by Megan Crane
If Jonas were going to drop something deadly into a crowd, he would do it from there. Because not only was it a nice height and packed tight with victims already, but the constantly revolving doors behind him would push the air around and do the work the air-filtration system had done in that basement.
Not to mention, it was splashy and self-aggrandizing, just like his quarry.
Jonas moved for the stairs, passing people who stared straight at him and never knew he was there. He could have touched them and they still wouldn’t have registered his presence. It was his gift. His curse. His most formidable weapon.
He melted up the stairs toward the balcony, winding his way in and out of busy commuters and clueless tourists snapping photographs, searching every face and every stance, looking for a man who could very well have disguised himself—
And then, at last, he saw him.
He’d dyed his hair since California, into a shocking red that was clearly meant to hide him by calling attention to the difference that would automatically disqualify him. But it was still the same man. Judson Kerrigone. Dominic Carter.
Once a mercenary killer, always a mercenary killer.
Jonas knew that Carter didn’t expect to be recognized. He wasn’t the steroid-slurping maniac he’d been in the desert. And he wasn’t the overly smiley CEO, all about handshakes and that fake aw-shucks grin, either. Today he was dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, both far rattier and thicker than anything he’d worn in California. And he stood differently, so that he looked thicker himself. Not muscled and ready, but pudgy.
Not a great disguise, maybe, but Jonas knew full well the best disguise was often as simple as a shift in a facial expression. A change in gait. He was doing the same thing himself.
He looped around, concealing himself behind a loud group of men with pronounced local accents. And when he came around the other side of the surge of bodies there at the landing at the top of the stairs, he was face-to-face with Dominic Carter.
At last.
And had the distinct pleasure of watching the man stare straight at him, then jolt, as if at first he hadn’t recognized Jonas at all.
But then he did.
“One step closer,” Carter said conversationally. And the gaze Jonas had found unsettling enough at Bethan’s wedding seemed even more intense. Downright unpleasant. “I dare you.”
Jonas ignored him. “What are you going to do?” he asked mildly, moving closer. “Kill me twice?”
Carter’s face twisted. “You should have died the first time. That bitch shot me.”
“If it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else,” Jonas said pitilessly. “You weren’t exactly a popular guy, Judson. I’m betting you still aren’t.”
But Carter sneered as if that were funny. “Says Jonas Crow, who, turns out, doesn’t own any company in Seattle. All talk to impress the crowd and General Wilcox, I’m guessing. Maybe you should ask yourself how valuable you are.”
“To who?” Jonas asked. He was aware of distinct movement in his peripheral vision, and he glanced over quickly to see Templeton on one side, Isaac on the other. He knew without having to ask that Griffin had a line of sight. And Blue, no doubt, was already tracking Iyara Sowande and Bethan.
But he couldn’t let himself think about any of that.
Even when Templeton pointed to his own ear, then gave Jonas the finger.
“You were a highly trained asset to your government,” Carter was saying, seemingly unaware that Alaska Force had closed in around him. “But now what are you? Just another mercenary. Disposable.”
“We’re all disposable,” Jonas replied. “The only thing you have, the only thing you ever have, is your honor. But you wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“You can keep your honor,” Carter snarled at him. “I have a Fortune 500 company and the most powerful biological weapon known to man.”
“That’s what I can’t figure,” Jonas said, and he adopted a little bit of a character while he did it, almost grinning. Far friendlier than he felt. “What’s your plan? You must know you’re going to inhale a little bit of your cocktail. Then what? You don’t strike me as the suicidal type.”
But when Carter only sneered at him again—like he was stupid—Jonas knew the answer. He thought about that scrap of paper with all the chemical compounds on it. And suddenly, things got a lot clearer.
Because if there was an antidote and Carter had it, that meant all Jonas needed to do was relieve him of it. Then give it to Bethan.
And if Jonas had to kill Carter in the process—well, that wasn’t the kind of thing he was likely to lose any sleep over.
Out of the corner of his eye he read Isaac’s hand gesture, obliquely telling him that there were other eyes watching this interaction. Officials, no doubt. None of whom would hesitate to take him down if he gave them a reason.
He decided he might as well give them one. As a little party favor, so they all felt good about their roles here today.
When the next big knot of tourists came in the door, heedless and loud, he hurled himself at Carter. There was no contest. The other man had spent too long behind a desk, counting his money, and it showed. Jonas was on him, his knife at a kidney from the back, ready and waiting for the first opportunity to gut Carter like a pig.
“Empty your pockets,” Jonas ordered him. “Now.”
He heard Templeton’s voice in the background, and while he couldn’t hear the words, he knew that tone. It was crowd control. If he had to guess, Fed and SWAT control.
“I don’t care if everybody dies,” Carter threw at him, all bravado.
But he yelped when Jonas pressed the knife against him, the blade so sharp it easily went through the layers of his sweatshirt and pricked into his flesh.
“You talk a big game.” Jonas spoke directly into the other man’s ear, holding him so it looked like an intense conversation, nothing more. “You think if you watch enough movies it might make you something you’re not. You think if you swagger around enough it will make you what you could never become on your own. But the truth is, you’re a coward. Just a coward.”
“Says the man who let a dumb bitch rescue him.”
“She’s good at that,” Jonas said with dark intent, and had to fight his own urge to end this right now.
He had to fight to keep his hand steady and not let his grief make him anything less than what he was. Not that he cared—but he knew she would, if she knew.
If she lived.
You killed me.
Jonas forced himself to talk. Not act. “She’s so good at all the things you pretend to be that she makes you look pathetic. And deep down, you know it.” His voice was low. Insinuating. “You know exactly what kind of low-life disgrace you really are. And you’re worse than most, Carter. Kerrigone. Whoever you are. You weren’t satisfied with all the double-crossing and murder when you were nothing but a gun for hire. You had to run off and up the game. Now you think you can kill innocent people and profit from it.”
The other man shook with rage. “There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
“You disgust me,” Jonas said with quiet menace. “You seem to be under the impression that because I’m not a lowlife like you, I won’t kill you. You’re reading me all wrong, friend. I have enough honor to know when extermination is the only solution for a cockroach who just won’t die.”
He stuck the knife in, just a little bit deeper.
And had the distinct thrill of listening to the other man hiss in pain.
Fun as all this was, time was running out. It was almost certainly too late for him, not that he cared to pay attention to the messages his body was sending him. That he was warmer than he should have been. That he wasn’t as steady as he usually was. Worse, he didn’t know what Sowande’s sister had done to Bethan. It could be all over by now.
; But Jonas didn’t accept that. He couldn’t.
He shoved Carter forward, knowing that to the untrained eye, they looked like friends who were roughhousing a little. He even grinned to show it was all in good fun.
It wasn’t.
Carter hit the balustrade, and as he did, Jonas employed one of the few skills he’d acquired in his childhood. The pickpocketing his parents had made him learn when he was a lot more feral than he felt now.
He shifted back, glancing down at his hand. One syringe. And what looked like an aerosol tube of colorless air. It didn’t take a genius to figure out which was which.
“Now what,” Carter snarled at him, hauling himself around to face Jonas. “You understand what you’re holding in your hand, don’t you?”
Jonas bared his teeth. “I do.”
“Are you really going to try to convince me that you’re altruistic?” The other man laughed. “Give me a break. I’ve known guys like you my whole life.”
“I sincerely doubt that,” Jonas said.
“So moral. All about the high ground. But when push comes to shove, and it always does, you choose the easy way just like anyone else.” Carter jerked his chin at the items in Jonas’s hand. “Do you have any idea how much either one of those things would go for on the open market?”
Jonas assumed his expression was lethal when the other man flinched. “I don’t care.”
“If you take that antidote, you’ll live,” Carter sneered. “But your girlfriend is already dead. Is that really what you want?”
You killed me.
Jonas was already plotting out his next move, made harder by the presence of the authorities. But harder wasn’t impossible, and impossible was all in a day’s work for him. Even if he happened to be a little more impaired than usual today.
He focused on Carter. “It doesn’t matter who dies as long as I’m rich, right? Isn’t that the way you operate?”
“Spare me the lecture, you sanctimonious prick,” Carter snarled at him, his face getting red. “I’ve scraped better men than you off my shoe. Just crawl back into your little hidey-hole in Alaska and leave it to the big boys to figure out—”
“Enough,” Jonas interrupted him. “I’m done with you.”
“What are you going to do?” Carter demanded. “Knife me right here in Grand Central? Is that the high road you think you’re on?”
“Technically,” Jonas pointed out, “I already did.”
Then he lifted his hand with the tube in it.
Everything sped up all around them. He heard shouting. The kind of loud, abrasive commands that only cops made, because they wanted to clear the scene, take control, get everyone down on the floor.
Jonas looked to his right, expecting to see Isaac there, and sure enough, his friend was right on target. So he threw the tube that he knew was full of the SuperThrax that was even now eating him alive. He didn’t wait to see if Isaac would catch it.
Because he knew he would.
Instead, he banked left, knowing that Templeton would do what was necessary to give him that opening—
He did. Templeton theatrically tripped over his own two feet, knocking back half the SWAT team gunning for Jonas.
Jonas dived for the stairs, plunging into the crowd and shoving his comm unit back into his ear as he went.
“Where is she?” he demanded, not bothering to look over his shoulder, because he was fairly sure most of the New York Federal Bureau of Investigation was behind him, with a few SWAT teams from the NYPD thrown in for good measure, and there was no point clocking their positions because he didn’t intend to get caught.
“The corridor to your left,” came Blue’s gruff reply.
Jonas ran.
He didn’t care if they shot him in the back. He’d keep running.
He didn’t ask if she was alive, because that wouldn’t help him go any faster. And if he was too late, he would deal with that once he found out one way or another. Likely by tearing the entire building down around him.
He ran and, for once, didn’t do a single thing to disappear while he did it.
Every eye in Grand Central was on him, and he didn’t care.
He vaulted over luggage, shoved a few clueless young men out of his way, and, for perhaps the first time in his entire life, was making a freaking spectacle of himself.
But it was for Bethan.
He would do a lot more.
Jonas threw himself into the corridor Blue had indicated and saw them there, halfway down the gentle incline. Bethan was slumped against a wall, down on the ground as if she’d crumpled there. Iyara Sowande was next to her, also sitting, while Blue was standing guard over them.
And it wasn’t until Jonas slid to a stop, going down in a roll that ended with him up on his knees before Bethan, that he realized he was light-headed.
Exertion, something in him told him matter-of-factly. You made that run in less than a minute, but it came at a cost.
“I have the antidote,” he managed to get out past the panting as his lungs worked overtime.
But his hands were already on Bethan. He checked for her pulse. He looked at her face. She was paler than she should have been, her eyes were glassy, and she didn’t look right—
“Jonas,” Blue began. “Brother—”
Jonas paid no attention.
He pulled out the syringe, sparing only a single, ferocious glare for the woman next to Bethan. He would deal with her later, in whatever time he had left.
But something happened to his hand as he lifted it. It was like there were suddenly two of them.
He thought, This is how it ends. This is how it goes.
But he shook it off, fumbling to get the syringe into position—
Bethan’s hands were moving then. He would recognize her touch anywhere. Her hands were on his, keeping him from administering the antidote while everything was dimming all around him.
And her gaze was cool, green, and the only thing he ever wanted to see. The last thing he’d see, he thought, and he was okay with that.
“Stop,” he told her, though his voice sounded far away. “I’m trying to save you.”
“Too bad,” she replied.
And he knew he was dying because though her voice was thready, she sounded . . . amused?
He tried to make sense of it, but he couldn’t seem to focus past what he already knew. What he was here to do.
The antidote. Her. That was all that mattered.
“Jonas,” she said, his name like a bright, happy thing in her mouth. He wanted to take that with him. “I’ve already had the antidote. I’m fine.”
She pulled him closer, smoothing her palm over the inside of his elbow, and then she smiled. He would do anything for that smile.
When Blue laughed, it occurred to him that maybe he’d said that out loud.
Jonas felt a sharp prick in his arm, then a kind of buzzing sensation that spread out from the point of impact.
Bethan leaned closer, gripping his chin in her hand, so the only thing in the world was her face. Her gaze. Her. “I know you’re going to hate this, Jonas, but I just saved you. Again.”
Twenty-five
Things got very official, fast.
The authorities—city, state, and federal—were deeply unamused with the day’s events. Bethan and Jonas were placed under strict quarantine. The CDC descended and, forewarned about the escape from their previous quarantine, treated Bethan as if she’d been incarcerated.
“This is like prison,” Bethan complained to one of her nurses, a solid week into her quarantine, which had so far involved parades of doctors and long stretches of boredom and inactivity.
“You’re not dead,” the woman replied serenely. “I’d focus on that.”
Both Sowandes were also detained. Tayo was in a different hospital, where a tea
m of specialists had fought day and night to save his life, and were optimistic he’d make a full recovery. Iyara, on the other hand, didn’t require hospitalization—but several levels of law enforcement and government were deeply interested in talking to her.
“It turns out she’s her brother’s research partner,” Isaac told Bethan, having somehow finagled his way past all her levels of security to stand there at the foot of her bed on the last day of her confinement. And apparently he didn’t have to wear a hazmat suit. “She doesn’t have any official degrees, which is how she flew under our radar, but she’s his level if not higher. They do the work together and publish under his name. They never expected anyone to go after both of them at the same time.”
“She was supposed to kill me.” Bethan remembered that expression in Iyara’s eyes. How close they’d stood, with that clock above them all the while. She’d been so sure it was counting down to her death. “And he wanted to listen while she did it.”
Isaac nodded. “She convinced Carter that because of South America, she wanted her revenge on you. I don’t know how she made that sound reasonable, but he believed it. Let’s face it, he would kill anyone. For fun.”
“What’s going to happen to him?” she asked, though even thinking about that vile man made her feel sour straight through. He’d been at her sister’s wedding, plotting this all the while. She felt violated in retrospect.
“There are a number of agencies and individuals interested in the man formerly known as Judson Kerrigone,” Isaac said with an edgy sort of smile. “And not in a way he’s likely to enjoy.”
Bethan shared that smile. “It couldn’t happen to a nicer person.”
She didn’t ask about Jonas.
Because she’d saved his life. And she already knew how that went.
When she was finally discharged after her observation period was up, it was time for her own debriefing sessions in Washington, D.C. Day after day of explaining herself and her actions, over and over again. Sometimes to people she recognized, but more often to strangers who didn’t always introduce themselves.