Page 53 of The Ghost

I remembered learning that her childhood involved all of those things and more. I had been appalled. But now seeing the mastermind, I could understand. He was crazy. He hadn’t bothered to think about the kids in his care as people; to him they were weapons of mass destruction.

I wished that Clark could have had a normal childhood, but I knew she wouldn’t have become the woman I loved that way. She might be a lawyer or a nurse, living an ordinary life in the suburbs. I didn’t want that for her either.

Clark stepped forward, chasing Ashcroft toward the edge. He glanced over, making me worried that he might choose suicide rather than face the music. That wouldn’t do, especially since Clark said he had a detonator that could cause massive destruction. I didn’t want to chance that thing smashing against the rocks down below.

“Step back from the edge!” I instructed.

Ashcroft heard me and did the opposite, moving closer to oblivion. “All I wanted was a fresh start. For us and for humanity,” he cried.

“You ruined my life!” Clark shouted. “You set me up with someone who didn’t love me and watched me grieve for years! How could you do that?!”

“I didn’t want to approach you until it was time,” Ashcroft explained. “I kept hoping that you would come back to me.”

“You were dead!” she shouted. “How could I come back to you?!”

“And when you found out that I wasn’t?” Ashcroft charged, pointing a skeletal finger at me. “You chose him over New Dawn.”

“New Dawn is a terrorist group!” Clark snapped, her emotions getting the better of her. “I did the best I could with what I was given, and I came out on the side of justice.”

“Is it justice to let people suffer when I hold the key to their salvation?” he demanded, holding the detonator up.

“Don’t push it!” Clark warned.

“You leave me no choice,” Ashcroft said, moving to end the discussion in the worst way possible.

I watched his finger head toward the button, a lunatic light in his eyes. He was going to do it. He was going to set off multiple nuclear weapons at the same time. I couldn’t imagine how one man could be that callous, that he could live with himself after killing so many people. As a spy, I’d done my fair share of hits. I’d left Regg dead on the bathroom floor just a day ago. But this was much worse.

I thought of the map that Lukas had shown me, with all the lights scattered across the globe. If Ashcroft managed to connect his finger to the device, the world would be picking up the pieces for centuries. It would be the worst catastrophe to affect humankind since the great plague.

Clark saw it happening too and did the only thing she could do. She fired a shot. The muzzle blast gave me hope, and when I saw Ashcroft clutch his chest instead of pushing the button, I released a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

He tumbled backward, mere inches from the drop. Both Clark and I converged on him, sliding to a stop before we fell off the building. Clark went down on her knees, putting a hand against his heart.

He was still moving, his eyes glazing over. He muttered something I couldn’t hear and then turned his head to the sea. The hand that held the detonator fell to one side, and the device toppled out onto the roof.

Clark scooped it up, turning it over in her hand. She glanced up to the sky, thanking the heavens for helping us through. I gave her a quick hug, assuring her that I was there and I wasn’t planning to leave.

“What should we do with it?” she asked, uncomfortable even holding the thing.

“Keep it,” I said.

“Should we destroy it?”

“We need to find all the bombs,” I decided. “We can deactivate it or give it to Z and have her deactivate it. But as long as the other key is out there and the bombs are still armed, the world isn’t safe.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Clark agreed, shoving the doomsday device into her pocket.

We hustled back to the elevator and pushed the button to take us to the basement. I agreed with Clark’s assessment that there was probably an exit at the bottom of the cliff. If we could reach it, then we could get the boats and return to the Dark Sparrow safe house in peace.

I put a call into Lukas to let him know we’d found Ashcroft.

“What happened?” Lukas asked. I could hear gunfire in the background.

“Ashcroft is dead,” I reported. “He had a secondary key, but we recovered it. We’re on our way out to the beach.”

“Roger that,” Lukas replied. “We’ll meet you there.”

The elevator opened into a hallway that was an exact duplicate of the other hallways we’d been in. The only difference was that the ceiling was lower, placing it well below the surface. Clark turned right automatically, using her innate sense of direction to search out the exit.