The Discarded

CHAPTER 25

Nearly fifty minutes passed before Gloria finally heard someone in the hall outside the observation room.

“King? Ms. Clark?” Nolan’s voice. “Are you down here?”

Gloria pulled the chair out from under the handle and opened the door.

Nolan and Andres were in the corridor. They had turned at the sound of the door and aimed their guns at the opening. Once they saw it was Gloria, they lowered their weapons.

“Thank God,” Nolan said. “Are you all right?”

“Where’s King?” Andres asked.

Ignoring the questions, she marched over to them and asked, “Where the fuck were you two?”

“You found them,” a third voice said. “Good.”

Gloria looked past her men toward the stairway. Standing near the entrance was Scott Foster, head of the McCrillis emergency response team. They had undoubtedly come in response to the call she’d made from the observation room.

She turned back to her men. “Answer my question!”

Nolan swallowed hard. “They knocked us out and tied us up.”

“They knocked you out and tied you up? Are you serious?”

Neither Nolan nor Andres said anything.

From the stairwell entrance, Foster said, “What’s the word on the prisoner?”

“Gone,” she told him.

Foster frowned.

“Hey, I’m not pleased about it, either,” she said. “But there wasn’t a hell of a lot I could do when the people who were supposed to be watching my back weren’t doing their job.”

In a hesitant voice, Andres asked, “Is King all right?”

She glared at him for a second before nodding back at the observation room. “He’s in there.”

When Andres caught sight of the other man’s body, he asked, “Is he dead?”

“Out cold.”

“So they got him, too,” Nolan said.

“True, except he wasn’t supposed to be guarding the place.”

She pushed past them and headed for the stairwell.

When she neared Foster, he said, “Mr. Davis said for you to call in as soon as we found you.”

“Davis isn’t my boss,” she said.

“He is now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mr. Davis will tell you.”

Cursing to herself, she pulled out her phone and headed up the stairs. A moment before she hit the top step, the line was answered by one of the night operators.

“McCrillis.”

“It’s Gloria Clark. I believe Mr. Davis is expecting my call.”

Hold music, low and unobtrusive.

It had barely played two measures when—

“Clark?”

“Mr. Davis, you wanted to talk to me?”

“What the hell happened over there?” he asked. Perry Davis was McCrillis’s vice president of general operations, a man who was reportedly a competent organizer. Gloria had no firsthand knowledge of this. Her work had never strayed into his arena before.

She grimaced. It wasn’t his place to ask that kind of question. “We had an incident, sir.”

“What kind of incident?”

Another pause. “An incursion.”

“Any casualties?”

“None, sir.”

“Any idea why they were there?”

“Sir, I should really be speaking to—”

“Please answer my question, Ms. Clark.”

“Yes, sir. They came to get the man we were questioning.”

“And did they?”

“Unfortunately.”

Davis said nothing for a moment. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on. I’ve barely had time to take a breath, let alone go through Boyer’s files.”

“Sir, where is Mr. Boyer? I’m sure he’s expecting me to update—”

“He’s dead.”

She had been walking across the ground-floor room toward the exit, but his words stopped her in her tracks. “Dead? How?”

“He was in his house when it burned down.”

“Jesus. Was it an accident?”

“Unlikely. His security team was found unconscious in the backyard. They’d apparently been drugged.”

Drugged? She’d been unable to revive King while they waited for the response team, which had led her to believe he was drugged.

Quinn, she thought. If he’d played a role in her boss’s death, it would certainly explain how he’d found out where she was.

“Ms. Clark, are you there?”

She blinked. “Uh, sorry, sir. I’m here.”

“I need to know exactly what you’re working on.”

“It’s a KV job, sir.” KV was McCrillis’s highest secrecy designation, meaning phone conversations about it were strongly discouraged.

“Of course it is, goddammit. Fine. Get your ass in here as quickly as you can and give me a full report. I’ll be in my office.”

Gloria stood on the other side of Davis’s desk as she filled him in on her assignment. The offer to sit had not been extended, nor would she have accepted it if it had. Though one of Foster’s men had patched her up before she left Virginia, she’d refused any pain medication, so it felt like she had a hot poker constantly pressed against her side and sitting made it worse.

“So the job is to find out if the girl is alive or not?” Davis interrupted, apparently having a hard time comprehending the mission.

“Part one, yes,” she said, working hard to maintain her patience.

“And what is part two?”

Her training made her not want to answer the question, but with Boyer out of the picture she had no choice. “If she’s still alive, eliminate her.”

“A child.”

“Yes, sir.”

She would have understood if he looked disgusted, but instead he appeared merely annoyed as he said, “And do we know why?”

“That’s not part of the job, sir,” she told him, though she actually did know the answer.

“Unbelievable. Who approved this?”

“The client has worked with McCrillis for many years, sir, and I do believe a premium is being paid for this project.”

“As well it should be.” He reached for his phone. “Please step into my waiting area. I’ll call you back in when I’m ready.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, and headed for the exit.

As she entered the waiting area, she heard Davis say, “Don? This is Perry. We have a situation here that I need a little…”

After the door closed behind her, she could hear him no longer, but she had no doubt who he was talking to.

Donald McCrillis. President and CEO of McCrillis International.

The corner of her mouth ticked up.

Exactly seven minutes after she stepped out of Davis’s office, the door opened.

“Please come back in,” Davis said, his tone contrite.

As she entered, she felt her phone buzz in her pocket. She pulled it out and looked at the text on the screen.

Davis. Keep it natural.

There was no sender’s name, only a number she was sure belonged to a burner phone. It didn’t matter. She knew it was from Don McCrillis.

In a few hours, when the sun came up, instead of being down one vice president, McCrillis International would be down two.

“Ms. Clark, please have a seat.”

She smiled and lowered herself into the chair.