Jonathon stiffened. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Never mind about that now,” Monica said. “We need to dispatch with James.”
“Never mind?”
“I’ll tell you anything! Anything!”
“I was just teasing you about an interrogation.” Monica smiled at the man pleading on his knees. “I don’t need you to tell me anything. I know everything I need to know. More, I’m sure, than you do. Except perhaps about your own completely irrelevant motivations.” She retrieved the phone, switched it on again and held it up toward him. “We should get this on tape, though. Not that I don’t already have plenty of other evidence. But, your part, James. Did you frame my son, turn him into a target, just for the money?”
“No! Well, I mean, actually, yes. I mean, it wasn’t anything personal.”
“It was very personal to me, James.” She glanced over to him. “And to Jonathon, I’m sure.” She turned off the camera phone. “That should do it. Would you like to do the honors, Jonathon?”
He couldn’t process the accusation that she had killed his father. Not now. He would get to the truth of that later.
For now, he was acutely conscious of the presence of Veronica as his mother offered to let him wreak vengeance at best and commit cold-blooded murder at worst. He shifted. “Aren’t there, ah, procedures or something for things like this?”
“Yes, the procedures involve putting the dirty traitor out of his misery. Quickly. Or not so quickly. Either way.”
“I’m not a traitor! Donovan ordered me to do it! It was a legitimate directive.”
“I’d been thinking of delegitimizing Donovan, and this has convinced me. But when he ordered you to do it, all legal and so on, it was off the books, right? A little extra project. And accompanied by a fat payment for you.”
Conley hung his head. Monica aimed.
“Don’t kill him, Mother.” He couldn’t believe he’d just said that. He remembered the screen. “Is O’Reilly in on this?”
His mother shook her head. “No. He just thinks you’re a traitor.”
“Then take him out to O’Reilly. I’m sure, knowing you, you can convince him.”
“Well, we will be going out to O’Reilly, but’s a little more complicated than that,” she said.
“Yes! Yes!” Conley seized on the idea. “Take me out to O’Reilly. I’ll admit everything. Exonerate Jonathon. Whatever.”
“You’ve been out of the field too long, James,” Monica admonished. “This is getting embarrassing. Have some pride.”
“Whatever! I don’t care.”
“You never were a very good agent. I suppose that’s why Donovan picked you to be acting director. You’re such a puppy. And he didn’t think it was the slightest bit odd that I insisted on bringing you along to kill my own son?”
“Well, you said…” He did that fish-gulping thing again. “I mean you said, you wanted to make sure you didn’t waver.”
“That’s what I said. What I meant was I wanted to bring you to my son and kill you right in front of him for you having the audacity to—”
“Mother, please. Just hold on. For one second, can we hold on before we go shooting my house up?”
“This house will have to go anyway, Jonathon,” she said casually.
Conley was still on his knees, holding his bleeding hand.
“Look, just calm down, Mother. We found out what happened, so we’re not going to accelerate this or execute anybody. We hand him over to the Agency. O’Reilly, I mean, and that’s the end of it.”
“I’m more the Agency than O’Reilly is. And you heard what he said. Donovan ordered it.”
Jonathon knew who Donovan was. Monica had never kept the true workings of the Agency from him. But he’d never met the shadowy figure behind the acting director. “Well, yeah, I admit that’s a problem.” He turned to Conley. “Why did Donovan want me framed? Dead, I mean?”
“I don’t know!”
Monica put the gun to the agent’s temple and Veronica gasped.
“I don’t! It was a client! Donovan’s being paid for it! The client wanted a video of it even. For proof, I guess.”
“Someone who wanted revenge on me, you think?” Jonathon asked Monica.
“Hmmm. What do you think, James?” she asked him.
“I have no idea!”
“I know you don’t. That’s why you’re of no use to me at this point. And the day that management starts killing its own agents for money is the day I say there needs to be a change in management.”
“Wait!” Veronica said.
Jonathon and Monica, and even James, looked at her in surprise.
“You can’t just kill a man in cold blood. He’s wounded.”
Monica smirked and Jonathon glared at her.
“I agree, Veronica,” he assured her. “We won’t. Stand down, Mother.”
She lowered her gun.
“Now we need to bandage this hand.” Veronica, before Jonathon could stop her, went over to the wounded man, about to assist him, and James took the opportunity to scramble up from his knees. Instead of making a run for it, though, he jerked Veronica to him with his forearm, the bloody hand dangling, useless, but the grip around her neck so tight she probably couldn’t breathe. With his good arm, Conley had somehow grabbed a knife from the counter. It was just a butter knife, but any agent, no matter how rusty, could kill quickly even with a butter knife.
Monica glanced at Jonathon with an I told you so expression.
“I’m getting out of here. Right now,” James said, “and you’re not following me unless you want your girlfriend dead, Vale.”
“Fine with me,” Monica said. “She was becoming a distraction.”
Veronica made a small sound. He knew his mother didn’t mean that—or he thought she didn’t, anyway—but Veronica wouldn’t realize it and it would make her even more scared.
“I’m not letting you walk out of here with my charge,” Jonathon warned.
“Then I’ll kill her right now. You’re going to kill me anyway, so I might as well extract a little revenge in the bargain.”
“He has a point, Jonathon,” his mother said.
Jonathon let out an exaggerated sigh, turning to his mother as if to argue. Then he whipped around one hundred and eighty degrees, spinning into a high kick right at Conley’s head. Conley staggered, relinquishing his grip on his hostage in an effort to right himself, and Veronica rushed out of reach and into Jonathon’s arms.
Monica threw Conley her gun and pulled another small one out of nowhere.
James scrambled to pick the weapon up, pointing at her.
“Go on, James,” Monica goaded him. “Do your worst.”
Conley aimed straight for her head and two seconds later, he was dead.
Veronica hugged Jonathon, burying her face in his chest. “How can you stand this?” she murmured.
“I don’t know that I can much anymore.”
Monica stooped down to retrieve her second gun from the hand of the corpse, surveying her handiwork, one shot through his head, deadly as ever. She never missed. “Conley was a coward, but he was a sneaky one. We never would have gotten him out of here alive. He’d have tried something else. And though of course he wasn’t much of a threat to the two of us, Jonathon, I didn’t really intend to let him kill Dr. Barrett.”
“You didn’t need to kill him,” he said. “I would have protected her. I did.”
“But you were distracted enough to let her get caught by him, weren’t you?”
Jonathon shook his head. Had he ever considered all this just normal course? Maybe Veronica had somehow changed him.
“Don’t give me that look, Jonathon. I gave him a fair fight. It was more than he deserved.”
“And now we’re no closer to finding out who Donovan’s client is. Or how we fix this.”
“Oh, I know who Donovan’s client is. I’ve come into possession of some inside information. And I’m pretty sure how to fix this wh
ole situation, too. I’m going to need a little cooperation from you, though.”
“What kind of cooperation?” Jonathon was suspicious, based on long experience with his mother.
She sat at the island, and even had the audacity to pick up an apple from the basket of fruit, and shine it against her sleeve, casualness itself. As if there wasn’t a corpse she had just killed on the floor and men waiting outside for an explanation and someone still out there who had paid for his death and wanted to watch it like a Netflix movie. “I met your father on the job, you know.”
As non-sequitur as this was, the information made Jonathon scoff and drop his arms from Veronica’s waist, keeping her close though. “No, of course I didn’t know! But it sure makes all your lectures about not fraternizing pretty hypocritical.”
“Your father was the most…capable man I’d ever met.”
He unwillingly smiled at the memory of how he had admired Veronica’s capability in the hangar brewing up some gas. Vales liked them capable, apparently.
“I was in love with him. I admit it.” She made a little face, as if that were a flaw. “And I helped him die.”
“Helped him die? But you…you didn’t kill him, did you?”
“Depends on who you ask. I was pregnant with you by then and I was going to give you up, of course.”
Jonathon didn’t move a muscle.
“This was no life for a child. It was messy and dangerous and selfish to even want to chance it. But when they handed you to me in a blanket and your wrinkled little fingers flexed, I was a goner. I loved you so much, so fiercely, I couldn’t give you up.”
“I guess that wore off,” he muttered.
“Never!” The intensity of the one word startled him. “I have loved you for every moment of your entire life, Jonathon.” Monica looked at him for a second and he couldn’t begin to guess what her expression meant. He’d never seen it.
But Monica quickly masked it, stood and turned her back on them. “If I didn’t show it, it was because I thought it would make you stronger. Or because I didn’t even know how. I don’t know anymore. It was selfish to keep you.” She gave a humorless laugh. “But love is selfish. It’s the most selfish emotion I’ve ever experienced. And don’t let anybody tell you any different.”
All this sudden talk of love made Jonathon look at Veronica. She seemed as mesmerized by these sudden unprecedented confessions as he was.
“I was wrong to take you into this life. And so very, very wrong to keep you in it. You are your father’s son, Jonathon, and that’s the highest compliment I could give you. You’re good and gentle and I’ve tried to turn you into something you’re not, like me.”
Jonathon’s mouth opened, but then he snapped his jaw shut. He just didn’t know what to say.
She turned back to them and said, “But I didn’t come to ruin Shangri-La for you, Jonathon. I’ve come to save it. Not this one, but another one. One that will be even safer for you, if we do this right.”
Monica zeroed in on Veronica. “The only question is whether you’ll be escaping to it alone or with someone you care for.”
He decided to end the sentimentality and get back to their usual common ground. “Cut this crap, Mother. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have to get Veronica out of here.”
“You’ll be leaving soon enough, don’t worry, but first you need to hear me out. I’d like you to meet someone.”
A man emerged from the door to the basement. He looked familiar. Veronica stared from the man to Jonathon and back again.
“What is it?” he murmured to her, but she just shook her head, her mouth a firm line. He turned back to his mother. “Who the fuck is this? The guy who really runs the Agency? Donovan? Is O’Reilly going to be rushing in here too, so everybody can invade my supposedly private retreat?”
“O’Reilly is waiting for a signal from Conley, which he won’t be getting, of course. So, we have a little time. And no, this isn’t Donovan.”
Veronica leaned further into Jonathon and laid her palm on his heart, a comforting gesture, though he wasn’t quite sure why he needed it.
The man seemed older than his mother—though, who knew, since he had no idea how old his mother was—with gray mixed in his black hair. Dressed casually in jeans and a sweater, he did look familiar. One of his many childhood bodyguards from so long ago, perhaps?
“Hello, Jonathon,” the man said. “It’s nice to meet you after all this time.”
“Yeah, well, you’ll forgive me if I’m not feeling sociable. I got a dead body on my kitchen floor and a posse perched outside and a few things to clear up.”
Monica turned to Veronica with a slight smile. “This is so interesting. He doesn’t see it.”
Veronica nodded, just a bit, then focused her big blue eyes on him. “You don’t notice the resemblance?” She spoke barely above a whisper.
And with her words, he did. Just like that. This man who emerged out of nowhere from his basement looked like an older version of himself.
It was good Veronica had her hand on his heart because he felt it might just burst out of his ribcage, it was beating so fast. When he could speak, he said, “You’re going to introduce me to my father now? Impeccable timing, as ever.”
The rage that exploded through him, though he kept still—just that thumping heart that surely Veronica could feel—surprised the hell out of him. Like he was some teenager whose dad had run out on the child support and showed up uninvited at his high school graduation. He wanted nothing more than to slug this guy, whoever the fuck he was.
Knowing that would serve no purpose, he settled for pretending he wasn’t curious. “What does he have to do with anything?” he asked his mother.
“That’s a pretty long story.”
“Then I don’t have the time for it.”
“I’m the one who’s responsible for you being targeted,” the man—well, his father, he supposed—said.
Jonathon glared at him. “You’re not really winning me over here, old man.”
“I’m not trying to win you over, Jonathon. I’m sure I lost the chance to do that a long time ago. I’m trying to give you an explanation for what is happening here,”
“Yeah? How about an explanation for where the fuck you’ve been my whole life!”
Shit, did I actually just say that? Like a wounded adolescent!
“I’m sorry,” he said more calmly. “Forget that. Fine. What’s going on here? Are you going to solve everything? Deus ex machina-style?”
“Don’t be silly, Jonathon,” Monica chided. “Deus ex machina! Please! Your father’s not a God.” She paused a moment. “He’s a prince.”
Chapter Eleven
#xa0;
In his plaid bathrobe and favorite suede slippers, Neil Donovan fielded another call from that petty little wanna-be-dictator, complaining how Donovan wasn’t doing the job he’d been paid for. Well, only half paid for. The things he did for money! He’d just switched the television off when the red phone had rung. He had been hoping it was Conley. The sound of the slightly accented English was not welcome.
“Everything is fine. I already told your man that,” he assured the caller.
Everything was not fine, however. Conley should have checked in by now.
“I was led to believe that your Agency was more efficient than this, Mr. Donovan. I am extremely disappointed.”
Cry me a river! As soon as he got the rest of the money from this guy, he was going to consider launching a coup in this pain-in-the-ass client’s shit-stained country.
“I’m expecting to get the news it’s been done any minute,” Donovan hedged.
“I believed I adequately communicated to you my sense of urgency. I’m dealing with a time-sensitive situation here.”
“Forgive me for being so blunt, Maxwell, but aren’t you better off if the old man just dies off? Whether or not you get Vale’s head before that? And that’s just an expression, by the way,” he added hurriedly. “All you�
�ll be getting is a video. Not the head.”
That would cost much more.
A long sigh on the other end of the phone. “It’s a congenital failing of you Americans to think you understand the world, when you know so little. Ours is a hereditary kingdom. If my half-uncle dies before Vale has been dispatched, it will complicate my ascension to the throne. Too many people know about the grandson’s existence and hold some past indiscretions of my own late father against me. I need the old man’s unwavering imprimatur and I have reason to believe that without this situation resolved, he may have left instructions to keep searching for his grandson. I need to show him proof that the—forgive the expression—evil Agency that killed his son has done it to his grandson, as well.”
Like I asked! Well, he guessed he did ask. But he didn’t want a lesson in small nation shit politics. That was why it was so much better back in the days when they could just take over these small countries and teach them about real democracy.
“Yes, well, I guess we all have our problems. But on that score, I think you’re going to like what we came up with. It’ll be the same shooter.”
“Pardon?”
“The same as killed the old man’s son, I mean.”
The old man’s son. It had been a while since Donovan had thought about him. His predecessor, in fact.
Though he didn’t bother to explain it to his client, that was how Donovan knew that this job would be carried out with precision. Monica Vale always went that extra mile. He’d cut a deal with her a long time ago to kill their boss, her lover, so that Donovan could take over the Agency, young as he was, and she could have free reign, the best jobs, the highest pay—the whole shebang. Part of him thought she made the deal just because she had slept with the boss, like she wanted to get rid of him because she didn’t want anything to ruin her inhuman armor. Or perhaps she had thought he might try to drag her back to his country and make her into a princess or some shit.
Monica was so predictable. He had only been surprised by her once—when she had proved she was human by going ahead and having the boss’s kid anyway, after she’d already offed him. From what he could tell, though, here was no love lost between mother and son. Maybe that was even why she took the job to take out the so-called traitor this time, same reason she’d done away with his father. She didn’t want to be human.
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