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“How far’d you make it in the timeline?” Griffin asked, easily reading between the lines. He picked up the yellow legal pad with all of our notes and the timeline and began thumbing through the pages after I recapped what I’d already told Diana.
“So, you really think the Novaks had Rebecca’s parents killed?” Diana asked, sounding a bit skeptical. “And then to hide that truth, they set Rebecca on a collision course with Andrew Cutter to sever any ties to her death?”
“We do,” Griffin answered.
“But who sent Rebecca the tip?” Diana abruptly turned toward me, her mouth rounding as it all clicked for her. “Wait, that means your job isn’t why she died.”
I’m not the reason, no. It didn’t change the fact she was gone, and I hadn’t been able to save her, but she wasn’t targeted because of me. All I could do was nod, the words caught somewhere between Fuck this and I’m done.
I was so tired and exhausted of years and years of this uncertainty and chaos since Rebecca had died. Now that I knew what it was like not to be consumed by so much hate and anger, to feel what it was like to be on the other side with Diana, I just wanted out. I wanted the peace she gave me. I wanted it so damn much it hurt. The tightness in my chest made it hard to breathe, hard to move, hard to speak.
That little tremble in Diana’s lip as she did her best to resist hugging me in front of my colleagues, sent me over the edge. I reached for her wrist and gently pulled her to me, nearly crushing her against me as I wrapped her up in my arms.
Dallas beelined to us, his tail wagging against us as I rested my chin on top of Diana’s head.
As the rest of the team resumed packing up around us, I caught Griffin’s eyes across the room and nodded, the gratitude I felt for my friend only eclipsed by the love I felt for the woman in my arms.
After allowing myself a few minutes to hold her, and get my shit together, we finally pulled apart.
Blotting the tears beneath her glasses with the bottom of her shirt, still caught up in the same emotions as I was, she whisper-cried, “What were we saying?”
I tapped a fist against my mouth, scanning the room for a save from someone. Anyone.
Mya beat Griffin to it. Her days in investigative journalism had been helpful. As Gwen and Natasha had combed the web to pull out possibly pertinent details to fill in the puzzle, Mya had been pivotal in organizing the information we’d received to make sense of it all. “Two days after Craig met with Karl—presumably to share the news someone tipped off Rebecca—the Novaks’ head of security mysteriously died in a boating accident while on vacation at his lakeside home. I don’t know why Ivan chose to do it, but we believe he leaked the evidence to Rebecca that his employer may have had a hand in her parents’ crash. Who knows why.”
“The Novaks would’ve taken him out sooner if they knew he had something that could connect them to the crash. I’m assuming they considered him the guilty party after Craig gave Karl the heads-up about the anonymous photos,” Oliver tacked on to Mya’s explanation.
“After that, the Novaks distracted Rebecca by setting her in Andrew’s path, which must have meant the Novaks were familiar with The Italian’s true identity,” Mya added. “They wanted to stop her from finding the truth, and possibly from also picking up where her father left off with his cold fusion dream.”
Diana pivoted to Gray, as if drawing up a memory he’d shared previously. “Her father was the one making the most noise about clean energy back then, and he had the financial means to make cold fusion a priority. The Novaks wanted to stop her from being successful the way they’d stopped her dad.”
“They stopped everything in its tracks for a long time, yet again,” I said under my breath, and Diana turned her attention back on me. “Then the project was kicked off this summer because of the intel about the Chinese having a weapon, but shrouded under the premise of pulling off cold fusion as a viable energy source.”
“When in reality, I was working on both an EMP weapon and its countermeasure, and they had inside knowledge to know I was on the verge of solving both. They knew I was the closest in the world to making cold fusion possible as an energy source.” She covered her mouth as the responsibility settled in, and I refused to let her take that on.
I had her back in my arms again before she could say what I knew she was thinking. No other way around it, she wasn’t confronting this alone. “This is not your fault.”
“If I’d never accepted the job at Barclay, then maybe none of this would’ve happened,” she cried into my chest. “Bahar would be alive. Bonnie. The world wouldn’t be on the brink of chaos. And for what?”
“Jared pushed your mother into getting you to work with him so he could keep an eye on you. If not with him, then to work at Barclay where Pierce could watch over you,” I explained the only thing that made sense. Jared was guilty, but so was Craig. Everyone was on my target list right now. “They’ve been pulling our strings for years. Both of ours.” Diana’s work in energy, and my marriage to Rebecca, placed us in the Novaks’ crosshairs long ago.
“That’s why Karl hates you? Tried to turn Sierra against you? So she’d try and turn me in that direction, too?” Diana sputtered, hands on my chest, peering up at me with glossy eyes. “She said he had footage of you killing people after Rebecca died. Warned her you were dangerous. He was trying to find you, wasn’t he? Worried you could connect him to Andrew Cutter and the truth.”
And I failed. Fucking hell, I couldn’t let myself go there right now. Too much to deal with. “Yeah, and I’m confident that’s why Karl smeared my name at parties, trying to convince people I was behind Rebecca’s death, too.” I’d heard he’d been tossing out rumors I murdered my wife, but so many others had as well. I never thought anything of it.
“When Karl learned you were in New York with me in June, he wasn’t just worried I’d told you about my work, he wanted a chance to get to you before you could upend their plans,” Diana said as if putting more of the story together. All the pieces still didn’t quite make a whole yet, though.
“The Novaks must’ve learned through Jared or Craig—maybe both—the President planned to join a project with eleven other countries. They had to try and control the narrative,” Griffin said, joining in. “They made sure Barclay was chosen. They already had the pieces in place to manipulate it in a way that’d work for them. Insiders, including Karl marrying Sierra to keep a closer eye on Diana.”
“Karl never served in the military,” I added, “but he did have top-secret security clearance. Worked side by side with DEVGRU, outfitting them with the best of the best in weapons.” Diana was nodding along, knowing all about DEVGRU given her dad had been a Teamguy. “I spoke with your father and confirmed he’d been meeting with the Novaks about defense contracts for the Pentagon at the time the first listening device was planted at his home. They’d even moved the meeting up by three weeks, which was odd, but given their relationship, he didn’t think anything of it.”
“They plotted and planned. Somehow sabotaged the lab in China after they completed their work, which means they have people on the ground there, too,” Mya shared her thoughts.
“Their only fuckup in all this was never counting on the President to turn to Carter for help after the labs were hit,” Oliver said.
Not to mention not knowing about my obsession with Diana.
“Wait.” Diana abruptly took a step back. “What if this has nothing to do with the EMP weapon, just like those terrorists never really attacked the lab? It’s another diversion to distract from their ulterior motives. They can’t stop the inevitable—cold fusion as an energy source becoming reality—but they can control the narrative of how we view it.”
