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“It was never proved,” he said though his smirk said it all.
“Oh my God,” she said, pushing her shoulders back. “It was Olympus… Olympus got the information from Merrill through Kaiya, and you planted the evidence to frame Buford.” Beyond shocked, it was a lot to process. “You could’ve ruined his life… You did ruin his life. His career was over.”
The satisfaction ebbed from his eyes as they sank down to his glass. “The man got his revenge… We worked hard to ensure the investigation didn’t end in a conviction. That should’ve been the situation done with… But we learned our lesson about showing mercy… and covering our tracks. The fool went too far, exploiting his access to sympathetic allies…”
The pieces clicked. “Olympus A,” she said. The gun fight Daire had been born in, the havoc that killed his mother, was brought on by the man who’d lost everything for their live drill. “Guess that’s what happens when you play with people’s lives.”
Zeus wasn’t amused or in any way contrite. “He started a war he could never win that day.”
“Didn’t Buford kill himself?” she asked, receiving her answer in another smirk. “What happened to Merrill? Did he kill himself too?”
Shaking his head, Zeus took his time about enjoying his drink. “Considering his own run at the White House, last I heard.”
Daire’s father was alive? Alive and… Did he know? Damn, where was a computer when she needed one? Googling his father without his permission would be crossing a major line. She should wait until he was ready to tell the story rather than force the issue.
“Did he ever ask… about the baby?”
“Kaiya died at Olympus A.”
That wasn’t enough, she expected more, but it didn’t appear he wanted to give it. “Did Merrill ask? Did he care? Didn’t he ever—”
“As soon as the story about Buford broke, he distanced himself. Left the VP’s office… he worked for Byron for a while.”
And probably breathed a sigh of relief that he was never identified as the true leak.
“So much history,” she muttered, dropping against the back of the couch. “So much hurt.”
Zeus came over to sit at her side again. “You can think we’re monsters, but we do valuable work and we learn our lessons. We tightened all protocols, worked overtime to reduce exposure, and put mercy on the blacklist.” She shifted her head to look at him. “After that, physical relationships were held under close scrutiny and only allowed in the course of missions.”
Daire told her.
Of course, there was a glaring issue with that protocol. “From how I understand it, you and Garrick are rarely in the field.”
She wasn’t sure how often Harry took part in missions as an active operative rather than just working oversight. More then than now, she guessed. But that was her father, so she didn’t want to put him in any bracket involving the subject of sex.
His slow smile could’ve become a laugh, but he licked his lips to restrain it. Thank God. Her own cringe wasn’t so easy to suppress.
“There are exceptions for principals.”
“Which I suppose is how Harry got with my mom,” she said. “Those pesky exceptions.”
“Harry met your mother on a mission,” he said. Equal parts intrigued and nervous, she hoped the new story wouldn’t match the previous one. “She wasn’t a mark, just an administrator in the mark’s firm. Harry’s task was to monitor a Michael Lloyd. He was funding a candidate with ties to a severe terrorist group. We wanted to discover his motivation.”
“And did you discover it?”
He sucked in a breath. “We did. Talk about overkill. He was using a flamethrower to swat a bug. His real interest was a single target. Funding the candidate, he hoped, would lead to the terrorist group taking aim at his rival. Thus, suspicion would not fall on him.”
“But it didn’t work out?” Zeus shook his head. “What happened?”
“He was murdered,” he said then raised a hand. “It wasn’t us. It was someone from the group who didn’t like being manipulated.”
Funny that their focus was a single person if a group was terrorizing with impunity. “Which group was it?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
More shock. “It doesn’t matter?”
“No.”
