Chapter 26 - The Architect of Deceit
The conservatory was a massive glass cathedral filled with exotic orchids, palms, and rare botanical specimens collected by three generations of Whitmores. Rain hammered furiously against the thousands of glass panes, making it sound as if the sky itself was collapsing upon the glass dome.
Standing in the center of the illuminated greenhouse was Marcus Cole.
He looked older than Naomi remembered from their days in the Division. His face was scarred down the right side—the permanent souvenir of the explosive trap Naomi had left for him in Bogota four years ago. He wore an expensive charcoal coat over an armored vest, and in his leather-gloved hand, he held a sleek remote detonator with an active LED display.
Sitting bound to a cast-iron bench five feet away was Ethan Whitmore.
His face was bruised, blood trickling from the corner of his split lip. When Naomi had gone out to hunt, Cole’s personal detachment had flanked the cellar through an old coal chute, overpowering Ethan and dragging him up to the surface.
"I told you she would come," Cole said smoothly, not looking up as Naomi stepped through the shattered glass doors of the conservatory. "She was always predictable when it came to loyalty. A terrible flaw for an assassin, wouldn't you say, Mr. Whitmore?"
Ethan struggled against his bonds, his eyes blazing with fury. "Don't do it, Naomi! He's wired the glass dome with C4! If you shoot him, the roof comes down!"
Naomi stopped fifteen paces away. Her weapon hung loosely by her side. She didn't raise it.
"Marcus," she said, her voice dropping into an eerily calm register. "You look terrible. Bogota didn't agree with your complexion."
Cole touched the twisted scar tissue on his jaw, a thin, venomous smile spreading across his lips. "You took my face, Naomi. You took my promotion. And you took the Division's primary syndicate contracts when you decided to develop a conscience and burn our network to the ground."
"Your network was selling chemical agents to warlords in East Africa," Naomi retorted. "You stopped being an intelligence officer and became a butcher."
"And what are you now?" Cole laughed, gesturing contemptuously at her torn, blood-stained gray apron. "A maid? You pour tea for arrogant aristocrats who wouldn't look twice at you if you were bleeding on their Persian rugs? Look at him, Naomi! Ethan Whitmore belongs to the class of people who rule this world without ever getting their hands dirty. They use people like us to clean their toilets and fight their wars, and when we're spent, they discard us like scrap iron!"
"Ethan’s father saved my life," Naomi said simply.
"His father was a thief who stole from the Division’s black budget to build this pathetic empire!" Cole shouted, his composure slipping, revealing the unhinged monster beneath. "And now it ends. The detonator is linked to a dead-man's switch. My heart stops, or my thumb lifts, and two hundred pounds of military-grade plastic explosive turn this conservatory into a rain of glass and shrapnel. You die. Ethan dies. His sister dies in the cellar."
"And you?" Naomi asked, taking a slow, imperceptible half-step forward.
"I walk out the west gate to my transport," Cole said, stepping behind Ethan and pressing the cold barrel of a custom Sig Sauer against Ethan’s temple. "Drop your weapon, Reyes. Drop it, kick it across the floor, or I blow his brains out before the glass even falls."
Naomi stared at Ethan.
Ethan shook his head frantically. "Don't do it, Naomi! Don't let him win!"
Naomi looked at Cole’s thumb on the detonator. She looked at the tension in his shoulder, the angle of his feet on the wet flagstones, the slight tremor in his scarred eyelid.
"Fine," Naomi whispered.
She opened her fingers.
May you like
The heavy carbine fell toward the stone floor.
***
