Chapter Twenty-Three

“Come on. Come on, Luke.” Claire chewed her lip hard enough to pierce the skin, watching as Luke moved between floors via the camera feed on his tablet.

This wasn’t something she’d prepared for or thought out in advance.

This gut-twisting, nauseating dread.

The feeling that she was watching her life crumble in real time.

What if he got shot?

What if they killed him?

There would be nothing for her to do about it, nothing she could say. A decryption program wouldn’t bring him back. Wouldn’t erase the guilt. The pain. The loss.

Khan was restless in the pack at her feet. He sensed her anxiety; he always did. She couldn’t find the breath to comfort him. Who was going to comfort her if she lost Luke?

And it was all her fault.

There was movement from another section of the screen, another camera’s feed. Chance was on his way to his next terminal—only he’d end up on a floor where two guards currently patrolled, weapons drawn.

“No,” she breathed, her heart sinking. Her stomach clenched and threatened to expel everything in it. Only the thought of Khan’s reaction at being thrown up on stopped her.

She had no way of warning him. Why hadn’t she thought to get an earpiece for herself? She could only watch and let things unfold. She was utterly powerless.

The same powerlessness she’d felt all her life. Every day for so long. No power. No say in how things unfolded.

And she was tired of it.

She realized there was something she could do.

Because at this point, what did it matter? If they were going to die, it had better be for a good reason.

She turned to the keyboard and clicked the key to continue the decryption program. Luke had asked her to put it on pause—for once, she shouldn’t have listened to him. They were losing valuable time. Every second she wasted was one more second in which the Patterson brothers risked their lives.

If anything, starting the process again would mean drawing security away from them and toward her.

Could she stand that? Could she take that onto herself?

“Yes,” she decided. “Because they’re doing this for me.” Khan meowed, signaling his agreement.

Every second lasted an hour. Claire’s gaze darted back and forth between the tablet and her screen. Luke had vanished from sight.

She couldn’t breathe. Her lungs wouldn’t take in air.

No, there he was. Darting up a flight of stairs, hugging the wall. Weston was behind him. The pressure in her chest lessened.

But they weren’t out of the woods yet, not even close. Those guards must have cloned themselves, she decided. They were spreading everywhere.

Just another minute. Maybe two. That was all they needed.

Her head snapped up at the sound of a door closing. She held her breath. Her muscles froze, like the first few seconds after waking up from a nightmare.

Only this was no nightmare...this was very, very real. And somebody was on the floor with her.

Her head might not have moved, but her eyes did. She looked down at the tablet and could still see Luke, Weston. Chance. Brax.

It wasn’t one of them.

One of the guards? There was no telling how many of them existed, so it could’ve been one of them. The progress bar crept so slowly. Could she stall?

Footfalls. Closer now. Tears filled her eyes, but she found the ability to move in time to knuckle them away. There was no time for tears.

What would Luke do? What would he want her to do?

She turned away from the computer with her hands raised, blocking the screen as best she could with her body.

Her heart stopped when she saw who she was facing.

No wonder he’d moved so slowly. He’d been playing with her. Again.

“Hello, Claire.” Vance Ballard flashed the sort of smile he usually saved for the media with his Mr. Good Guy persona. “You have no idea how hard I’ve been looking for you. How you’ve inconvenienced me. And I don’t enjoy being inconvenienced.”

“You don’t look surprised to see me,” she whispered. Every ounce of her wanted to look at her screen, at the tablet, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off him.

Only an idiot would take their eyes off a snake when it slithered its way closer.

“That’s because I’m not surprised.” He came to a stop, his feet planted and arms folded. With his chin raised, he looked at her over the tip of his nose. “I didn’t buy that whole fake death for even a second.”

She gulped. What did that mean for Arellano’s wife? And why was she worried about either of them right now? “Y-you didn’t?”

Tipping his head to the side, he looked like a disappointed parent. “Oh, come on, Claire. We both know you. You aren’t brave enough to face down two armed law enforcement officers without there being another plan in place. The moment those two nitwits came to me with the news, I suspected you had something up your sleeve.”

“You could’ve come after me right away. Could’ve put my name back on the news, offered a larger reward—”

“No. That wouldn’t do.” He shook his head. “You had to believe that I believed it—which meant releasing that detective’s wife, as much as I hated doing so.”

At least that part had worked. “Why let her go?” she asked. “If you knew it was all a trick?”

“Detective Arellano had outlived his usefulness—and I couldn’t run the risk of him alerting you. I let him leave town with his wife, let him leave and never come back. I don’t care very much.” He snickered. “It’s not like anyone would believe his story anyway...”

Where were the guys? Where were the guards?

Where was she on the decryption?

She licked her parched lips. “We could back him up, you know.”

“You won’t be alive long enough to back him up, Claire.” He laughed softly, but there was a hardness in his eyes. That hardness was always there. It always had been. She had only tried to ignore it back in the day when he was nothing but her boss.

He had always been empty.

“You think you’re going to kill me now?” She snickered the way he had. Let him see how good it felt to be laughed at. “You’ve tried all this time... You think you’ll succeed now?”

“You were stupid enough to walk in here and make it easy for me.” He threw his hands into the air with a dramatic sigh. “Come on, Claire, I know you. I know everything about you. Which was why I knew you couldn’t have been brave enough to face those men if you weren’t absolutely certain they wouldn’t kill you.”

“I wasn’t certain... The other one could’ve shot me. And the fall from the bridge could’ve—”

His sharp bark of laughter cut her off. “Please. A cowardly thing like you? Sure, you might take a risk to avoid capture, but we both know you would’ve collapsed and trembled like a leaf if you hadn’t gone into that situation with at least a fair degree of certainty of your success.”

Before she had the chance to tell him off, he continued, “I know everything there is to know about you. Don’t you understand that by now? How did you think I was able to track down your former foster families?”

A lump lodged in her throat. She pressed her lips together to keep from letting out a sob.

The corners of his mouth twitched, and she realized he enjoyed watching her suffer in silence.

“I know your pain points. I know your weaknesses. Information is my stock-in-trade, Claire. You ought to know that by now. Isn’t that what this is all about?”

“Information?”

“And the power it holds. Mind you, only the right sort of person can wield that power. Only they can take that information and turn it into something useful. Even the sharpest blade is nothing in the hands of a rube.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You will keep nothing in mind.” His playful, toying expression shifted, hardened.

He reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a semiautomatic. “Though I’m glad we had this time together, Claire...really, I am. I wanted to explain myself to you before bringing an end to your useless little life.”

“Useless?” She forced herself to not flinch away from the sight of the gun and maintain eye contact. “I created the program you’re going to use to steal that all-powerful information you have such a craving for. How does that make me useless?”

“Because you would’ve left it lying there! All that knowledge. All that power. Right within your grasp, and you would’ve let a golden opportunity pass you by! Too concerned with honesty and integrity and all the pretty words people use to mask their weakness. Their aversion to doing what needs to be done to get them what they want.”

“I didn’t want that. Neither did Julia.”

“Which is why you are both expendable. The world is no place for the weak, Claire. I’m only culling the herd.”

She went cold when he raised the gun and leveled it at her. His hand trembled, but only slightly. He would make the shot.

Which was when the sweetest sound in the world met her ears.

The soft chime of a program reaching its conclusion.

There was no holding back her smile. “Thank you, Mr. Ballard.”

His brow furrowed, his gun still pointed at her chest. “For what?”

“For giving my decryption program the time it needed to complete its job.”

It was all worth it.

The terror. The running. The pain. Knowing her life could end at any time.

It was worth it just to watch the brief flash of fear wash over his face.

“You’re lying.” He lowered the gun but charged at her anyway, shoving her aside and bending over the laptop. “What have you done?”

“What I came here to do.” She eyed the tablet, willing somebody to come. Quickly.

“Which was?”

“You knew I recorded Julia’s murder.” She spat the last word. “You knew somebody was watching from another terminal. I bet you tried to find the file, too. But even you couldn’t manage that. But little old me...? I hid it where you’d never think to look—and even if you did, you’d never recognize it after encryption or know how to decrypt it yourself. Always using other people to make up for your inadequacies.”

This was almost fun, and it might’ve been if the question of whether the Pattersons had survived didn’t hang over her.

Whether Luke had survived.

“No. No! What have you done to it?” He pocketed the gun. His hands flew in a blur over the keys while curses poured from his mouth.

“What have I done to you, you mean?” Yes, she had strength now, the strength she’d always possessed. Only it was a lot easier to let it show while the monster in front of her fell apart.

She watched as he floundered. Nobody could ever have explained how satisfying it would be to watch him panic this way.

“I should thank you for coming up here to see me, since that was what gave me the time I needed to finish running the program. I knew once I started asking questions, you wouldn’t be able to help yourself. You would have to grandstand.”

“Quiet,” he growled, still working and breathing hard.

“What are you trying to do? Delete the file? Destroy it? What about the external drive hooked up to the machine? It has all the files Julia sent me. All the proof of what you planned to do with our app. You should try to destroy that, too, before the information falls into the wrong hands.”

He swore again. “You’ll pay for this, Claire Wallace.”

“You first.”

He stood upright, taking a step back from the machine when the display changed.

There were now only four words on an otherwise black screen.

Files Sent. End Program.

“What does that mean?” His eyes were wide and oh so panicked when his head snapped around. “What did you do?”

“You did it.” She jerked her chin toward the laptop. “You tripped the program I created. All you had to do was keep your hands off and there wouldn’t be anything but files on that machine. Just there, nowhere else.”

“And now?” he bellowed, his face red and sweat rolling down his neck.

“Now you’ve sent the files to the entire San Antonio Police Department.”

Panic turned to horror. “No...you’re bluffing.”

“Julia’s murder. The files she sent me with your intentions to steal data from your clients. It’s all there, and now they have it.”

“Lies!”

“Wait and see. I expect they’ll be opening their email anytime now. It won’t take long for the police to come knocking.” When he only stared at her in slack-jawed surprise, she shrugged. “I know you, too, Mr. Ballard. I knew you wouldn’t be able to leave well enough alone. You’re the one who delivered your own death blow, you monster. I hope it was all worth it.”

He shook his head as his body began to tremble. “Lying,” he murmured. “Buying time.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“Just wait and see.”

They stood that way for what felt like forever but might have lasted no longer than moments. Eye-to-eye. She would never forget the thrill of knowing she’d taken him down. Of watching realization begin to dawn when she didn’t flinch, didn’t falter.

He knew she was telling the truth.

Which was why he reached into his pocket for the gun and leveled it at her chest. “You’re dead.”