Page 108 of Unlocked

Except her eyes.

Tatum had her mother's eyes. She'd known that her whole life. Everyone said so. The same shape, the same color, the same sharp, intelligent quality that people noticed and commented on.

She had never, until this moment, seen them look at her the way they were looking at her now.

And that, more than the folder and the company names and the offshore accounts and all the carefully constructed evidence she'd been assembling for months, was what made her understand, fully and completely and with no remaining room for doubt, exactly how much trouble she was in.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Archer's office had never felt small before. It felt downright cramped now. Four other men besides him had crammed in. The door was closed and the signal jammer was on. The space was eerily quiet with the silence that existed when people who were paid to handle anything were trying to process something they hadn't handled.

He let them have thirty seconds of it. Then he spoke.

"Here is where we are," he said. "A man died on Society premises. On my watch. In my building. Under my security." He looked at each of them in turn. "You all know what that means."

Nobody said anything.

"It means I lose my position," Archer said. "And you all know how that happens."

Cash looked at the floor. Flynn's jaw tightened. Rush crossed his arms over his chest and looked at the wall. Ryker looked directly at Archer with the expression of a man who had already been doing the math and didn't like the sum of the problem.

"Someone has to take me out," Archer said. "That's the rule. That's always been the rule. A death on the head of the Society's watch means the head of the Society answers for it. And the only way to answer for it in this organization is with your life."

He said it flatly and without drama because it was a fact, and he had always operated best in the territory of facts.

"Realistically," he continued, "it falls to one of my own team. That's how it's traditionally been done. Someone close to the head. Someone trusted. Someone with access." He paused and looked at each man. "One of you."

The silence had a different quality now, as if this was a wholly unexpected announcement. But it wasn’t. Not really.

"I'm not telling you this to make you uncomfortable," Archer said. "I'm telling you because you need to understand the situation completely in order to help me manage it. And because I trust each of you with my life, which is apparently now quite literally what I'm doing."

Ryker said, "We're not going to⁠—"

"I know that," Archer said, holding up a hand. He moved to the window. Outside, the city was going about its business with the magnificent indifference it always showed toward the private disasters of the people who lived in it. "The problem is that I wasn't ready for this. Of all the things I prepared for, of all the scenarios I mapped out and built contingencies against, this one I missed."

He pressed his lips together. Oh, the irony of it all.

He had been unprepared. That was the truth of it, and it sat in him like something corrosive. He had been so focused on Davis and Fisher and the camera threat and the board meeting and the Curator and Tatum, always Tatum, threading through everything, that he had not adequately protected the asset sitting in a room two floors above his own head.

He had put Kelly in that building and posted Rush on security and told himself it was enough. It had not been enough. A twenty-four-year-old girl was dead in the ambulance bay, and a frightened, culpable, irreplaceable witness was dead in his dining room, and Archer Gray, who prided himself above all things on being prepared, had been caught completely flat-footed.

He needed more time. Another month, maybe six weeks, and the exit strategy he'd been quietly constructing would have been ready. The contingency that nobody in this room knew about. The one he'd been building in the background of everything else, real estate deals, encrypted accounts, and a set of arrangements that would allow Archer Gray to cease to exist in one form and continue in another.

He was not ready, and someone had just forced his hand.

His phone rang. He looked at the screen.

Of course.

He answered it and put it on speaker so the others in the room could hear. "Austin."

"Archer." Davis's voice was warm and rich and practically glowing with barely contained satisfaction. The drawl was thick, thicker than usual, which meant he was enjoying himself enormously. "I just heard the most distressin' news. A death? On Society property? Lord, Archer, that is just terrible. Just absolutely terrible."

"Yes," Archer said. "It is."

"Now, I've been talking to a few of the board members, and I think you can appreciate that, given the gravity of the situation, we simply cannot wait until the scheduled meeting to address this. The members deserve answers, and they deserve them promptly."

"I see," Archer said.