Chapter Eighty-Four
Voss
He watches Calder’s video for the third time.
Halfway through the fourth viewing, he stops taking notes. There’s nothing left to catalogue. The evidentiary weight is immense. The Public Integrity Project won’t let this go.
With the clarity of someone who’s spent thirty years building something that was never supposed to be seen, he knows exactly how much damage this annoying woman has done.
He still watches the recording seven more times.
What he can’t stop looking at is her face.
She’s composed. Calm. Her voice only wavers once, briefly, when she mentions the man who helped her escape. He notices the slight change in register. The way her eyes move.
Predictable. Women are too sentimental. Too emotional for a job like this. They let feelings cloud judgment. Attachment becomes vulnerability. Commissioner Adams understands that. Always has. It’s why Voss respects him—unlike the others in the Directorate’s leadership.
The man currently restrained three doors down is Calder’s pressure point. And she’s just handed him everything he needs to use it.
He’s still watching when his phone rings.
“Yes?”
“The Public Integrity Project is asking for comment on a forty-seven minute affidavit recorded by a contractor named Brett Wallburn,” his assistant says, the man’s voice infuriatingly whiny for a Friday afternoon.
He hangs up.
Wallburn is manageable. Or was. Voss has all the recordings. Proof the contractor administered every round of ECT. Every fatal injection. Wallburn understands the cost of speaking—or did. She must have offered him something worth more than silence.
He knows who got to Wallburn. What he doesn’t know is how.
His phone rings again seventeen minutes later. Not his assistant this time. He’d ignore it if he could. He can’t.
The conversation is brief, unpleasant, and clear. Make the problem disappear. Or Adams will make him disappear.
He stands, straightens his jacket, and walks down the hall.
The room smells like sweat and copper. Locke slumps in the chair, wrists locked to the table, head listing slightly to one side. Still conscious. Barely. His eyes find Voss the moment he enters—tracking slower than before, but still tracking.
Voss pulls one of the other chairs around to Locke’s side of the table and sits beside him. Not across. Beside. Like colleagues. Like men with time to spare coming to a quiet understanding.
Of course, there is no time to spare. But Locke doesn’t need to know that.
Locke’s head lifts slightly. His voice is barely a rasp, but the cadence holds a bite.
“You…lost?”
“Agent Calder found Wallburn,” Voss says. “I want you to know that. She found the one person who could corroborate the operational methodology from the inside.” He waits, scanning Locke’s face for several seconds. Using the silence.
Nothing.
He tries again. “I underestimated her. I won’t make that mistake again.”
Locke keeps his jaw clenched. The carefully controlled tension tells Voss everything he needs to know about how much Locke wants to respond, and how much it’s costing him not to.
Voss folds his hands on the table, studies them for a moment, and sighs.
“What happens next isn’t personal. I want to be clear about that.
Agent Calder is a problem that requires a solution, and I intend to be thorough this time.
” He says it the way he says everything—evenly, without heat.
Or nearly without heat. “The original protocol was interrupted before it could be completed. That won’t happen again.
We have a facility in Spokane. Closed for years, but serviceable.
Extended low-amplitude sessions over several weeks will produce more reliable results than the accelerated protocol she experienced. ”
A vein in Locke’s temple throbs. Voss notes it with satisfaction.
“She’ll be conscious for all of it. That’s important to the methodology. The subject needs to be present for belief modification to take hold.” He tilts his head slightly. “By the end, there won’t be much left of whoever she is right now. You’ll watch it happen before we conclude your involvement.
“And she’ll watch us destroy you. Physically first. Then whatever’s left. I think that’s appropriate, given the role you’ve played. Don’t you?”
Locke isn’t still anymore. Rage simmers just under the skin. Along with a hint of fear.
Voss stands, and something inside of him snaps. The back of his hand flies across Locke’s face, harder than he intended. His knuckles sting. He stares at the reddened skin with something akin to interest, then straightens his jacket.
“She’s going to come for you,” he says, his voice back to its usual register as he moves to the door. “Whatever leverage she believes she has—Wallburn’s testimony, Ellen Markle’s, security footage from Coherent Path—it won’t be enough.”
Voss doesn’t look back. He no longer cares what Locke is doing. Locke won’t be an issue long enough to matter.
When he returns to his office, he picks up the phone. “Send them back in. And schedule the next recording for an hour from now. I want Locke recognizable. Nothing more.”