A Sense of Danger

by Jennifer Estep

  She started blubbering, and tears spilled out of her eyes and streaked down her cheeks. As far as these sorts of things went, it was a truly impressive effort, and I was exhausted just looking at her. Who had the energy to cry that much?

  In addition to her unending torrent of tears, magic also blasted off Miriam’s body. The soft, warm sensation wrapped around my chest and squeezed tight. It also tickled my tongue, as though her charmer power wanted me to reveal the necklace’s location just as much as she obviously did.

  “Shut up,” Trevor snapped. “Just shut your mouth, and stop talking.”

  Miriam sucked in another breath. She stopped wailing, although her whole body was trembling, and she looked as if she might faint or vomit, or both, at any second. The invisible force of her magic pressed up against my body again, trying to prompt me to talk, but I ignored the warm, ticklish sensations.

  “Wow,” I drawled. “Your face gets really red and splotchy when you blubber. You’re not very pretty when you cry, Miriam. I would think a charmer like you would practice bawling in front of the mirror.”

  She reared back as though I had slapped her. I stared at her a moment longer, then looked at Trevor again.

  “You want to kill her?” I asked. “Well, go ahead. Shoot the bitch. She’s a traitor, just like you are.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Charlotte

  My harsh words bounced off the plastic cubicles and quickly dissipated in the cool office air. Miriam and Trevor both blinked, as if they were trying to process my accusation.

  “What are you talking about?” Trevor stepped forward, his gun still in his hand. “I’ll shoot her dead right here and now—”

  Miriam huffed, rolled her eyes, and waved her hand. “Forget it, Trev. She knows.”

  Trevor blinked again, but he slowly lowered his weapon to his side. I focused on Miriam. Even without a gun, she was far more devious and dangerous than he was.

  Miriam sighed, then dropped her hand and palmed a blade that was hidden up her jumpsuit sleeve—a silver butterfly knife just like the one Rosalita had stabbed me with. From one moment to the next, Miriam’s demeanor completely changed. Gone was the terrified, blubbering woman I’d considered a friend, and in her place was a cold, confident spy, one who was looking at me as though I were a high-school lab frog she was about to slice open so she could peer at my guts.

  “How did you figure it out?” she asked.

  “That Trevor was your new mystery man boy toy? That you were fucking him and getting him to be another mole inside Section for Henrika and Anatoly?” I shrugged. “The two of you weren’t quite as discreet as you should have been.”

  “What do you mean?” Trevor asked.

  Miriam ignored him the same way that I was doing. We both knew this was between us now. “And how did you figure out that I was fucking him?”

  “It was a lot of little things.”

  “Like what?”

  “You were the only one at Section who knew I was working at the Moondust Diner, so you were the only one who could possibly know I was in debt to Gabriel,” I replied. “After Desmond killed those four cleaners outside my building, I started to wonder why they didn’t just break into my apartment in the middle of the night, and how they knew that I was out and exactly what time I would come home. You were the only one who knew any of that.”

  “That could have been a coincidence,” Miriam said. “People from Section eat at that diner all the time. Anyone could have seen you there and started spying on you.”

  “True,” I agreed. “But it was the first domino that started falling in a long chain that led straight back to you.”

  Miriam and Trevor both kept staring at me.

  “The two of you were very careful to keep things strictly professional around the office. No eating lunch together, no overt flirting, no quickies in the fifth-floor locker room. But I still knew you were sleeping together.”

  “How?” Trevor growled. “How did you figure it out?”

  I gestured at Miriam’s desk. “May I?”

  She waggled her knife at me. “Slowly.”

  I shuffled in that direction. Miriam’s desk was a mess, just like always, but I spotted a sturdy-looking metal stapler sitting among the candy wrappers and other debris. I made a mental note of exactly where the stapler was, then leaned forward and reached past it. I grabbed a small item off the desk, then turned around and held it up where Miriam and Trevor could both see it.

  “A pack of gum?” Trevor said. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Not just any old pack of gum—rosemint gum.” I looked at Miriam. “The gum that Miriam has been chewing for weeks to try to help her stop smoking. It’s a pretty unusual kind of gum, one I doubt that many people have even heard of, much less actually chew.”

  “So what?” Trevor snapped.

  “So when you told me to spy on Desmond, I immediately became suspicious that you were the mole. Then I noticed you had several sticks of rosemint gum in the crystal candy dish on your desk. Everyone at Section knows what a health nut you are, Trevor. You rarely eat sugar, and you only have those mints and chocolates in that dish to offer to visitors. The gum was a new addition, and I started wondering why you would have the exact same flavor as Miriam. Combine you having the gum with her having a mysterious new boy toy, and the two of you sleeping together made the most sense.”

  I paused, but neither one of them said anything, so I continued.

  “Of course, I didn’t know for sure until I was accused of stealing the Grunglass Necklace. Everyone was so focused on me they forgot that Miriam also handled the necklace at the hotel. Not for long, not for more than a couple minutes, but that would have been enough time for you to swap it out for a fake.” I gave her a thin smile. “I would have loved to have seen the look on your face when you realized that the necklace you had stolen from me was also a fake. I bet that really put a kink in your plans.”

  “How did you steal the necklace?” Miriam asked. “I haven’t been able to figure it out.”

  “That’s because I didn’t steal the necklace—Gabriel Chase did.”

  Surprise filled Miriam’s and Trevor’s faces. They—and everyone else at Section—had been so focused on how I had stolen the necklace that it had probably never occurred to them someone else might have swiped it from the hotel.

  “Remember all the prep work we did for the Redburn mission? All those blueprints we looked at? Well, I gave that information to Gabriel,” I said. “With that intel and his ability to phase through walls, it was easy for him to slip into the hotel the night before the mission and switch the real necklace for a fake.”

  Miriam’s eyes narrowed. “But he gave the real necklace to you, and you brought it here.”

  I shot my thumb and forefinger at her. “Winner, winner. I brought the real Grunglass Necklace to work the next morning, and I hid it before we ever even left for the Redburn mission. It’s been here ever since.”

  “And you put all that together just by seeing a couple of pieces of gum? Clever,” Miriam murmured. “It’s too bad you’re not one of us. I’m sure Henrika could find a use for someone as smart as you, Charlotte.”

  “Is that an invitation to join your little cabal?”

  Miriam leaned against one of the cubicle walls, that long, sharp butterfly knife still clutched in her manicured hand. “First of all, we’re not a cabal. We call ourselves the Syndicate. I’m sure you’ve heard of us.”

  Of course I’d heard of the Syndicate. Like most people, I thought the alleged bad-guy collective was more of an urban legend than anything else, a scapegoat for Section and other agencies to blame when the true perpetrators of a crime or terrorist attack couldn’t be found. But Miriam saying the name chimed a bell in the back of my mind and sent a chill zipping down my spine.

  I’m finally going to discover exactly who is in the Syndicate. My father had said that to me right before he left for his doomed Mexico mission.

  And
what would you know about Mexico? My own voice whispered in my mind, along with Henrika’s smug response: Everything.

  I didn’t believe in coincidences, and I was starting to think that the Syndicate was very, very real—and far more responsible for my father’s death than the cartel leader he’d been sent to eliminate. But that was a mystery for another time.

  “The Syndicate?” I said. “That sounds a bit pretentious.”

  “No more pretentious than Section 47. That sounds like something out of a rule book, and I’ve always hated following the rules.” Miriam let out a small, mocking laugh, but then her face turned serious again. “And why shouldn’t you join us, Charlotte? What has Section ever done for you? Nothing. They disavowed your father and left him to rot in Mexico. And then, when they thought you had dared to steal from them, they stuck you in a cell and interrogated you for a week. That’s not the kind of organization I would give my loyalty to.”

  “That’s because you don’t have any loyalty to anyone, not even your boy toy.”

  Miriam didn’t say anything, but agreement flickered across her face. Trevor eyed her, taking note of her silence. No honor among thieves, and most definitely no trust among spies.

  “Enough talk,” Miriam said, flashing her knife at me again. “Tell me where you hid the necklace, or I’ll start cutting off your fingers. And believe me when I tell you that I won’t hesitate like Trevor did.”

  TRUTH.

  She meant every word, and she would carve me up like a wheel of cheese for a charcuterie board until I was begging to tell her where I had hidden the necklace. My time had officially run out.

  I gestured at Miriam’s desk again. “May I?”

  Her eyebrows drew together in confusion, but she nodded her head. I stepped back over to her desk, tossed the gum down, and pushed aside some of the candy wrappers and other trash. Then I scooted the castle-shaped box that contained her costume jewelry to the edge of the desk. I opened one of the drawers, reached into the very back, and drew out the item I had wedged inside a couple of weeks ago.

  I turned around and held out my hand. The Grunglass Necklace dangled from my fingertips in all its sparkling, shimmering, emerald-and-diamond-encrusted glory.

  “It was in your desk this whole time? Right under your nose? You idiot!” Trevor hissed at Miriam. “How could you not think to look in your own desk?”

  “Oh, Miriam never looks in that drawer,” I drawled. “It’s where she stuffs all her old, broken jewelry, along with all the ugly, unwanted baubles her boy toys buy her. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that.”

  “Shut up,” Miriam snapped and held out her hand. “Give me the necklace, Charlotte. Now.”

  I stepped forward. Miriam snatched the necklace off my fingertips and stared at it with a reverent expression. She didn’t notice that I had palmed the stapler off her desk.

  “Henrika will be very pleased to see this,” she murmured in an appreciative voice. “It’s just the thing to get me back into her good graces.”

  “You mean she might not kill you once you deliver the bauble that you had already promised her, lost through your own stupidity, and couldn’t find with all your Section resources?” I clucked my tongue in mock sympathy. “I wouldn’t count on that. Henrika doesn’t strike me as the forgiving type.”

  Miriam reached up and hooked the necklace around her throat. “Oh, don’t worry about me, Charlotte. I’m a survivor. I can’t say the same thing about you, though.”

  She opened her mouth, probably to order Trevor to shoot me, but her phone buzzed in her jumpsuit pocket. A second later, Trevor’s phone buzzed in his coat pocket.

  “The two of you are going to want to look at your notifications,” I said.

  Miriam and Trevor each stared at me, suspicion filling their faces, but the temptation was too strong, and they both pulled out their devices.

  Trevor was quicker, so he got the bad news first. “There’s been a transfer on my Swiss account…” He scrolled down the screen. He blinked a few times, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “My money…it’s all…gone.”

  Miriam cursed, staring down at her own phone. “My money’s gone too.” Her gaze snapped up to mine. “You did this.”

  I grinned at her. “Guilty as charged.”

  “But—but how?” Trevor sputtered.

  I stabbed my finger at my cubicle. “I sit at that desk and track terrorists’ and criminals’ money all day long. How hard do you think it was for me to find your slush funds? The secret Swiss bank accounts that Henrika and Anatoly funneled your payments into? You really shouldn’t have put the account in your son’s name, Trev. It was ridiculously easy to find.”

  He kept blinking at me, stunned by what was happening.

  I turned my attention to Miriam. “Yours was a bit more difficult to locate, but then I remembered how fond you are of using the name Coco Livingston as one of your aliases, and voilà! There was your account. After that, well, it was just a matter of figuring out your passwords. Something else that was pretty easy to do.”

  I’d actually used the Mockingbird program to get their passwords, but I doubted they cared about that. No, all the two of them cared about was the fact that their money was long gone, along with the safety and escape it could have facilitated.

  “This transfer was made five minutes ago,” Trevor said. “There’s no way you could have done that.”

  “As soon as I spotted you outside my building, I knew I was going to be indisposed, so I sent a voice command to my phone. That alerted Gabriel, who was more than happy to crack open his laptop, use the info on the flash drive I gave him before the Redburn mission, and hit a few buttons for me.”

  “You bitch!” Miriam hissed. “You duplicitous little bitch!”

  “Temper, temper,” I taunted her. “You shouldn’t get so angry. It makes very unattractive wrinkles on your forehead.”

  “All my money is gone.” Trevor looked at Miriam, a desperate note in his voice. “How are we supposed to run now? I have nothing left. Nothing.”

  “Don’t worry. The Syndicate will take us in. We’ll get rid of Charlotte, leave Section, and go to one of the local Syndicate safe houses. Everything will be fine. You’ll see.” Miriam tightened her grip on her knife and started toward me, but I held up my hand.

  “Don’t you want to know what else I did?”

  Her eyes narrowed, but she stopped. “What?”

  “Not only did my voice command alert Gabriel and tell him to drain your accounts, but it also triggered a series of emails.”

  “What emails?” Miriam snapped.

  I grinned. They still might kill me, but I was going to savor this moment. “I sent all the information I compiled on the two of you, including your secret bank accounts, to several people at Section, including Gia Chan. Why, I think it’s the best report I’ve ever written.”

  Miriam cursed, but I turned my attention to Trevor.

  “I also sent a copy of the information to Desmond. He might be pissed at me right now, but sooner or later, he’ll open the email and read the files. Then he’ll know exactly how you sold out him, Graham, and all those other dead Section agents.”

  Trevor’s eyes widened, and his face paled. “Dez—Dez knows?”

  “He will soon enough. And I think it’s safe to say there is no place on this green earth that you can hide where Desmond Percy won’t find you, especially since your precious money is gone.” My grin widened. “Consider this my payback for all the times you’ve tried to kill me over the past few weeks. Not to mention all those tedious hours you spent interrogating me when you knew I hadn’t done anything wrong.”

  Trevor stared at me, worry, fear, and horror quickly flooding his features. He wet his lips and actually swayed on his feet, as though he was going to faint, and unlike Miriam’s earlier histrionics, it wasn’t a performance.

  “Oh, snap out of it, Trev,” Miriam said. “We have the necklace. Shoot her, and let’s get out of here. We can figure
out the rest later.”

  Trevor kept staring at me, his eyes wide. A sheen of sweat covered his forehead, and he yanked at his tie, as though it was suddenly strangling him. Trevor Donnelly might have been a cleaner, might have killed people for Section, but his whole world was crumbling to dust, and his confidence right along with it.

  “You should have stayed in your cubicle,” he growled and raised his gun.

  I tightened the grip on the stapler still hidden in my hand. My plan was to throw it at him, and hope that my synesthesia would kick in, correct my aim, and help me knock his gun away. Then I would grab the scissors still tucked in my coat pocket and try to kill Miriam before she stabbed me with her knife. After that… Well, I was still working on the rest of my plan—

  “Actually, no one is going to be shooting Charlotte,” a low voice drawled. “I’m her bodyguard, you see, so it’s my job to make sure nasty things like that don’t happen to her.”

  A shadow detached itself from the wall, and a man stepped out into the light in the middle of the aisle.

  Desmond.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Desmond

  Charlotte whispered my name like it was the answer to her most secret, fervent prayer.

  The sound made my heart clench, but I focused on Trevor. He was the one with the gun, so he was the biggest threat to Charlotte. Nothing else mattered but making sure she stayed alive.

  “You—you’re supposed to be in London!” Trevor spit out, his voice growing higher and sharper with every word.

  “I went to the airport, but I didn’t get on the plane. I had some unfinished business here.” My gaze flicked to Charlotte. “And I had a promise to keep.”

  She grinned at me. I winked back at her.

  “How—how much of that did you hear?” Trevor asked, wetting his lips.

  “Everything.” I nodded at Charlotte. “I see you found the pen I dropped in your purse a couple of weeks ago. The one with the hidden camera and microphone.”