I bite back my smile.
I feel like I’m in high school, and my boyfriend beat up another boy because he didn’t respect me.
It’s cute, but I can beat up my loser ex-boyfriend all by myself.
“It won’t happen again.” Park nods at me. “Carry on.”
“The computer chips?” I narrow my eyes back on Nicholas. “Where are they?”
“I don’t have them anymore.” A trickle of blood runs from his cut lip down his chin. “As soon as I pulled them off your friend,” he glances at Park then back to me, “I sent them to my broker. So as you can see, your visit here is a waste of time.”
“Not necessarily. I don’t personally care about your weapons or your formulas. What I really want is to bring you down.” I lean against the fume hood where Nicholas was working when we came in. “Do you know how exhausting it was pretending to love you the last two years?” A realization flickers through his eyes, and his fists clench. “That’s right.” I shoot him a satisfied smirk. “None of it was real. Iusedyou to gain knowledge. You thought you were so much better than me the whole time, but I was playing you, and you were stupid enough to fall for it.”
Nicholas moves his forearms like he means to strike me, but the ties stop him. And the best part is, I don’t even flinch. The weight I’ve been carrying around the last few months, even the last year, slowly lifts from my chest, and I can finally breathe again.
This is the checkmate moment I’ve been waiting for.
“Poor, Nick. It’s got to hurt to hear that the woman you thought you had control over has played you for a fool.” Park folds his arms across his chest, leaning back against the counter. “Fortwoyears.”
“You think I care about you?” Nicholas shoots his gaze in my direction. “You’re nothing to me.”
I incline my head toward him. “And you're nothing to me.” I grab two pairs of gloves from the box on the counter, fitting them over my fingers. Then I put on protective eyewear. “That’s why I’m going to enjoy this next part so much.” I flip on the ventilator on the fume hood even though I know a fancy lab like this already has state-of-the-art ventilation to keep airborne concentrations low, but the hum of the fan adds to the dramatics. I open the nearest cupboard, scanning the chemicals until I find the most powerful. Nicholas’s eyes watch me as I examine the bottle. “Fluoroantimonic acid.” I glance at Park. “If I remember from all my chemistry classes, this is the world’s strongest superacid. It will dissolve glass, plastics, and every organic compound, including the human body. Its only kryptonite is Teflon.” I turn toward Nicholas. “Shall we try it out?”
Nicholas squirms in his chair. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Oh, she would,” Park says behind me.
I carefully twist off the lid, keeping it a safe distance from my body so I don’t inhale the fumes. Toxic smoke drifts out of the bottle, funneling up to the fan in the hood. I pour about one-fourth cup of the dangerous liquid into a Teflon container, watching as more gaseous smoke wafts upward. I pick up the dish and slowly hold it in front of Nicholas.
“Lacee?” He fidgets in his chair, turning his head away, so he doesn’t breathe in the fumes. “What do you want? I’ll give you anything you want.”
“I want to know who you're selling your weapons to.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
I lower the dish closer to his body, and that’s all it takes.
His words come out fast. “There’s a broker making all the arrangements. I only know that the buyer is an independent weapons dealer in Russia that goes by the name of Sasha Petrov.”
A weapons dealer in Russia. That’s new information.
I move the dish closer until it’s right by his fingers. “And who’s the broker arranging the sale?”
He shakes his head. That’s when I pick up his hand, fighting against his struggles. I remove the safety glove he’s already wearing. I’m pretty sure this moment makes me worse than the Grinch who stole Christmas. If I really were to stick his hand in the acid, I’d be known as the girl who stole Nicholas Lawrence’s fingers or, more likely, his life. That’s how dangerous fluoroantimonic acid can be.
“If I tell you,” he shouts, stopping me from putting his hand in the powerful liquid, “will you put the acid away?”
“I didn’t think you had a problem using chemicals to harm people.” Park pushes off the counter, walking toward us, but still keeping a safe distance from the acid. “After all, you had no problem creating deadly chemical weapons that could kill millions of people if used on them.”
“That’s so true.” I nod at Park. “We should probably give him a taste of his own medicine.” I move his fingers closer to the dish. I don’t really plan on dipping them in the acid, but Nicholas doesn’t know that. And as long as he doesn’t know, my threats will work to gain information.
“Wait!” A bead of sweat drops down his forehead. “I don’t know who the broker is. We’ve never met, only ever talked through encrypted messages and emails. But,” his breaths are heavy and panicked, “it’s someone in the CIA, a double agent.”
I tip the bowl like I mean to pour a drop of the liquid over his skin. “Give me some information I don’t already know.”
“Fine!” He swallows. “There’s a meeting in three days between the broker and Sasha. Sasha’s flying into Seattle to purchase the already made weapons and their codes and take them back to Russia. The broker is waiting to hear instructions on when and where that meeting is.” I glance at Park, wondering if he’s thinking the same thing I am. If we can somehow intercept this meeting, we’d be able to catch the mole and the Russian weapons dealer.
“Have the broker and Sasha ever met before?” Park asks, letting me know he is on the same page as me.
