Edge of Betrayal (20 page)

P
ayton looked up as Sophie Devane walked through his open office door. He rose to greet her, wondering if she recognized him.

She’d seen him once in Sage’s home. It had been after one of her treatments, and she’d been barely coherent, but he remembered exactly how she’d stared at him, silently begging for help.

That night had been the first time he’d had a twinge of conscience about what he was doing. He knew that Sage’s treatments weren’t fun for the kids, but he’d still believed that they’d thank him for it when they were older and realized how much stronger and smarter they were.

How wrong he’d been.

“Lila said you were on your way to see me. I thought you were supposed to be with Riley,” he said.

“I was. Snuck out his bedroom window. He still thinks I’m at his place.”

“Why are you here?”

“Riley said that I might be able to help—that something I’d seen or heard might lead you to Sage.”

“He sent me the recording you made. I’m sure it will be helpful.”

“It’s not enough.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I heard your conversation with Riley. I heard that you need to give Sage a reason to leave his hiding place and go to wherever it is he does his evil deeds.” She pulled in a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I’m that reason.”

Payton slipped past her and shut his door so no one would overhear them. “I think you’re mistaken.”

“I’m not. I spent enough hours being tortured by that man to know how his mind works. I heard the fights that he and that lady doctor—Stynger—had. She already tried to get her hands on me twice. If Dr. Sage finds out about that, he’ll want me. He won’t let her get to me first.”

He turned her words over in his mind, looking at them from various angles. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t find a single hole in her logic. “What are you telling me?”

“If you want to draw someone out of hiding, you need juicy bait. Well, I’m standing right here.”

“You’re offering to let us use you? Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”

“Actually, I do. It’s probably just about as dangerous as trying to live a normal life when evil scientists are after me to use me as some kind of lab rat.”

“Your new identity is almost ready. All that’s left is finding you a secure place to live. Tomorrow, you can walk away a free woman.”

“If you believe that, then you’re an idiot. I’ve conned enough people to know that hiding is only a temporary solution. They’ll find me. I’ve changed my name before. Moved. They always find me.”

“A real identity—one that can stand up to scrutiny—is quite different from taking on an alias.”

“Doesn’t matter. They’ve got the time, manpower, and money to do whatever they want. Until every last one of them is dead or behind bars, I’ll never be safe.”

“If you do this, you could be killed.”

“I’m tired of looking over my shoulder all the time. I’m tired of not having a life. I want to settle down and have a family. How in the world can I have a child if I have to spend my life on the run?”

“You’ll never have a child if you die.”

She shrugged. “I’m not an idiot. I realize this is a big risk, but if your team is there, I’ll be okay.”

“What does Riley say?”

“You don’t have to ask to know that. Neither do I. That’s why I crawled out of his window and stole his car to come here and talk to you in person.”

Sophie was exactly what they needed to force Sage into action. One leaked rumor that Stynger was after her and his professional jealousy would flare to life. A few well-placed calls, a staged accident, and Sage would be on his way to his lab by dawn.

Payton looked at her, waiting until he was sure he had her undivided attention. “You have to be sure. If I set this plan in motion, there will be no stopping it—nowhere for you to hide. Once Sage learns of your whereabouts and that Stynger wants you, he won’t rest until he’s got you.”

“I know.”

He had to be graphic—had to be sure she understood what she was doing. “He’ll put you through God knows what kind of tests. He’ll drug you, hurt you. He may even kill you just to autopsy your brain. Are you really sure that you want to sign up for that kind of risk?”

“I don’t, but it’s the only way to take him out. Isn’t it?”

“I could have killed him a hundred different times, but unless we take down his work and all of the people doing it, another one just like him will pop up and take his place. This is about destroying his life’s work and making sure that every scrap of research is burned to ash.”

“And this Stynger chick? What about her?”

“We’re working to do the same thing to her. But right
now, Sage is the one on the ropes. We actually have a hope of digging up his work from the roots and annihilating it.”

“Then sign me up. I’m all about annihilation when it comes to that man.”

Payton nodded. “Do you want to tell Riley, or shall I?”

“Let me,” she said. “He might hit you if he thinks you talked me into it.”

“It’s no less than I deserve.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve all done shitty things. Seems to me it’s time I started making up for some of mine.”

Sophie left his office. Her steps were a little lighter, her head a little higher.

Payton knew in that instant that he was doing the right thing. That feeling of undoing past wrongs—it was more important to him than breathing. Maybe Sophie felt the same way.

She should have been afraid—and maybe she was—but she was facing her demons on her own terms.

He respected her for that. More important, she would respect herself. After all the pain he’d caused, it was the best gift he could give her.

Payton texted Riley to have him come in to the office. However this mission went, Payton knew that Riley would be on it. Period. There was no sense in trying to change that man’s mind once it was made up. Besides, with Riley on the team, Sophie’s chances of survival were much, much higher.

*   *   *

One of Mira’s alarms went off, dragging her attention away from her efforts to access Payton’s personal files.

She was expecting the alarm to be an indication of activity in Ruby’s apartment, but instead found it was one of the triggers Mira had set up on Adam’s phone weeks ago.

Confused, she squinted at the name and number displayed. She didn’t recognize it, but her computer did. A
few keystrokes later, the database pulled up the rest of the information attached to that phone number.

It was one flagged as being part of Stynger’s network of goons.

Adam was calling Stynger? Why would he do that?

Unless he was a traitor.

Her heart chilled, and a wave of pain sloshed through her insides, freezing them over. For a long second, she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.

Adam had fooled her. He’d fooled her so completely that she’d slept with him.

The shock and pain melted in the face of her growing fury. How dare he? Seducing her once was bad enough, but this time . . . she was taking him down.

Mira used his trackers to locate him in his office. He had the nerve to make that call from inside the building, as if they were all so stupid they’d never even bother to keep tabs on him.

She slammed out of her office and down to the floor below, where he worked. Her weapon was in her hand, though she had no recollection of putting it there. Not that it mattered. The man deserved whatever he got for what he’d done.

She’d slept with a traitor. The mere thought made her sick.

She didn’t bother to knock—just barged in through his office door and watched as he hung up the phone.

His smile of greeting faded as he saw how pissed she was.

“Why were you calling her? Getting ready to sell me out to the highest bidder again?”

He looked at the phone sitting on his desk, then back at her. Understanding dawned on his face. “You think I betrayed you?”

“Seems to be your habit.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions. If you give me a minute, I can explain.”

It was a trick. He was an excellent liar, and she so desperately wanted there to be a logical explanation.

She didn’t want him to be a bad guy—not when she felt about him the way she did.

“I’m listening. But you keep your hands where I can see them.”

He pressed them flat against his desktop. “I was searching for bait.”

She blinked, unable to make sense of his words. “What?”

“We needed someone to entice your father back to his lab. I still have the number of the people who used to send me out to find subjects for Dr. Stynger. I thought one of them would be able to help me find someone suitable to play bait.”

“Suitable?”

“A murderer was my first choice. There are three convicted killers in prison right now who were victims of the Threshold Project—men so loathsome they make me look like an angel. I just found out where they are. I thought Payton might be able to pull some strings to get one of them released into his custody.”

Now the pieces were clicking into place. As they did, her gun sagged in her grip. “You weren’t turning on us?”

He stood and moved around his desk toward her. “I know you track all my calls. I know you probably listen to every word I say. Why in the world would I use a company phone inside of this office if I were planning to turn on you?”

“Because you think you could get away with it?”

He wrapped his hands around hers, angling the weapon toward the floor before easing it from her fingers. He set it on the desk behind him.

Mira probably should have fought him but didn’t. She so desperately wanted him to be telling the truth. She wanted him to be worthy of the way she was starting to feel toward him—scary, deep feelings that would ruin her life if she let them bloom and he betrayed her again.

“I’m not trying to get away with anything.” He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her against him. “I have exactly what I want. I’m not going to do anything to ruin that.”

He smelled so damn good, she couldn’t think straight. Every one of her brain cells were dancing around, celebrating his touch.

“What you want?” she asked, sounding breathless and vapid.

“You can check my phone logs. Listen to whatever recordings you make of me every day. You’ll see I’m telling the truth.”

“How do you know I record your calls?”

“Because you are a brilliant woman who has every reason not to trust me. I’d expect no less.”

She was brilliant, but hearing him say it made a little warm spot in her chest flare to life. She tried to resist being sucked in by it—knowing that his praise had been designed to make her feel that way—but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from reveling in his compliment.

His eyes were such a pretty shade of gray. They were normally pale, almost silvery, but when he touched her, they always shifted to a deep, richer slate. A man couldn’t fake that response, not even one as skilled as Adam.

Could he?

“The next time you want to make alarming calls, you should at least warn me first.”

A slow smile smoothed out the harsh angles of his cheekbones. “And miss you running down here to stop me and my nefarious ways, all armed and fierce? I don’t think so. You’re positively stunning like that.”

“And that part where I was ready to shoot you in the foot didn’t bother you?”

“Once you found out I didn’t deserve it, you would have felt so guilty, you’d have nursed me back to health. Absolutely worth the pain.”

“You underestimate my queasiness and overestimate my capacity for guilt.”

“I don’t think so. Everything you’ve done all year has been in an effort to erase your father’s bad deeds. None of them were your fault, but you’ve still worked yourself into exhaustion trying to undo the damage he did.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“If not for me, he never would have hurt those kids. I always resisted Dad’s efforts to get me to cooperate, so he’d bring in some kid, let me play with them long enough to get attached, then hurt them until I did what he wanted. If not for me, none of those kids would have been tortured.”

His big hand splayed across her back, stroking her in a slow, soothing sweep. “Those were the acts of a deranged mind, not of an innocent child victimized by her own father.”

She looked away, unwilling to share her pain with him. “That’s easy to say. Much, much harder to believe. I keep thinking that if I help enough of the people he hurt, it will tip the scales. Maybe then I can sleep at night.”

He tipped her chin up, forcing her to look at him. “Then that’s what we’ll do. Once we find him and put a stop to any future pain he might cause, we’ll gather every record in his lab and make it our life’s work to restore balance.”

Our life’s work.

That he would tie them together in that way shocked her. It was almost as if he was saying that the two of them had some kind of life together.

But they didn’t. Not really. Sure, they could work together and even sleep together, but in the end, he’d move on. Or she would. There was too much bad history between them for any other outcome.

“I can tell by your silence that I’ve overstepped my
bounds,” he said. “But I don’t care.” He walked her backward until she was against the office door. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but you keep looking at me like I’m some kind of passing phase you’ll outgrow in a day or two. But I’m not. I spent my entire adult life searching for my brother. I never slowed or faltered, and I never let anything get in my way, no matter how appealing or attractive a diversion it might have been.”

Just the idea of that kind of potent force of will and undivided attention from him made Mira shiver. “And you found him.”

“I did. And do you know what?” he asked.

She was almost afraid to say, “What?”

“I find I miss the quest. The challenge. Or I did until I met you.”

“So the quest to find my dad has taken the place of the one to find your brother?”

He leaned into her just enough that she could feel his bulk, his power. The act sent a delicious thrill racing through her. It pooled in her knees, liquefying them until his weight was the only thing keeping her upright.