Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(42)

“Dimples,” he explained. “It’s just a bifid major zigomaticus. The muscle attached to your cheekbone.” He indicated on his own face.

Trish gave his cheek a condescending pat. “Aw. You’re just jealous because you don’t have any. Don’t worry, Sam. You’re still cute.”

“It was just an observation,” he called after her.

She turned and winked at him. “Bruno didn’t do it,” she said. “It’s not possible. Those bifid zigomaticus are just too adorable.”

The bell tinkled as the door fell shut behind her. Julio let out a grunt in the sudden silence that followed. “Women,” he said.





The image on the view screen spun and blurred. The device came to rest sideways, showing a partial view of Reginald’s big toe. A rivulet of blood trickled down between it and the second digit.

Neil counted the seconds until the picture disintegrated.

That was that. When Reggie’s heart stopped, the device erased itself, and detonated. A small explosion, just a safety feature to ensure that the coms were thoroughly destroyed and never fell into the wrong hands. He used it with only his own personal operatives.

The feature had never been put into use before. This entire scenario was unprecedented. King had considered his mature, trained adult operatives to be 99.9 percent infallible.

Bruno Ranieri represented that .01 percent of uncertainty. It should hardly surprise him. But Bruno had never had the benefit of decades of intensive training, nor long-term DeepWeave. Neil had written the boy off long ago as an evolutionary dead end. More trouble than he was worth, considering his pit bull relatives.

But he’d managed, in his own crude way, to become exceptional.

King was furious. At Bruno, for slaughting his agents. At Howard and Lily, for lighting the fuse. At Reginald, for being his shining star, and then daring to fail. It was dangerous to get attached, but he was only human. And Reggie had been special series, too. That entire pod had been the very first of his special series, and with their natural genetic advantages, he’d always expected a bit more from them.

Neil had no choice but to terminate Reginald’s life. He had to be rigorous, or what message would he send to his other operatives? He could undermine their psychological stability and destroy them all.

Zoe was huddled on the floor, still naked and gasping. He felt an urge to kick her until she was quiet. He controlled it. One did not kick a finely tuned machine worth tens of millions.

He could understand her being upset, but for God’s sake, she hadn’t even been podmates with the dead agents. Neil fostered the development of familial feelings, raising his trainees in small family groupings. Experience had taught him that family bonding fostered intellectual and emotional health as well as esprit de corps. But Reggie, Cal, Martin, and Tom were years younger than Zoe. She’d never even been assigned with them. No, she was just carrying on. As usual.

Anger piled up on anger as he pondered the logistical nightmare he now faced. He’d already leased Reginald’s services over the next two years to the Amesbury Group, a wealthy multinational corporation, for a staggering sum of money. Now he had to renegotiate the contract. Failure would mean a loss of revenues of well over three hundred million over the course of the next two years alone.

First, basic housecleaning. He punched Nadia’s code into his com. She responded instantly. “Yes, sir?”

“What is your position?” he demanded.

“I’m driving on Airport Way,” she said, her voice very subdued. “I was waiting for Reggie to give me further—”

“Reggie is dead,” he said harshly.

Nadia let out a thin squeak, then a strained silence.

“Nadia?” he prodded. “Are you there?”

A wet sniff and a wobbling voice. “Awaiting orders, sir.”

His teeth ground. Nadia, too. Nauseating. But Nadia at least was justified in being devastated, having lost two podmates in one blow. The fourth of their pod quartet, another female, had been culled ten years ago, at the age of fourteen. Only Reggie, Cal, and Nadia had made it.

Poor Nadia. Bereft of her pod. So sad. But that was no excuse for wallowing in self-pity. “Go to the house on Wygant Street and dispose of his body,” he ordered. “I want no trace of him for the authorities to find. Not so much as a hair or a skin flake.”

“Sir, ah, how do you want me to—”

“Be creative,” he snapped. God, was no one displaying any powers of independent cognition today? “Use acid, use the food processor, use the garbage disposal, use whatever you want! Just be thorough! It’s bad enough that all the others are headed for the morgue!”

“Yes, sir,” she murmured. “Ah . . . sir, are you . . . am I . . .”

He sighed, sharply. “No, Nadia. You are not in disgrace. You followed your team leader’s orders. He was the one at fault, and he has paid for the error in full. Understood? Now go do as I said.”

“Yes, sir,” she murmured. “Thank you.”

He wished that Nadia had had the initiative to defy orders and put bullets into Parr’s and Ranieri’s brain stems on the spot. But he could hardly fault her for doing as her team leader had directed.

Zoe’s snorting and whimpering grated on him. She needed aggressive behavioral modification and changes in her meds. To be fair, he had perhaps overdone it in the sexual rewards. To show off for Michael, he’d basically inflicted a twenty-minute orgasm on the poor girl. She could barely stand up. It would be no wonder if her brain chemistry was somewhat altered.