The Judas Strain - James Rollins [147]
Gray snapped a glance toward Seichan. Surely Nasser was lying. How could she…with the bastard who had just ordered his mother’s torture? Just the thought of his mother spilled more acid into his stomach.
But Seichan refused to meet Gray’s eye, glaring instead at Nasser. Her fingers curled into a fist on her knee.
“But all that ended,” Nasser said. “The ambitious bitch. We were both vying to rise to the next station in the Guild hierarchy. The last rung to the very top. But we came to a difference of opinion. About how to acquire you.”
Gray swallowed. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Seichan wanted to use her wiles to lure you into cooperating of your own volition, to help the Guild follow Marco’s trail. I, on the other hand, believed in a more direct approach. Blood and coercion. A man’s way. But when the Guild decided against her plan, Seichan sought to take matters into her own hands. She murdered the Venetian curator, stole the obelisk, and fled to the United States.”
Seichan crossed her arms, glowering back in disgust. “And you’re still piss-sore that I beat you to the prize. Again.”
Gray studied Seichan.
All her talk of saving the world…could it have all been a lie?
“So I followed her to the States,” Nasser continued. “I knew where she’d be going. It was easy enough to lay a trap.”
“Where you missed killing me,” she scoffed, “once again proving your incompetence.”
He pinched his fingers up between them. “By a fraction of an inch.” He lowered his arm. “Still, you kept to your original strategy, didn’t you, Seichan? You still sought Commander Pierce out. Only perhaps as more of an ally now. You knew he’d come to your rescue. You and Gray against the world!” He laughed coarsely. “Or are you still playing him, Seichan?”
Seichan merely sniffed in derision.
Nasser turned back to Gray. “She is nothing if not ambitious. Ruthless. She’d step over her own dying grandmother to rise up in the hierarchy.”
Seichan leaned forward, glaring. “But at least I didn’t kneel quietly while my mother was murdered before my eyes.”
Nasser’s face clenched hard.
“Coward,” Seichan mumbled, falling back into the seat with a satisfied sneer. “You even murdered your father while his back was turned. Still couldn’t face him.”
Nasser lunged at her, a hand going for her throat.
Gray instinctively knocked Nasser’s arm away.
Maybe he shouldn’t have.
Still, Nasser pulled back on his own, his eyes sharpened by hate. “Best you know who you’re in bed with,” he said savagely to Gray. “Should be careful what you tell that bitch.”
The combatants settled silently to their corners. Gray eyed Seichan, realizing that for all her bluster she had never denied Nasser’s statements. Gray reran the past days’ events over in his skull, but it was hard to concentrate with his head pounding and fear wormed deep into his belly.
Still, there were some realities that were hard to dismiss. Seichan had murdered the Venetian curator to get the obelisk. In cold blood. And when they’d first met years ago, she had even tried to kill him.
Nasser’s words echoed in his head.
Best to know who you’re in bed with…
Gray didn’t know.
Ultimately, he didn’t know whom to believe, whom to trust.
Gray knew only one thing for certain. There could be no missteps from here. Any failure threatened more than just his life.
7:05 P.M.
HARRIET STRUGGLED, SOBBING in terror. “Please, no…”
Her wrist was clamped in the vise of the guard’s grip, pinned to the table, her hand flattened under the same guard’s fist. The blowtorch hissed a few inches away.
Annishen held the open jaws of the bolt cutter over Harriet’s splayed fingers. “Eenie, meenie, minie, mo…”
She lowered the jaws toward Harriet’s ring finger. The diamond on her wedding band glinted under the bare bulb.
“No…”
A loud crack echoed, startling them all.
Harriet turned her head as Annishen straightened. Two yards away, the guard who had been cradling Jack’s chin, forcing her husband to watch