Heartland Pharmaceuticals

“You wanted to show me a pharmaceutical company?”

Her teasing smile lit a fire low in my gut, where it continued to smolder as long as her gaze held mine. “You got something against pharmaceuticals? You know, they may have a system you could analyze.”

Before I could reply, she turned and crossed the lobby, then led me down another hallway and past several offices to a door with a keypad above the handle. “Wouldn’t they have changed the code, if you’re not supposed to be in here anymore?” I asked, as she started punching buttons.

“Why bother, when I wouldn’t be able to get past the darkroom anyway?” She grinned and when a green light appeared on the keypad, she pressed on the lever and pushed the door open. We stepped into another hallway, identical to the first, as far as I could tell. More white doors with no windows. More featureless white tile floor. Security cameras on both ends, near the ceiling.

“Where are we?” I asked, as our footsteps echoed down the hall. I felt like I should whisper, but she hadn’t, so it seemed stupid for me to.

“I thought you trusted me.”

“I thought you said not to.”

She stopped in front of the last door on the left and turned to look at me. “I don’t know if I can actually get us in here. This one takes an employee-specific security code, and chances are good that they’ve stripped my clearance. Either way, I’m taking a big risk bringing you here.”

“Why?” I said, more worried by what I saw in her eyes than by anything she’d told me so far. “Why would you break into a building you no longer have clearance for, just to show me something Tower obviously doesn’t want me to see?”

Kori glanced at her feet for a second before meeting my gaze again, and again I was astounded by how much I saw in her eyes, and how little of it I understood. “Because I can’t truly balance the scales.”

“I don’t understand.” I felt like a broken record, spouting that same sentence over and over again, but I couldn’t help it. I’d never felt so unsure of anything as I felt when I was with Kori. I didn’t understand her thought process and I couldn’t interpret her body language, because it seemed to constantly broadcast contradictory signals. Her silence seemed louder than her voice, and even when she did speak, I felt like the parts she left out were more important than the things she actually said.

“Now that the syndicates all know about you, you’re going to have to sign with someone, and it’s my job to make sure that someone is Jake Tower. But no matter how badly he wants—or even needs—your services, he’ll still have the upper hand in negotiations. He’ll still have all the power.”

“And you don’t think that’s fair?”

“I think it’s unacceptable. But it’s also inevitable. I can’t give you even footing. The best I can do is arm you with information I haven’t been explicitly forbidden to give you. That way, at least you’ll know what you’re up against. And what you’re in for.”

I studied her, trying to see what lay behind her eyes and hear what hid between her words. “You don’t think I should sign with him, do you?”

She blinked, and her armor slid into place, as easy as if she’d just lifted an actual shield. “I think you have to,” Kori said. “When there are no good choices, you pick—”

“The lesser of all evils?” I said, and she shook her head slowly.

“The evil willing to pay the most for you. You look that evil in the face, and you take it for all it’s worth.”

Was that what she’d done? Had she sacrificed liberty for the almighty dollar? Or was the money merely compensation for work she would have been forced to do, no matter who she signed with?

“But you shouldn’t sign anything until you know exactly what you’re signing on for,” she said, before I could voice my questions. “Even if you can’t change the terms.”

“And what’s behind this door will tell me that? What I’m signing on for?”

Another nod. “This is his most promising new business venture. Top secret. It’s still on the ground floor, but Jake believes it has penthouse potential.”

But she made the word penthouse sound more like a deep, dark dungeon, which made me both tense and incredibly curious. Intel wasn’t my primary mission, but I had no objection to being handed information that could damage Jake Tower even beyond the blow I’d be delivering by killing Kenley Daniels.

“How bad will it be if we get caught?”

“For you? He’ll make you sign a sealed oath swearing you haven’t yet and never will reveal what you learned here.”

“And if I don’t want to sign an oath?”

Her brows rose. “You will want to, because the alternative won’t be as simple or as pleasant.”

I didn’t bother asking what the alternative was. “What about you? What will happen to you?”

Kori’s jaw tightened for just a moment. “Nothing. Because we’re not going to get caught, unless you don’t shut up so I can get us out of this hallway.”

And there it was again—that fear I’d glimpsed earlier. It wasn’t there when she talked about people dying in their own blood and vomit, or when she bluffed her way into a secure building, or when she took down armed men with her bare hands. I couldn’t find any pattern to the things that Kori feared, and I was almost as worried by that as I was fascinated by it.