast looked slightly different in color and material, as if they’d been repaired in the cheapest way possible. There were fewer windows along the second floor than had been there previously, giving that level a sinister, secretive look.
Black wondered if the building’s owners had trouble renting it out in the aftermath of the bomb. People were superstitious. And nobody liked being associated with tragedy.
The large fountain out front was gone, along with the modern glass sign that had proudly born the National Surveillance Center name. In its place was an ugly marquee, showing the various businesses that now inhabited the different floors of the high rise. As Black expected, the space for the second floor was blank. Whatever shell company Morris had used to rent it, he hadn’t bothered adding its name.
Black wondered how long Morris had been renting this place, how long he’d been planning all of this. He must have been so deliciously excited when Holly said, “Oh, I know Byron Black! He’s an old friend of mine.”
It must have seemed like fate to Morris—like destiny had brought them together for this moment of triumph and revenge.
Every madman thinks they’re the hero of the story. Or even the god.
Black was all too painfully aware that he was not a hero. He was just a man, horribly afraid that the woman he loved was about to be killed in front of his eyes, because of a mistake he’d made. He knew that he was fallible—and mortal. There was a very good chance that he wouldn’t escape from this building a second time.
The building was dark, as was the lobby. Most everyone had gone home for the day. No security guard stood watch over the entrance. Black supposed the front doors were usually locked at the end of the day, but as Morris had promised, when he put his hand to the handle, they swung open.
He could hear his footsteps echoing through the silent lobby. The elevators stood open on his left, but he didn’t want to trap himself in a little box just yet. He took the stairs instead.
He climbed slowly, his heart already hammering in his chest. He wanted to draw his gun, but he’d come unarmed like Morris had said. He hadn’t dare do anything that might risk Holly’s life.
His only protection was a thin bulletproof vest under his suit. And that wasn’t going to help him if Morris simply intended to blow them all up.
Black came out of the staircase onto the second floor. It looked different than it had the last time he saw it. Then, almost the whole floor had been taken up by the large, open-plan NSC office. Now, it was subdivided into numerous smaller offices enclosed behind solid oak doors. However, every detail of that place had been burned into Black’s brain. He had a good idea what the old layout had been and which direction he needed to go.
He was sure that Morris was luring him to the exact place where Gemma had died.
Because that’s what this was really all about, in the end.
Black walked down the hallway toward the northeast corner of the floor. There he found a single open office door with no nameplate or signage.
Inside, he saw Holly, tied to a chair with tape over her mouth. It was not a large, plush chair, like the one Gemma had been sitting in. It was only a small wooden chair, like the kind that would be part of a cheap dining-room set. Still, Black saw the obvious parallel.
Morris stood next to Holly, his hand resting paternally on her shoulder. He was watching the doorway, having obviously heard Black coming down the hallway. His eyes gleamed with anticipation. But otherwise, his face was oddly blank and expressionless.
Black had often wondered what lay beneath the politician’s mask of friendliness. Now he could see that for Tom Morris, there was absolutely nothing beneath. No compassion. No emotion. Just emptiness.
“You found us,” Morris said.
His voice was similarly devoid of cheery energy now. It was quiet, calm, monotone.
“I did,” Black said.
“Glad to see you remember.”
“I remember very well.”
Black could see Holly’s sea-green eyes watching him, wide and frightened in her pale face. But she wasn’t crying. She wasn’t hysterical.
She trusts me, Black thought. She believes I can save her.
The thought was more terrifying than comforting.
She had a small bruise on her forehead.
Morris had hurt her.
The thought of Morris hitting her, threatening her, forcing her into his car, filled Black with rage.
But he couldn’t allow it to distract him. That was exactly what Morris wanted.
“I hear you were poking around John and Helen,” Morris said.
“Yes. I visited your parents.”
“They’re not my parents,” Morris said sharply.
Black knew that would provoke him.
“I did find out a few things about your real parents, too,” Black said. “You were what, five, six years old when your mother ran away from Wright? Old enough to remember him.”
Morris’s mouth stiffened at the mention of his father’s name.
“I remember him,” he said.
“Guess your mom figured out he was a lunatic and tried to get away from him. But Dad didn’t like that too much.”
Morris’s eyes narrowed. His face looked pale in the dim light.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Morris said.
“I think I do. You have this sweet, sheltered girl. Escapes from her zealot family. Makes it to university. But then, she meets Wright. And she doesn’t realize at first that he’s as insane as her parents, just in a different way. Maybe that fire of insanity in his eyes even seemed comfortable and familiar to her, at first. But over time, she starts to see that he’s a killer at heart. These revolutionaries like to pretend it’s about the ideals. But in the end, I think they just like blowing people up. Isn’t that right, Tom? You can give all your reasons, but at the end of the day, you like having that power over people. To hurt them. And to kill them.”
“Why Black,” Morris said softly, “I didn’t realize you were an amateur psychologist.”
“I am curious why you asked me to look into the Citizens. Why bring me in? Threw a bit of a wrench in your own plans.”
“I wanted you to figure it out. But just a little too late, as per usual.”
“Not too late to stop you bombing the House of Lords.”
A shadow of anger flickered across Morris’s face. He obviously hadn’t expected Black to guess that bit.
“Yes, you surprised me there,” Morris admitted. “But I guess I should have expected that. You do get it halfway right, don’t you Black? It’s just the ending you always fuck up.”
They both looked unconsciously towards Holly, bound to the chair. She narrowed her eyes at Morris, furious with him.
“Sorry, Holly, my sweet,” Morris said. He didn’t actually sound sorry in the slightest. “You were a very good assistant. But not a good judge of character, I’m afraid. A publicist should never believe their own press releases.”
“What’s your plan now?” Black said. “What do you hope to get out of this? Emerson knows you’re the one that planted the bomb at Parliament.”
“Does he?” Morris said. “Because as far as I can tell, that was the work of Daniel Clark, acting completely on his own. I doubt he’ll testify any differently. And I don’t think you have any evidence to the contrary.”
“You’ll just kill Holly and I, and that will be that?” Black said. “You don’t think all this is going to put a damper on your political career?”
“Maybe for a little while,” Morris said. “But I think I can spin it. I’ve been targeted by a domestic terrorist group. And then harassed by the failed police officer who killed my mother. Once you’ve murdered my senior assistant and killed yourself, I think it will be pretty clear who’s at fault. The victors write the history, Black. All it does is put my name in the news.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Black could see Holly straining against the ropes binding her hands behind her back. She was trying to subtly wriggle her arms back and forth to get a little slack, without Morris noticing.
“All publicity is good publicity?” Black said, forcing himself not to look toward Holly.
“I think so. Look at Trump over in America—no scandal is more powerful than celebrity. My father was right about the dangers of technology. He saw a far-distant society where technology controlled the people. Well, it wasn’t distant at all. It’s already here. His mistake was to try to destroy it, instead of using it.
“I can manipulate people’s perception of me, and of the issues they’re for or against. I can hire ten thousand bots to upvote everything I say and spread it to people who buy into it wholeheartedly, believing that’s what everyone else already thinks and feels. I can make algorithms to show people only what I want them to see and bury what I don’t like. I can even create news stories to attack myself in ways that will inflame my supporters, that will make them rush to my defense. Then I expose the falsehoods in the attacks against myself, and now my supporters won’t believe anything said against me, because they think it’s all made up.”
“And the rest of the Citizens are on board with the new direction of your little club?”
“They’re as easy to manipulate as anyone else,” Morris said coldly. “You might be right about that one thing, Black—they don’t particularly care where the gun is pointed, as long as they get to fire it.”
“I guess I’m just confused about one thing, then,” Black said.
“What’s that?”
“Why are you playing the part of the villain in all this? Because I think you actually cared about your mother, if you’ve ever cared about anyone. Why are you determined to recreate what happened to her with Holly? Holly never wronged you. She believed in you. She cared about you. Just like your mother did.”
Black thought he saw Morris flinch just a little. Morris glanced over at Holly, who was sitting still now. Her eyes looked up at him, confused and reproachful. Tears sparkled at the corners, but she refused to let them fall.
But Morris turned back to Black, furious.
“You put me in this position!” he shrieked. “Just like you did to my father! He never would have killed her if it wasn’t for you!”
“You think Wright was going to let Gemma go?” Black laughed incredulously.
“Of course he was!” Morris was livid, his face flushed. “He was angry with her because she took me and hid me. He wanted to scare her, to punish her. But he wasn’t going to kill her! It was you who ruined everything. You who murdered him. It was you who caused her to die!”
Black thought, from his peripheral view, that Holly had used Morris’s shrieking tirade to free one arm from her restraints. But she was still half-tied to the chair. Black said the first thing he could think of to keep Morris distracted.
“Your father would have killed her, and he probably would have killed you, too. His plan was shit, and so is yours.”
Morris was scarlet, his eyes bloodshot and blazing.
He pulled out a gun and pointed it directly at Black. Black looked down the dark, empty barrel. It was aimed at his face. The vest wasn’t going to help him.
“No bomb this time?” Black asked.
“It doesn’t quite fit the profile for a murder-suicide,” Morris said. “This is a Glock 17; I’m sure you recognize it.”
Black certainly did. It was exactly what he used to carry when he worked for the Metropolitan Police.
“Once I switch the registration to your name, it’s going to all fit together very nicely. You’ve got a history of being unlucky in love, don’t you Black?” Morris sneered.
“Go ahead then,” Black said levelly.
“Not until you’ve felt what I felt,” Morris said.
He swung the gun around to point it at Holly.
Black charged.
He sprinted at Morris, but he was yards away.
Morris squeezed the trigger. Right as the gun went off, Holly yanked hard on the arm that was still bound and flung herself half out of the chair. It was still tied to her legs, and she fell over in a heap. But Morris’s shot narrowly missed her head.
He saw Black charging at him, and he swung the gun around to fire off three more shots. Black felt the first two hit him in the chest, like two massive mallets swinging into him. The third caught him in the thigh. His leg crumpled beneath him, but he barreled into Morris all the same, taking him down at the same time.
Black grabbed Morris’s hand, pinning his wrist to the ground. Morris pulled the trigger twice more. The shots went wild into the wall, narrowly missing Holly where she sprawled on the ground, still attached to the chair. She was struggling with the knots in the rope, wildly kicking and squirming.
Morris flailed his other arm, hitting Black repeatedly in the side of the head, punching him in the jaw and ear.
Black seized Morris’s throat with his right hand, still pinning his wrist down with his left. Black had huge hands, hard as iron from countless hours working a heavy bag. His fingers went almost all the way around Morris’s throat. He began to squeeze.
He felt a rage unlike anything he’d known before. Holly had brought him back from a dark place when he thought he’d never feel happiness again. She was everything that was beautiful and hopeful in the world. She’d been nothing but kind to this monster, and he’d wanted to murder her in front of Black, just to make him suffer.
Morris was a psychopath, devoid of feeling, using his intelligence only to control and destroy the people around him. The world would be a measurably better place without him in it.
Black squeezed harder, as Morris’s face suffused with blood and the hand holding the gun went limp. Tiny blood vessels popped in those manic blue eyes.
Black could have snapped his neck. In a moment more, he would have felt the throat collapse under his furious hand.
But instead, he looked over and saw Holly laying on the ground. She had stopped struggling with the ropes. She was watching him.
All he could see were her clear green eyes, her calm face. She still trusted him. She still believed in him.
Just like that, the frenzy abated. The desire to rend and destroy this man abandoned him.
Black let go of Morris. He had passed out on the floor, but Black could see his chest rising and falling, shallowly. He was still
alive.
Black grabbed the gun from Morris’s limp hand and engaged the safety. He tucked it away inside his jacket.
Then he dragged himself over to Holly and helped untie her from the chair.
Gently, he pulled the tape off her mouth.
“Byron!” she cried. “Are you alright?”
“I have a vest on,” Black gasped, “but he got my leg.”
He hadn’t felt it too much in the adrenaline-soaked struggle for the gun, but he could feel it now: the flaming, burning pain that felt like a molten finger shoved insistently into his thigh. His leg had gone stiff and immobile.
His trouser leg was soaked with blood, but Black was fairly sure the bullet had missed the artery, or else he’d probably already be dead.
Holly found the wound, on the outer side of his right thigh. She took off her blouse and bound it as tight as she could around his leg. Then she used Black’s phone to call an ambulance.
As they waited, she tried to make him as comfortable as possible.
“Where’s everyone else?” she asked. “Why’s it taking so long?”
“There isn’t anybody else,” Black said. “He told me to come alone.”
“And you did?” she cried. “You knew he was just going to kill us!”
“I couldn’t risk him hurting you,” Black said.
“I can’t believe you,” Holly said, shaking her head.
Now she really was crying, now that it was over.
She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand.
“That was a terrible idea,” she said. “What were you thinking?”
“I guess I was just thinking...that I love you.”
“You love me?”
“I do.”
She laughed.
“Are you sure you’re not just delirious?”
“No,” Black assured her. “Actually, I figured it out the other night. I was going to call you to tell you, but it was past midnight.”
Holly laughed again, as if she couldn’t believe her ears.
“You can call me and wake me up,” she said. “For something like that.