Playing God (Helford #2)

(29) Sins

Meade called Parker first. I could hear his voice as a murmur from inside of the vault as he paced around the body, keeping an eye on the sick blood smear painting of names that Shawn created like it would blink out of existence. I edged out of the vault, feeling numb, looking up and down the way of the corridor for anyone coming near, but there was no sign. The video cameras were off—Jonathon’s doing, I could only assume—and the older man who had accompanied us to the vault was nowhere to be found, and it was only then that I inched my cell phone from where I had it tucked in my shoe, bringing it up to my face as I slowly clicked through the names in my contact book, feeling sinking dread coursing through my stomach like liquid fire. I had known the signs weren’t going to be good from the moment I was put on the case—Krantz dropping off the grid could only mean a couple of things, and none of them were as likely as this ending was—but it was an ending that we had preferred not to have to face. But Meade and I didn’t look hard enough, didn’t do our job exceptionally because we had been so distracted, and now I was looking at four names on a wall that had the power to crumble the world.

I clicked on Woodburn’s number and listened to it ring, taking slow, pacing steps up and down the corridor, keeping myself moving and warm as if I feared I was going through shock. I ran a nervous hand through my hair as it rang three times and, on the fourth ring, Woodburn answered.

“We found Krantz,” I relayed to him slowly, grimly, feeling the despair dripping from my words. “He was in my bank vault in Belgium. Looks like he’s been here for a while, but he’s been dead for a little less than a week. Woodburn, it was Shawn.”

Woodburn was quiet for less than a second before he questioned, “The list?”

“Compromised,” I reported, feeling like I had failed a lot more than Woodburn as my shoulders slumped. “Shawn wrote the names of the Four Corners in blood on the wall in Krantz’s blood, and they’re all correct. He has the list.”

Woodburn swore, and there was a loud sound on the other side of the line like he had thumped his fist against his desk, allowing himself one second of weakness before he threw himself back into professionalism, becoming a force to be reckoned with when he said, “I’ll inform the other two corners and let them know to find a nice place to hide for now. That list becoming compromised—you know what that means, Caitie. That means that this war has just become magnified. We can’t sit around and wait for answers anymore. We’re going to have to become the aggressive side.”

“I know that. Woodburn, I’m sorry.”

“You as well need to stay in designated spots, and you’re not to leave,” Woodburn ordered me, ignoring my apology, and that just made me feel even more worthless, like my apology wasn’t even a tiny fraction of the apologies that I owed him. “Do you hear me, Caitie? I will tell you where to go and when to go. There is going to be no more terrorizing the world, there will be no more answering phone calls that aren’t me, there is going to be none of this fun and games. This has just stepped up in a way that I didn’t want to imagine, because now we have a time limit.”

“I understand.”

“And Caitie—” he started, and then stopped, and his voice softened considerably when he said, “Just stay safe, alright?”

“I know, I will,” I assured him, so shaken. He breathed out heavily on the other line, and then laughed once, almost hysterically.

“This is the end,” he said, and then laughed again, and the phone clicked away the connection, and I took my phone away from my ear, thinking about those last words and how much I had thought I was prepared for them.

Woodburn and I had known that, eventually, Krantz’s position would be found out by Helford or Shawn, and we had long since come to accept that as something that would happen. But I don’t think I had properly prepared myself for this, for standing here in the middle of what would soon become a warzone. Because now Shawn knew what we didn’t want him to know, but not anything we didn’t know that he would find out down the line. This was the second to last domino and it was teetering, two seconds away from falling, and I only had until the domino hit the ground before it was the end of the war. Before the carnage, the bloodshed, the end.