He turned and walked toward the door, his whole bearing brimming with arrogance and self-satisfaction. He thought he’d played the winning card, Kendra could see. He didn’t care that card was hideous and the stuff of her worst nightmares. Perhaps he had won, she was too shaken right now to tell. But she couldn’t let him leave this room with a complete victory.
“Wait.” Kendra stepped toward Biers. “Take your errand boy with you, Dyle. If you intend to blind me again, I don’t want one of the last things I see to be this scum. I can’t stand to look at him.”
Dyle turned. “Excuse me?”
“Biers has been working with you.” She stared at Biers. “I don’t know for how long, but I’m guessing it’s been since before these three men left England. It’s how you were able to find Shaw and Waldridge so easily.”
Waldridge’s gaze was narrowed on her face. “Kendra?”
She nodded. “I’m sorry, Charles. You trusted the wrong man. Biers is in Dyle’s pocket. He’s playing you.”
Dyle smiled. “What makes you say that, bitch?”
“I know he’s been here before,” Kendra said. “He probably even set up this lab. For all your precautions with the hood over my head, I know we’re about ninety miles east of San Diego, somewhere in the Anzo-Borrego Desert.”
“Interesting,” Dyle said. “I hadn’t heard that an uncanny sense of directions was among your gifts.”
“It isn’t. Everyone who has walked in this room has been tracking in a coarse sand that is only found there, at least in this part of the country. The remains of thousands of years of underwater life. It’s very distinctive. There are granules wedged in the ridges above your soles.”
Dyle looked down. “What does that have to do with-”
“Biers had the same granules wedged in his shoes when I first met him. He’d already been out here.” She turned to Biers. “You wanted us to find you at your apartment. You knew Jessie would somehow be watching your place.”
“That’s it?” Dyle said. “Sand?”
“That, and Biers was the only other person who knew about the tracker that Jessie put in me.” She felt her hip. “It was cut out of me before I even woke up. He had to have told you. Or maybe he did it himself. Charles said someone who knew what he was doing did the stitches. Did you bring him in here to put more pressure on Waldridge? Another friend whom only he can save if he gives you what you want?”
Waldridge looked at Biers with disgust. “Get on your feet, Hayden. You can stop the act now.”
Still on his knees, Biers glanced at Dyle. Dyle gave Jaden an impatient gesture, and Jaden pulled Biers to his feet and cut the duct tape binding his wrists. Biers rubbed his wrists and brushed himself off before smiling at Kendra. “I did do the removal.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out the small disc. He showed her the tracker and the thin battery he’d removed from it. Then he slipped the items back in his pocket. “You’re lucky that Dyle told me to do it. You might have ended up with blood poisoning. Dyle’s men are good with knives, but not in that capacity. Not that it would have made much difference at this point.”
“I trusted you,” Waldridge said to him. “Why?”
“That was your mistake,” Dyle said. “Not everyone sees the world the same as you do, Waldridge.”
Waldridge was still staring at Biers. “Shaw is dead because of you. As surely as if you pulled the trigger yourself.”
Biers shook his head. “Shaw was a foolish old man. He sealed his own fate, just as you did. We were all partners in this project. Yes, you were the guiding force and held the patents. But you had no right to hijack it.”
“You never told me you felt this way.”
“Would it have changed anything?” Biers didn’t wait for a response. “Of course not. You would just have cut me out of your plans. I was better off with Dyle. He said that he’d make me a minor partner. Do you know how much money that will mean?”
“May I point out that your time is growing shorter with each passing word,” Dyle said as he glanced at Kendra. “Come along, Biers. I believe your colleague has some soul-searching to do.”
Biers avoided Waldridge’s and Kendra’s eyes as he followed Dyle out of the lab. One of the guards followed him, but Jaden didn’t move, his gaze fixed on Kendra.
She instinctively tensed. The ordeal wasn’t over. “What do you want, Jaden?”
He smiled. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m glad you’re here. I was amused to see how you saw through Dyle’s little trick. I always knew you’d be clever. I was looking forward to the challenge of taking you out. But then Dyle changed his mind and robbed me of the pleasure.”
“Changed his mind?”
“When you were doing the publicity circuit all those years ago, Dyle was thinking that Waldridge might need a martyr scenario to drive him deeper into the Night Watch Project. The death of his pride and joy, supposedly committed by a hate group like the one who was fighting to make the government shut down the research? Anyway, you seemed to be the perfect candidate. He genuinely cared about you. But then Waldridge let you go about your merry way, and Dyle decided his commitment wasn’t strong enough to go through with it.” He smiled, his silver-gray eyes glowing with malice. “But that’s all changed now, hasn’t it?” He turned toward the door. “With an interesting variation. I wonder if Dyle will assign me to be the one who takes out your eyes…” A moment later, she heard the door lock behind him.
Shock on top of shock. “Dear God, Charles. Eight years? Even that far back?”
“I had suspicions, but no knowledge of this kind of… evil. I just didn’t like the feel of it. And I wanted you to be free to enjoy your life.”
“And you let me go.”
“It appears we were both lucky it was a joint decision.”
“Yes… lucky.” Shock and revelations and that last confrontation with Biers and Dyle were taking their toll. She felt limp now, her knees trembling. What good had any of it done? The situation was still basically the same.
No, it wasn’t the same. She didn’t feel as weak and ineffectual. Dyle couldn’t feel as all-powerful as he had before. Both were good results in a bad scenario. And she had now been able to gauge the depth of Jaden’s ruthlessness and the fact that he would never stop. Knowledge was also power. She needed any good results that came their way right now.
If you could call it good when her stomach was twisting, and she had to fight not to fall back into that pit of sheer terror.
Waldridge stepped closer to Kendra. “You’re shaking,” he said gently. “Don’t fall apart now. You were bloody magnificent.”
“I couldn’t let them have it all their own way,” she said unevenly. “I hate bullies, and I wanted to smack Biers when I realized what he was doing.”
“Well, you slapped him down figuratively. I would have liked to do a good deal more to him.” His expression was shadowed. “I was in a world where I could trust no one, and I allowed myself the bad judgment to trust Biers. He was so brilliant and enthusiastic. I suppose money and power can change people.”
“He’s weaker, but just as bad as Dyle,” she said, remembering Biers’s expression when he was looking at Waldridge. “And he’s jealous of you. I’m surprised you didn’t pick up on that.”
“We were colleagues. I celebrated any success he made. I thought he did the same.”
“And you trusted him,” she repeated. “But he belongs to Dyle now. He didn’t even get up off his knees without Dyle’s okay. He was the one who cut that GPS out of me. If Dyle told him to cut out my eye, he’d do it in a heartbeat.” Her lips twisted. “Of course, he might have to fight Jaden for the pleasure.”
He muttered a curse. “No way, Kendra.”
“I hope we can keep that from happening.” She had to stop this shaking. “I guess you know how I’d feel about that. Dyle managed to hit a bull’s-eye. No one can really know the difference unless they’ve been there.”