Chapter 24
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
Jason and Trick zip-tied the couple to ladder-back chairs in the center of the room where everyone could keep an eye on them. Trick even coughed on them a few times just for good measure.
Rachel glared daggers while Bradford scowled.
“They’re clearly with Winterlight.” Olive stepped closer, thankful to no longer have that gun to her temple. But it was too soon to relax. “What are we going to do with them?”
“They came here to get me.” Michael’s face was pale as he sat in the corner facing the two intruders.
“We need to get Michael out of here before anyone else shows up.” Rex moved toward the window, his muscles taut. “We can’t let them get their hands on his brain and everything he’s capable of.”
“The roads are impassable,” Jason reminded him.
“As soon as they’re clear, we need to move him,” Rex said.
“That won’t be happening,” a new voice announced.
Olive swiveled her head to look behind her.
She sucked in a breath.
For a second, Olive thought she was imagining the pale face in front of her.
But she knew she wasn’t.
“JJ,” she murmured. “You’re alive.”
Then she saw the gun in his hand.
“I thought you were dead . . .” Disbelief roughened Rex’s voice.
“Step back.” JJ’s tone didn’t sound panicked—it was controlled and cold. “All of you.”
Rex’s jaw locked. “Put the weapon down, son.”
“I can’t,” JJ said without a hint of apology in his tone. “You don’t understand.”
The firelight flickered, catching the hollow in his cheekbones, the exhaustion behind his eyes. He no longer looked like a fresh out of college computer tech.
He’d transformed into a hardened operative.
Olive’s stomach turned as she realized the truth. “You’re working for them. Winterlight. You were working for them all along . . .”
JJ’s gaze met hers, and he smirked before lifting his gun higher.
“I am. They embedded me within your organization when Michael started to get squirrely. They monitored his calls and knew he’d talked to the FBI.
They knew about the agent’s connection to Rex and Aegis and anticipated what might happen.
” His smirk grew larger. “And then we proved we were smarter than Aegis. And we just proved it again.”
No one moved.
JJ’s gun stayed trained on Rex, steady despite the tremor in his hand. Snow clung to his jacket, melting into dark patches that dripped onto the wooden floor. The fire hissed in the silence.
“You faked your own death.” Rex spoke first, his voice low and rough around the edges. “How?”
“Winterlight used to call it the Lazarus serum. It was designed by another one of the scientists we brought on board. We usually use it for deep-cover extractions. The serum gives us twenty minutes of full cardiac suppression, with no detectable pulse or oxygen use. They perfected it years ago. I brought a dose with me, knowing I might need it.”
“Sounds like your very own Power Pellet,” Trick muttered.
JJ smiled, like he liked the Pac-Man reference. “I guess it was.”
Olive’s mind raced. “Why did you go through all this trouble to fake your death to just reappear again?”
JJ’s jaw flexed. “Because it was the only way to finish what I started.”
“You let us think you were dead!” Olive didn’t bother to keep the emotion from her voice.
JJ looked at her then—really looked at her—and for a second she saw the boy she’d liked, the kid who’d smiled too easily and stayed late at the office tinkering with code.
That boy was gone. He’d never really existed at all.
“I didn’t have a choice,” he said. “I wanted to grab Michael right away—but I didn’t know where he was.
I knew I couldn’t go snooping with all of you around.
That meant I needed to disappear in order for my plan to work.
Then the snowstorm closed the roads, and I realized I couldn’t drive away from here. ”
The air seemed thinner somehow, the room closing in.
“Why’d you leave the jump drive in your hand for me to find?” she asked.
“That . . . well, that was a mistake.” His face twisted. “After I’d taken the serum, I remembered I had that jump drive on me still. I reached into my pocket to get rid of it, but it was too late. The serum took effect, and I was out. I figured it would come back to bite me.”
“And your cell phone?” Jason asked. “Did you mean to leave it in the shed?”
“That was on purpose,” JJ said. “I thought it would look more realistic if I left it there, like I’d been caught by surprise. That’s why I gave myself some bruises also. I wanted it to look real.”
Olive’s pulse hammered. “So now what? You kill us, grab Michael, and walk away?”
“That about summarizes it.” JJ shrugged. “Sorry it has to end this way. But a job is a job, and you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”
He didn’t sound sorry.
“Waka, waka, waka,” Mitzi muttered, making the classic sound from Pac-Man.
“What about them?” Jason nodded at Rachel and Bradford, who’d been surprisingly quiet as they listened to the conversation around them. “Aren’t they your friends?”
JJ glanced at them and shrugged again. “Never met those two before. Winterlight probably sent them as a backup.”
“In case you botched the job,” Bradford muttered. “You clearly have no idea what you’re doing. We should bring him in.”
“Oh, no one’s probably mentioned that there’s a large reward to be given to the person who does bring Michael in,” JJ said. “They won’t be getting it.”
“We’ll see about that,” Bradford muttered.
“I’m not the one tied up in the middle of the room.” JJ flashed a smile.
Olive’s mind raced. Everything she thought she knew—JJ’s death, Michael’s presence, even Rex’s orders—shifted like snow underfoot.
She glanced toward Jason. His eyes met hers, steady but guarded.
How do we get out of this? her look asked.
His expression gave the only answer he could. We’ll figure it out. But not yet.