Chapter 46
glenn
I chuckled.
“No, no,” I said. “No need to worry. It’s almost quaint. I’d never known you could fail before, Quayle.”
He folded his hands on the desk, not saying anything, just staring straight ahead. I turned back to my poster board, pinned with references and documents—and at the center of it all, Elaine Whitner.
Ah, Elaine. It had been foolish of me to overlook her from the beginning. More than Vera, Yulia, any of them… this was Elaine’s work.
And she would make an excellent Blackbird once we’d finished our work with her. She was a bleeding heart, from the sounds of things. Extorting her would be easy once we had her in our clutches.
And she was an extraordinarily beautiful woman. It would be quite agreeable to spend some time with her. Everybody had a price, and it wouldn’t be hard to find Elaine’s.
“It was for the best,” I said finally. “We’ve fully contained the information leak about the Whitecliff operation.
And given Vera’s and Elaine’s bond now… it would be a shame to let that go to waste.
I nearly made a foolish error by having them all killed.
” I clasped my hands together. “Forget Vera, Petra, Jenna, and even Yulia. Forget all of them. We get Elaine, alive, at any cost.”
“Yes, sir.” He stood up. “Do we proceed with the planned lever?”
I chuckled. “Oh, yes. Elaine Whitner is already on a string. All we need to do is pull it.”
I looked back at the poster board, following the line from Elaine off to our key variable. Elaine’s weakness… and our easy path to victory.
Her mother.