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“You mean . . . like a soul, a spirit?” Paige’s voice wavered. “Like it had chosen to come back after it left the body? I’ve read stories of near-death experiences where people swear they were given a choice of whether to return to their body, to continue their lives. Do you think it was—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Kaiser slammed his palms down on the desk. “The baby clearly wasn’t dead in the first place. A premature newborn would be so tiny it might be hard to get a pulse, hard to tell if it was breathing.” He slapped the desk again, shook his head and glared at Benson. “You must have been mistaken about the timing. Scarlet must have called 911 immediately after all. Paige is right—Scarlet must have been out of her mind after giving birth alone at home. Maybe she couldn’t go through with her plan once she saw her baby. Maybe she did nothing wrong at all, even if she’d planned to. Maybe she . . . wait, what did you do with the baby after it started breathing, John? Did you take her into the ER?”
Benson looked up at the ceiling. “Child was suddenly breathing fine, bawling like it had the world’s strongest lungs. So I made a snap decision. Called the Langley hotline. Had them kill the 911 response before the cops and ambulance got to Scarlet’s place. We were already in Virginia, so it was easy. Police know better than to ask questions when Langley sends them home.” Benson looked away from the ceiling, but didn’t meet Kaiser’s gaze. He stared past Paige towards the bookshelf with that new family photograph, Fay’s dead sister’s twins, survivors of that unspeakable horror now smiling in Martin and Alice’s arms. Fate was a funny thing, wasn’t it?
But fate wasn’t magic.
Fate was a choice.
And Benson had made a choice that night.
He glanced at Kaiser now, his gaze hardening. “CIA had a safe-house with fully-staffed medical facilities not far from town. I took the child there, left it in safe hands, then drove back to Scarlet’s place.” He took a slow breath. “Told her the baby didn’t make it.”
“What?” Paige’s breath caught sharply. “How could you . . . how could you do that? How could you do that to a new mother? You didn’t even know if she intentionally tried to smother the child, if she actually followed through with any of that stuff she’d written. Maybe she never meant it at all. She might just have been working through her anger by writing it out. Like journaling or something. It wasn’t your choice to make. You’re a . . . you’re a bastard, Benson.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Benson chuckled darkly, noting she’d called him Benson instead of John or—heaven forbid—MisterBenson. “Your righteous anger is adorable, Paige. But you aren’t that fucking naïve. You’ve seen the kind of decisions the men and women who run this organization have to make every damn day. You know what kind of people we are. You sit there in your little tech-bunker and tell yourself you’re just following orders. But you’re no angel, Paige. Rhett asked you to frame Indy O’Donnell for treason and you damn well did it. You don’t get to judge anyone in this building, certainly not anyone in this room. We’re all cut from the same cloth. We’re all patriots, sure. But there’s also a streak of cold-blooded ruthlessness in all of us. Don’t pretend like you don’t have it. You have it all right—that cold dark streak. That’s partly why you were so drawn to Rhett.” His gaze softened a little when he saw the shock streak across Paige’s face. “That said, there’s also a strong balance of goodness and light in your heart, which is why I’m trusting you by telling you all this. But there is most certainly a part of you that relishes the thought of seeing Rhett burn. So please spare us the bullshit moralizing.”
“I can’t believe you think I—” Paige started to protest, but one cold knowing look from Benson forced those words back down her throat. She stood there red-faced and indignant, then turned on her heel and stormed back to her chair against the wall. She sat down hard, then crossed her arms over her chest, pouted for one long moment, then huffed out a breath. Her eyes narrowed to slits, but the light in them blazed with acceptance, not anger.
Benson noticed Kaiser’s sharp gaze lingering on Paige, like the wheels were turning in the CIA Director’s mind too, like he now saw the potential in this geeky woman with the acne scars and the broken heart.
Damn it, Benson thought with wry amusement—Darkwater might have to fight Kaiser and the CIA for Paige Anderson’s next employment contract.
But for that Darkwater needed to still exist, and Kaiser needed to still be running the CIA—which meant Benson needed to get to the point, complete the pitch, lock in the sale.
“Look,” he said softly to them both. “The child was alive and safe, so I turned my attention back to recruiting Scarlet. But you’re both right—I needed to be sure it wasn’t just an accident, needed to confirm that Scarlet really was the woman I thought she was. I told Scarlet her daughter didn’t make it so I could see her reaction, figure out if the woman was genuinely shattered or if it was all an act.”
Kaiser nodded. “And?”
Benson shrugged. “Truth is, I think it was a bit of both—a performance but also genuine trauma that she was leaning into, using real emotion to add authenticity to the act. That’s how we train NOC operators to work. It’s not that different from method acting.”
Paige nodded. “Harnessing real emotions to make the act so authentic you can’t tell the difference.”
“Because in a way thereisno difference,” Benson said. “The emotions are real, which makes the act real. Scarlet was a natural—so good I knew she could become one of our best NOC agents.” He sighed. “But it was hard to break her. She’d wiped everything from her computer weeks earlier. She absolutely denied that the deleted document ever existed, claiming that I had manufactured it myself, planted it on her computer. When I told her who I was, she reminded me that CIA was a civilian agency with no jurisdiction inside the United States. She was good. Confident. Articulate.” He chuckled. “She would have made a formidable lawyer. She had this burning need to win—the same fire that couldn’t let Rhett’s betrayal go unpunished.”
Paige frowned. “So how did you finally get her to confess?”
Benson smiled. “I suggested she think in terms of probabilities. Even if I had never existed, she’d be taking a big gamble that her defense would hold up in court. But add me to the mix and the odds change drastically—and not in her favor. I had the document, along with proof that it had existed on her computer. She could contest it, and maybe it wouldn’t hold up in court. But the District Attorney would still take the document seriously—coming from a CIA guy it would certainly hold weight, even more so if I leaked it to the press.” He smiled tightly. “Then I told her I wasn’t judging her, that in fact I understood her, was giving her a chance to embrace the person she was and channel those skills into a higher purpose.” He took a breath. “She went quiet after that, and I knew I had her. So I made my offer. Death certificates saying both mother and baby died in childbirth. New identity along with U.S. citizenship. Training. Compensation. A chance to give free rein to her shadow. Might even be fun, I suggested.” He shrugged. "That mix of threat and temptation broke her. She confessed to smothering the child against her breast, then waiting until she was certain the girl was dead. She took the deal."
Kaiser chuckled grimly. “Always the salesman.” His brow furrowed. “What about the child?”
“And what about Rhett?” added Paige.
Benson leaned back, stretched his arms, cracked a smile. “One at a time. I got back to the CIA medical station later that night. They said the girl was healthy, alert, totally fine. A little undersized because of the early birth, but no need for incubation or anything like that.” He swallowed. “They kept the child under 24-7 care for the next few days. In hindsight, that was a mistake. It gave me too much time to think.” Benson grinned. “My conscience was clear about lying to Scarlet. Once she accepted my deal, she dropped any claims that the child was stillborn and confessed. That was enough for me. In my mind she’d given up the right to her daughter—hell, it would have been borderline criminal to give that little girl back to her murderous mother. I was going to immediately arrange a closed adoption for the child, but naïve sentimental fool that I was back then, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to at least give Rhett a chance to be a father.” He shrugged. “Who knew—maybe seeing his baby would trigger something paternal and protective in the guy. Sure, it might get complicated if Scarlet found out her baby was still alive, but I figured I’d cross that bridge later. Back then birth and death records weren’t so digitized, weren’t so connected—it was way easier to alter records without leaving a trace.” He sighed. “Anyway, since it was already public that Rhett was the father, I just got some Langley folks to put on uniforms, pretend they were cops and Child Protective Services, deliver Rhett’s little bundle of joy to his ever-loving arms.” Benson chuckled dryly, shook his head. “Bad move, obviously. Shit, I thought worst case Rhett would simply give the kid up for adoption. Something like that would barely make the news, and I could get the records sealed behind the scenes to make sure Scarlet never found out. Seemed to check all the boxes at the time. I’d get Scarlet into the program and still do right by the child by giving Rhett the chance to make his own choice.” Benson’s face clouded over. “Didn’t think he’d makethatfucking choice, though.”
Kaiser grunted. “No shit. What was his plan?”
Benson shrugged. “Similar to Scarlet’s. Call 911 and say the baby had stopped breathing. He was careful not to leave any marks on the child’s nose and mouth when he suffocated her.”
“I don’t understand,” Paige said. “Why not just give up the child for adoption? Why take the risk some Medical Examiner rules it a homicide instead of an accidental death?”
Benson’s eyes hardened. “Scarlet and that child ruined his life. He’d been told Scarlet died in childbirth. So there was just the baby left now. Rhett wasn’t going to let her go unpunished.”
Paige stared, her mouth hanging open for a moment, then snapping shut as if she’d just remembered being alone in a room with Rhett earlier that day. “He killed his own innocent child for . . . forrevenge? After the mother tried to do the same thing for the same reason? These are the people we recruit into the CIA? Pay with taxpayer money?”
“Actually, it’s not all taxpayer money.” Benson winked at Kaiser. “CIA gets to keep any assets seized from suspected terrorist organizations—or really, anyone we get our hands on outside the United States. And over the past few years we’ve built up a nice stash of cryptocurrency too. Very handy for untraceable payments. Right, Martin?”
Kaiser neither confirmed nor denied a damn thing, instead choosing to ignore Benson after shooting him a deadly look. Paige stayed silent and speechless, her mouth still agape.
