Replica

CHAPTER TWENTY

Nadia broke out in a cold sweat as she sat across the table from Mosely, waiting for him to react to her statement that she’d met with Bishop. Unlike Nate, Mosely had iron control of his reactions, and she could tell nothing from the look on his face. Was he surprised? Or had someone followed her and seen the entire meeting?

Nadia took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. If whoever had been watching her had actually followed her to the rendezvous and overheard the discussion, Mosely wouldn’t be asking her questions. If he knew exactly what had happened last night, he’d just kill her, not interrogate her.

“You met with Kurt Bishop?” Mosely said after chewing it over for what felt like forever. “How, exactly, did that come about?”

The evaporating sweat on her skin made Nadia shiver. She hated the sign of weakness, but no matter how determined she was to be brave, her body had its own ideas. And maybe looking weak wasn’t such a bad idea after all. The less Mosely respected her, the more he would underestimate her—and the more willing he would be to say something that would eventually cost him his freedom, if not his life.

Nadia thought carefully about her answer, frantically trying to figure out which truths she should reveal and which she should hide. If she wanted any chance to convince Mosely not to torture her, she had to tell him enough truth to satisfy him. That meant giving up on protecting Bishop. And much though she hated to admit it, it meant giving up on protecting Nate, too. Mosely might not know what exactly had happened last night, but Nadia would bet her life that he knew Nate had been with her.

That left Dante, and the resistance movement to which he was connected. If Dante was arrested, not only would he likely die, but he’d be questioned like Nadia, and he’d tell Mosely who else was in his cell. And those cell members would be arrested and talk, and so on. She might not be convinced this resistance movement was on the side of the angels, but if she could save their lives, then at least she would die knowing she had saved someone.

With the decision made, Nadia’s racing pulse calmed, though she still shivered. Not because of how scared she was, she realized, but because the room was cold. No doubt kept that way to make prisoners more miserable.

“It’s a bit of a long story,” Nadia said, still mentally piecing together exactly what she was going to tell him.

“Don’t worry,” Mosely said drily, “we have plenty of time.”

She nodded, then sneaked a glance at the torture table, shivering and emphasizing to Mosely how terrified the threat made her. Hopefully helping to convince him that she would tell him the whole truth rather than risk his wrath.

“Bishop didn’t want Nate to find him,” she said in a small voice. “When Nate got beaten up the other night, Bishop was behind it. Trying to convince Nate he was really the killer so Nate would back off.”

As usual, Mosely’s face gave away nothing, but Nadia thought she detected a sharpening of the interest in his eyes.

“Bishop got hold of the locket Nate was wearing and found the tracker you had me plant in it. He made the assumption that I had put it there, and he contacted me.”

“How?” Mosely asked, leaning forward.

Of course he would immediately ask the one question she didn’t dare answer truthfully. “Through an intermediary,” she said, starting with the truth. “No one I knew, and he never identified himself. He cornered me when I was out shopping and told me to stay out of it or else.” Nadia’s pulse rate picked up as she watched Mosely watching her. She couldn’t say what had changed about his facial expression, but she got the distinct feeling he didn’t believe her. Or maybe that was just her own fear speaking, making her panic for no reason. Maybe that was why Mosely was so good at his job—because of his reputation for discerning truth from lies, those who lied to him got extra nervous and gave themselves away.

Knowing her best chance was to get past the lies and into the truthful—and, she hoped, even more interesting to Mosely—part, Nadia hurried on.

“I told him that, despite his best efforts, Bishop hadn’t talked Nate into not looking anymore, and that’s when he decided to set up the meeting.”

“Miss Lake, I thought I made it clear that it was in your best interests to tell me the truth. The whole truth.”

Nadia’s heart sank. She could give him more details on this mysterious intermediary she was making up, but she’d probably doomed herself as soon as she’d said he’d cornered her while she was shopping. There were enough security cameras in lower Manhattan that he could probably retrace her movements over the last week, and he would find no evidence that she’d been out shopping.

Nadia fought to stave off panic. She would worry about how to protect Dante later; right now, her first priority was to get Mosely to incriminate himself while she was of sound enough mind and body to manage it. Which meant she had to redirect Mosely’s attention, at least for the moment.

“Don’t you want to know about what happened last night when Nate and I met with Bishop?” she asked. She tried to fold her arms, but the handcuffs wouldn’t let her.

Mosely frowned and tapped the table with one restless finger. Nadia held her breath, and she had to suppress a sigh of relief when he took the bait.

“Don’t think we have finished with the current topic of discussion, but please do tell about last night.”

Nadia tapped into some of the fury she’d felt at everything she’d learned last night, letting it steal into her face as she leaned forward. She gave Mosely the most steely look she could manage, stoking her anger, urging it to well up and overpower her fear.

“Bishop told us that he wasn’t the one who killed Nate. You killed Nate, because of something he overheard you talking about with the Chairman.”

In the best-case scenario, Mosely wouldn’t bother denying the accusation, might even blithely admit to it. After all, he was planning to kill Nadia anyway, so what did it matter? But perhaps admitting to murder was against the spy’s code of conduct, because Mosely merely laughed at her.

“An interesting theory,” he said, still chuckling. “What would you expect the murderer to do, if not to point the finger at someone else? Very clever of him to point it at someone you were already predisposed to think ill of.”

The door to the interrogation room opened, and a security officer peeked his head in. Mosely turned toward him in obvious annoyance. The officer’s eyes widened in alarm at the look Mosely shot him, but he didn’t retreat.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said, “but there’s a … situation you should be aware of.”

Mosely looked even more annoyed as he shoved his chair back. “This had better be of the utmost importance.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mosely stood up with obvious reluctance. “I’ll be back soon, Miss Lake,” he warned.

Nadia shrank back into her chair, cold and scared and alone, with the hulking torture apparatus that would surely be part of her future looming in her peripheral vision.

Nate still didn’t have much by way of a plan when he arrived at the Fortress. He didn’t technically have the authority to give Dirk Mosely orders, and considering what he now knew about the man, he didn’t suppose Mosely would follow them anyway. Not to mention that Mosely was obviously willing to kill him if necessary.

Still, killing Nate in a private corner of the Chairman’s mansion was not the same as killing him in front of witnesses. Mosely was an expert at the cover-up, but Nate didn’t think a second murder could be covered up so easily. Feeling confident that Mosely wouldn’t just shoot him on sight didn’t mean he had any idea how to free Nadia, but even so, Nate had to try.

Getting through the first few layers of security in the Fortress was easy. Everyone knew who he was, and they weren’t about to risk their jobs trying to stop him. Besides, he had all the right access codes as a privilege of his rank. He tried asking where Mosely was, but no one would admit to having seen him. Not surprising, as there was more than one entrance to the Fortress and Mosely would have used the most private one. Nate made an educated guess that Mosely and Nadia would be somewhere in the very heart of the building, deep enough that even Nate didn’t have the clearance to get through. But he was prepared to be way more forceful than anyone would expect him to be. And it would take a security officer with balls of steel to deny the Chairman Heir.

At each security checkpoint, the demands grew more vigorous, until Nate was identifying himself not just with the proper access codes, but with fingerprints and retinal scans. There were officers at each of the checkpoints, but though they looked at him curiously, no one got in his way until he tried to get on the elevator to the sub-basement level, the floor on which Thea resided.

Though Nate had been in the sub-basement before, he didn’t have the clearance to go there without an escort. Here was where he expected to meet resistance, and indeed the two security officers stationed in the hallway leading to the elevator stiffened at his approach.

“I’m looking for Dirk Mosely,” he told them. “I believe he’s in the sub-basement, and I would like one of you to escort me down there.”

The two guards looked at each other, then back at him.

“I’m sorry, sir,—” one of them began, but Nate made an impatient gesture.

“No apologies. Take me downstairs, or I’ll have your jobs. I will see that you have the blackest of black marks put on your records, the kind of black marks that mean you’ll never get another job. You, and your families, if you have them, will sink into the Basement, where you will languish in poverty for the rest of your days. I’m having the worst week in the history of the universe, so don’t tempt me.”

In all honesty, Nate didn’t expect it to work. His threat was pretty awful—and a part of him felt bad for making it—but he feared the officers would face the same fate if they failed in their duty. If they had to bet on who was most likely to carry out the threat, Nate or Mosely, surely they would bet on Mosely. His plan B was to make a move on one of their weapons on the assumption that they’d never expect it and that the one he wasn’t attacking wouldn’t dare shoot him while he was making the attempt. Trying to wrestle one security officer for his weapon while hoping the other didn’t shoot him wasn’t high on Nate’s list of things he wanted to do in life, so it was a relief when his blackmail actually worked.

“Fine,” the guard who’d tried to apologize said, giving him a filthy look, “I’ll take you downstairs.”

“Damn it, Flynn!” the other guard said. “Mosely will kill us.”

Flynn snorted and waved for Nate to follow him as he unhooked a ring of old-fashioned metal keys from his belt. “I doubt he expects us to defy the orders of the Chairman Heir.” He stuck one of the keys into the keyhole beside the elevator and turned it, simultaneously leaning forward so the retinal scanner could work. The elevator door opened, and he stepped in.

The hair on the back of Nate’s neck rose as it occurred to him that getting here had been far too easy, the guards’ protests almost halfhearted.

“Come on, sir,” Flynn beckoned, holding the elevator door open when it tried to shut on him. “The alarm will sound if I hold it much longer. It’s kind of touchy.”

Nate gave a momentary thought to trying to back out and seeing if the guards would allow it. But it didn’t matter. If he was walking into a trap, then so be it. He wasn’t leaving here without Nadia.

Straightening his shoulders, trying not to look as spooked as he felt, Nate stepped onto the elevator.