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A Darkwater woman.
Benson could feel it.
It almost derailed him, the draw was so strong. He didn’t know what to make of it, but it gave him hope, sparked a flickering flame of optimism, made him start to believe that perhaps this wasn’t the end of the road, that perhaps this tentacled beast called Darkwater wasn’t done pulling men and women into its molten core of energy, wasn’t through spinning its stories of sex and violence, fate and destiny, always and forever.
“I’m thinking that you have not identified yourself, sir,” came Paige’s response, her voice wavering a little but going steady as she continued. “But I believe you’re John Benson. I recognize your voice from the phone call earlier. You deceptively identified yourself then as Director Kaiser, but Rhett told me who you are. You and Director Kaiser want to bring Rhett down, ruin his reputation in the eyes of Senator Robinson. You’re worried that if Senator Robinson wins the White House, he’ll name Rhett the new CIA Director. This is all a political game, and you’re trying to use me to bring down Rhett.” She shook her head defiantly, shot a look in Kaiser’s direction, then glared up at Benson. “Well, it won’t work. I’ve done nothing wrong. My relationship with Rhett is purely consensual, and since I don’t report directly to him, we aren’t violating Agency policy.”
“Nobody in this room gives a shit about Agency policy.” Benson stopped a few feet in front of the fidgeting Paige, wondering if she understood how close she’d come to having her neck snapped like a toothpick. Benson’s “deceptive” phone call had probably saved her ass, but she was too deeply under Rhett’s spell to take Benson’s word for it.
She’d have to see for herself.
See what kind of man she was defending.
“What’s this?” Paige asked, panic flashing behind her eyes when Benson tapped his phone screen and handed the device to her.
“Relax. Your apartment wasn’t wired for video.” Benson smiled tightly as the grainy thirty-year-old video on his phone began to play. “Rhett’s apartment was, though. Back when his name wasn’t Rhett Rodgers. That’s him thirty years ago. With his infant daughter, barely a week old. Watch it all the way through.”
Paige blinked and nodded, focusing those sharp blue eyes on Benson’s phone.
A minute later her eyes widened.
Another few seconds and her breath caught like it had been sucked out of her.
Then her entire body shuddered with the shock of what she’d seen.
“This can’t be real,” Paige whispered, still staring at the phone even though the video had played all the way through. “The video’s a fake. It’s dark and grainy. You can’t be sure the man is Rhett. But it doesn’t matter because the video is fake. It has to be.”
Benson shrugged. “You’re the tech genius. You can check if the video file’s been altered, if it’s a fake. Go ahead. Prove it’s a fake.”
Paige blinked her gaze away from the chilling horror of what she’d seen on the little screen. She swallowed hard, then nodded. “I’ll need to access this file on a computer.”
Benson cracked a grin in Kaiser’s direction. “Director Kaiser has a computer. Martin, let Paige use your laptop, will you? Oh, don’t give me that look. We both know this laptop isn’t connected to anything besides your unclassified public-facing email. Besides, there’s nothing you have access to that Paige couldn’t already hack into with her eyes closed and one hand tied behind her back. Here, I’m sending you the video. Open it up, close out of your email, then trust your own superstar employee not to start the next World War from your computer.”
Kaiser glowered at Benson over the top of his laptop. He took a long breath, tapped his chin, then sighed, hit a few keys, and spun the laptop around on his desk. “Go ahead, Ms. Anderson. I’m as curious as you are about this video’s authenticity.”
Benson flashed a sharp look at Kaiser but said nothing. What to do with the video was a bridge Benson would cross later. Once Paige verified it was real—and itwasreal—it would only lead to questions that Benson did not particularly want to answer, hopefully would never have to answer.
An electric silence fell across the room as Paige’s slender fingers flew across the keyboard, her eyes darting this way and that, her lips moving soundlessly as she worked her magic.
Benson watched her keenly, anxious for a moment that he’d underestimated Rhett Rodgers and overestimated Paige Anderson. Perhaps Rhett’s hold on this woman was so complete that she’d lie not just to the CIA Director but even to herself.
Paige’s face was a study in concentration. She’d pulled up the video, was playing it in slow-motion, zooming in with what Benson guessed was a video-analysis program downloaded from her own private server somewhere on the dark web.
Kaiser had walked around his desk and was standing behind Paige’s hunched shoulders. Benson joined him, a chill rising up his spine as he watched that scene from thirty years ago like it was happening now.
“It’s real,” came Paige’s breathless voice, her fingers curling into fists over the keyboard, her face almost devoid of color, a ghostly pale like her soul had just been drained out. “Oh, my God, it’s real. Rhett . . . he . . . he smothered that little baby. He . . . he killed that child. He’s a . . . a . . .”
Paige recoiled from the laptop like it was poison, staggering to her feet and reeling backwards, her left hand going to her neck, stroking it feverishly like she was recalling something, like maybe Rhett’s hands had been on her throat earlier that day, his deadly fingers caressing her smooth skin, his well-practiced chokehold about to compress her windpipe when fate intervened in the form of Benson dialing the right number at the right time.
“There’s water over by the coffee machine,” said Benson quietly. “Take a minute, then sit back down so we can continue.”
Paige nodded blankly, hurried across the room to the coffee area. Benson watched her open a sealed bottle of spring water and take a shaky sip. To his left he could feel Kaiser staring him down.
Both men understood that the video was a smoking gun—but one that could blow up and kill everyone in the damn room, not just Rhett. Kaiser had immediately dismissed any possibility of showing that video to Senator Robinson. Sure, it would kill any chance of Rhett being named Director, but it would put both Robinson and Kaiser in a very delicate position.
There was no statute of limitations on murder. Robinson would be obligated to pass the video on to the FBI. And that would lead to questions about the CIA’s NOC program that nobody—not Benson, not Kaiser, not Robinson, not Congress, not the President, not the American people—wanted answered.
Questions about what CIA did in the shadows.
