Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Archer's office had never felt small before.
It felt downright cramped now. Four other men besides him had crammed in.
The door was closed and the signal jammer was on.
The space was eerily quiet with the silence that existed when people who were paid to handle anything were trying to process something they hadn't handled.
He let them have thirty seconds of it. Then he spoke.
"Here is where we are," he said. "A man died on Society premises. On my watch. In my building. Under my security." He looked at each of them in turn. "You all know what that means."
Nobody said anything.
"It means I lose my position," Archer said. "And you all know how that happens."
Cash looked at the floor. Flynn's jaw tightened. Rush crossed his arms over his chest and looked at the wall. Ryker looked directly at Archer with the expression of a man who had already been doing the math and didn't like the sum of the problem.
"Someone has to take me out," Archer said. "That's the rule. That's always been the rule. A death on the head of the Society's watch means the head of the Society answers for it. And the only way to answer for it in this organization is with your life."
He said it flatly and without drama because it was a fact, and he had always operated best in the territory of facts.
"Realistically," he continued, "it falls to one of my own team. That's how it's traditionally been done. Someone close to the head. Someone trusted. Someone with access." He paused and looked at each man. "One of you."
The silence had a different quality now, as if this was a wholly unexpected announcement. But it wasn’t. Not really.
"I'm not telling you this to make you uncomfortable," Archer said. "I'm telling you because you need to understand the situation completely in order to help me manage it. And because I trust each of you with my life, which is apparently now quite literally what I'm doing."
Ryker said, "We're not going to—"
"I know that," Archer said, holding up a hand.
He moved to the window. Outside, the city was going about its business with the magnificent indifference it always showed toward the private disasters of the people who lived in it.
"The problem is that I wasn't ready for this.
Of all the things I prepared for, of all the scenarios I mapped out and built contingencies against, this one I missed. "
He pressed his lips together. Oh, the irony of it all.
He had been unprepared. That was the truth of it, and it sat in him like something corrosive.
He had been so focused on Davis and Fisher and the camera threat and the board meeting and the Curator and Tatum, always Tatum, threading through everything, that he had not adequately protected the asset sitting in a room two floors above his own head.
He had put Kelly in that building and posted Rush on security and told himself it was enough.
It had not been enough. A twenty-four-year-old girl was dead in the ambulance bay, and a frightened, culpable, irreplaceable witness was dead in his dining room, and Archer Gray, who prided himself above all things on being prepared, had been caught completely flat-footed.
He needed more time. Another month, maybe six weeks, and the exit strategy he'd been quietly constructing would have been ready.
The contingency that nobody in this room knew about.
The one he'd been building in the background of everything else, real estate deals, encrypted accounts, and a set of arrangements that would allow Archer Gray to cease to exist in one form and continue in another.
He was not ready, and someone had just forced his hand.
His phone rang. He looked at the screen.
Of course.
He answered it and put it on speaker so the others in the room could hear. "Austin."
"Archer." Davis's voice was warm and rich and practically glowing with barely contained satisfaction.
The drawl was thick, thicker than usual, which meant he was enjoying himself enormously.
"I just heard the most distressin' news.
A death? On Society property? Lord, Archer, that is just terrible. Just absolutely terrible."
"Yes," Archer said. "It is."
"Now, I've been talking to a few of the board members, and I think you can appreciate that, given the gravity of the situation, we simply cannot wait until the scheduled meeting to address this. The members deserve answers, and they deserve them promptly."
"I see," Archer said.
"I'm movin' the meeting up. Tomorrow morning. Ten a.m." A pause, just long enough to let that sink in. "I do hope that works for you."
"That works fine," Archer said.
There was a brief silence on Davis's end, the silence of a man who had expected more resistance and wasn't quite sure what to do without it. "Well. Good, then. I'm glad we're in agreement."
"We should meet tonight," Archer said. "You and I. Before tomorrow."
Another pause. Longer this time. "Tonight?"
"Yes. I think it's in both our interests to have a conversation before we're in a room full of board members."
"Archer, I appreciate the gesture, but I'm not sure what there is to discuss that can't be—"
"I have information about you," Archer said. "You and your relationship to the Curator."
The silence on Davis's end was complete and absolute and lasted just a half second too long.
"I don't know what you're referring to," Davis said.
"Sure you do," Archer said pleasantly. "And you'd like to know what I know. I'd like to meet tonight. We can keep it informal. Just the two of us."
He could hear Davis thinking. Could practically hear the calculation, the weighing of risk against the irresistible pull of information and the even more irresistible pull of being in the same room as Archer Gray the night before the meeting that was going to end Archer Gray's tenure as head of the Society.
Davis had never been able to resist gloating.
It was his single most reliable quality.
"All right," Davis said finally. "This evening. Where?"
"Riverside Park," Archer said. "The promenade. Nine o'clock."
Another pause. "That's rather outdoors."
"I find I prefer it," Archer said. "Given recent events, I think we're both better served by a location without cameras, don't you?"
Davis laughed, and there was real pleasure in it. "Nine o'clock," he said. "Don't be late." He ended the call.
Archer set the phone down.
The four men in the room were watching him.
"Riverside Park," Ryker said. "Why Riverside Park?"
"Because Davis has a private apartment two blocks from there. A discreet one. Not under his name. He uses it when he needs to be in the city without being seen." Archer looked at him. "He'll feel comfortable. He'll feel like he has the advantage of familiar ground."
"And why do we want him comfortable?" Cash asked.
"Because a comfortable man is a talkative man," Archer said. "And because whoever the Curator is, they are a Society member. I don't want this meeting taking place anywhere near the Society. I don't want them knowing it's happening."
"You think Davis is going to be taken out," Flynn said. It wasn't a question.
"I think the Curator is cleaning house," Archer said.
"North. Lebowitz. Kelly. Daniela. Each one was removed at precisely the moment they became a liability.
Davis has become a liability. He's loud, and he's compromised, and he's been making moves that draw attention to the operation.
The Curator will have noticed that." He paused.
"As much as it pains me to admit, I'd rather talk to Davis tonight and offer him a way out than have the Curator kill him. If anyone is going to kill that bastard, it should be me.”
The room absorbed that.
"Archer, if the Curator is watching Davis," Rush said carefully, "then meeting him tonight puts you in the same vicinity as someone who has now killed four people in the last week."
"Yes," Archer agreed. "It does, but I am counting on the Curator not wanting to draw too much attention by killing Davis on the same day as Kelly."
He looked around the room at the four men who had been with him through more situations than he cared to count.
Men who had never once, in all the years he'd worked with them, given him reason to doubt their loyalty.
Whatever happened tomorrow, whatever the board decided, whatever came next, that was true, and he wanted them to know he knew it.
"Ryker," he said. "I want you to prepare for the board meeting. Everything we have on Davis and his violations. The names Kelly gave us. The dates. The locations. All of it organized and ready to present."
"On it," Ryker said.
"I also want all four of you to go through the security footage from this morning.
Everything. Not just what Flynn already pulled.
I want to know how Daniela got that weapon into the building.
I want to know who she spoke to in the last forty-eight hours and who came and went from this building that we haven't fully accounted for.
The board will want answers, and I intend to have them. "
"And if the board won't hear it?" Cash asked.
Archer picked up his pen and turned it slowly in his fingers. " I'll make sure they hear it."
He looked at his watch. It was not yet noon. Tonight was nine hours away, and tomorrow was twenty-four, and a great deal could happen in twenty-four hours if you used them correctly.
"That's all for now," he said. "Keep me updated on everything."
The men all stood, but no one moved.
"What?" Archer demanded, his patience thinning. He had too much to do.
"We're not doing it." The words sounded harsh. Cash had given voice to the thought, but the others nodded in agreement. "Not one of us will take you out. It's not right."
Archer felt something swell in his chest. The loyalty of these men, possibly more than he deserved, had been the thing that had at times kept him going. They would never know how much it meant to him.
"I get that it's a hard thing, but—"
"There are no buts," Ryker said, glaring at his boss. "With all the resources you have"—he turned and gestured toward his teammates—"that we have, there are things that can be done, and we will do them. This is not the end of Archer Gray."
"Oh, this is definitely the end of Archer Gray," Archer said, "but I get your point. We'll discuss it this afternoon. I have things to do first."
The team filed out. Ryker was last. He stopped at the door and looked back at Archer with the particular expression he reserved for moments when he had something to say and was deciding whether to say it.
"Say it," Archer said.
"Tatum still isn't answering," Ryker said. "We can't locate her in the building. She's not on any of the internal cameras since early this morning."
Archer kept his face still. "She left before the lockdown."
"The tracker shows her phone at the law firm."
"Then she's at the law firm." He met Ryker's eyes. "Put someone outside the building. Now. Don't let her leave without someone with her."
Ryker nodded and left.
Archer sat alone.
He sat for a moment and let himself feel what he'd been keeping below the surface since he'd stood in the ambulance bay and looked at Daniela's face.
The icy-hot anger at himself. The frigid fear for Tatum that had sat in his chest since the phone rang.
The horror that the situation had moved faster than he'd anticipated and left him with fewer options than he needed.
Then he picked up his phone.
Not his regular phone. A new one. Just in case. And he dialed a number he knew by heart.
It rang once.
"It's me," Archer said. "I need you to meet me.
Tonight, before nine. Somewhere private.
" He paused and listened. "Yes, it's that serious.
" Another pause. "Because everything is about to change, and I need someone in place who isn't connected to any of this.
" He listened again, then said, "Thank you. I'll send the location."
He ended the call and set the phone down.
Then he looked out the window at the city and began, quietly and precisely, to prepare for the end of Archer Gray.