Butterfly Stomp Waltz

Chapter 16

16

Rage flares through me, evaporating the fatigue soaking my bones and turning my hands to fists. My toes dig for traction in the leather-soled sandals. Screw self-control—right here in this tidy Lisbon hotel room, I’m ready to rend flesh and spit blood.

I manage not to shout. “Who?”

Rob raises his hands. “Easy, Billie. You will have your chance. I promise.”

My fingernails are stabbing my palms. I forcibly peel my fists open to expose tiny red welts in my hands. I haven’t trimmed my nails in a week—I like to have a little bit of a nail when I do a gig, so I can pry up corners if needed. My heart is thrumming, my knees bent, my shoulders back. If I raised my hands, I’d be in a fighting stance.

Rob’s been nothing but kind. I know he’ll give me the answers.

I perch back on the edge of my aluminum-frame canvas-slung chair, trying to slow my heart.

A gust of warm salty Atlantic air puffs through the open balcony door, billowing the curtain.

“Okay,” I say.

Rob studies me for a moment.

I focus on breathing. “Who are they?”

“Before I give you a name, and in doing so thus sign a man’s death warrant,” Rob says, “I must ask you two questions.”

My chest shudders as I inhale deeply. “Shoot.” I can’t blame Rob’s caution. I want to. Everything in me screams to leap across the table and throttle him until he gives me the answer.

If I can’t have Deke, I will at least avenge him.

“Those kill squads,” Rob says. He’s speaking slowly. “You had visual on them.” He steeples his gaunt fingers. “Could they have gotten into place without you seeing them?”

I think back to sprawling in the claustrophobic crawlspace, my six-inch tablet gripped in a gloved hand. Four screens at a time, each only visible for a second unless I selected one to focus on. “No. No, I should have seen them.”

“Then they were in place beforehand. They let you penetrate the research facility. They let you carry out the beginning of your mission. You successfully identified and isolated the targets. You infected and destroyed part of the Newcastle research network. They then destroyed you before you could exfiltrate the data or the sample.” Rob’s hands curl, not quite into fists. “I’m forced to conclude that they knew you were coming. You were betrayed.”

Of course we were betrayed. We must have been.

But traitors keep themselves out of the line of fire.

I’d hidden up in a ceiling. Safe.

The chain of logic makes me tremble with tension.

“I would never betray Deke!” I’m shouting loudly enough that they can probably hear me for a city block, but I don’t really care. “I loved him, I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t!”

Rob raises his hands. “I know, darling. I know.” He lets me run down before saying, “For completeness, however, I must ask. You were in a secure building with two kill squads. How ever did you escape?”

“I poisoned the building,” I say.

Rob blinks a few times in quick succession. “Pardon me?”

“I had a second copy of the virus for the research network,” I spit. “If Beck failed, I would have gone into that datacenter and done the upload. But I was in a wiring closet. I fed that payload to their other computer systems, starting with the security network. When the cameras went down, I even hit the desktops and accounting with it, just in case they had a backup somewhere.”

Rob nods in sudden comprehension.

“And while they were blind,” I say, “I snuck down to the basement and got out the same A/C vent I used to get in.”

A survivor’s guilt isn’t enough. When a crew gets wiped out, you blame the survivor. Because they’re the only one left.

I say, “Good enough for you?”

“Indubitably,” Rob says. “I detested asking, really I did. If we are to have assistance, though, I had no choice.”

I try to steady myself. Rob is right. I hate the distrust, but he’s right. My anger and pain don’t quite swamp my logic and experience. Not quite. I wouldn’t want to work with a potential traitor, either. For just a moment, I close my eyes and try to concentrate on the warm ocean air.

The fist-sized knot in my throat slowly recedes to the size of a plum.

“So,” I say. “Who is it?”

Rob leans back in his chair and folds his hands over his stomach. “For some time now, Newcastle Biologics has had boardroom struggles. The chairman was replaced only a few hours ago. The new chairman of the board has contended, for the last several months, that the company’s innovation would attract fierce interest from competitors.”

He takes a deep breath and plunges in. “I believe that your performance was a false flag allowing a board member, British citizen Sir Jack Noah, to achieve control of Newcastle. My data analyst rates it as highly probable that the messages employing us came from Noah as well. Noah knew about the raid in advance—because he hired you. And me.”

I don’t scream. I don’t stand up. I don’t balance on the balcony rail and bellow an oath of vengeance to the sky.

My jaw does clench.

Rob nods approvingly. “Might you know any reason why he would want you and Deke dead?”

I’m sweating again. “No.”

Rob studied my face, then reaches for the bottle of wine on the table. “Some of the finest port you’ll find on the Continent.” With deft hands he pours an inch into each of the two snifters on the table. “A little sweet—but then, so are you.” He holds out a glass to me. When my hand closes on the stem he raises his glass. “To absent friends.”

I’m all cried out, but the tightness returns as I raise mine in response. “Absent friends.” The port is smooth and, like Rob said, too sweet, but the flavor’s thick and complex.

Just like Deke.

I feel drained. The long flight, staying up late, and the excellent meal and wines have left me satiated and complete. Telling the story for the first time feels like a punctured boil. It aches, but somehow my heart feels better after draining all that poison. I put the snifter down carefully on the mosaic-topped table. “Thank you, Rob.”

“It’s the least I can do. Truly.”

My yawn almost splits my head. I cover my mouth, but Rob says, “We really need to get you to bed. Jack Noah has an estate in southern Portugal. Penetration planning begins with an eight AM breakfast. Catered, I fear.”

I’m not going to argue. “Can I help you get all this out of here? Or you can just leave it overnight, I don’t care. I’ll be asleep ten minutes after you go.”

Rob slowly looks around the room, studying the drab furniture and the sumptuous bed in something close to outright horror. “My darling, what sort of heathen do you think I am? This… This pit is not your bedroom.”