Burned: Black Cipher Files #3 (Black Cipher Files series) (35 page)

“You failed,” she said derisively.

“I’m well aware,” Armbruster said. “This has been one long series of problems, but if I eliminate our threat to national security here, and sadly you will be collateral damage, I should be able to clean up the whole mess.”

Zeke was turning around all the information in his head. “You were the one who ordered the hits in 1995?” He started at the beginning.

“Yes.”

“Why?” Zeke thought about his grandfather, who’d done nothing to harm anyone since he’d arrived in the United States in 1946. He’d put his head down, worked odd jobs, stayed off radar. Why would this man want him dead?

“It wasn’t personal,” Armbruster replied. “Something you probably didn’t know, but my father was one of the code breakers picked up in the initial raid.”

Of course, not all Germans were blond-haired and blue eyed, but Armbruster had a particularly Eastern European look. “Funny, you don’t look German.”

Zeke curled his fingers around Sunshine’s hand, and she squeezed hard.

“My father was Russian. Working undercover at the castle. The Russians had infiltrated the German stronghold. They were only hours from taking the castle and getting the American and U.K. encryption codes when apparently TICOM found the castle first.”

“What does that have to do with your father?”

“He didn’t tell the Americans and Brits he was Russian. He pretended to be a German code breaker. And they bought it. He was relocated to the United States. But in 1995 if the Russians had discovered that their undercover operative had actually been debriefed and had willingly come to the U.S. and was still alive and well and living in the United States, it would have been disastrous for our country.”

But that wasn’t it. Zeke studied Armbruster. “What else?”

“Well, it’s true it would have been disastrous for me personally too. Our entire family would have been handed over to the Russian government as a peace offering. I wasn’t about to leave my cushy life in the U.S. for Mother Russia. They aren’t as kind to traitors as we are here.” He turned his hand over and studied his buffed fingernails.

“So you ordered the deaths that destroyed twelve families.”

“But kept America safe.” He enunciated quite nicely.

He was so full of shit.

Sunshine clenched her fists by her side. “Do you know how many lives you changed forever?”

“Again, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Armbruster smiled without an ounce of remorse.

Star Trek? Really?

“Did you know he killed my father?” Sunshine demanded waving her arm at her stepfather.

Shit, just what exactly had Zeke missed while unconscious?

“John?” At that Armbruster faltered. “Well, that was certainly a breach.”

Sunshine looked mad enough to spit. “Yet it was okay for him to marry my mother?”

“He was a tad unstable. A replacement for the first sleeper who died of a heart attack. But he did the job he was assigned.”

Zeke was still looking for patterns. Looking for sense in a situation that likely made no sense. “What made you choose the 5491 descendants for the experiment? It was you, right?”

“Here’s the thing.” Armbruster paced around. Sunshine jerked her head at the sand, but Zeke had no idea what she was trying to communicate. “Having all those descendants out there constituted loose threads. You all have very little left in the way of family. If the experiment wasn’t a success then there would have been less questions.”

And expedient for Armbruster as well. Those loose ends had probably been nagging at him for a long time.

“So you’d known Liam since boarding school.”

“Very clever, Zeke.” Armbruster said, “Yes. We met at The American School in England. Years ago. We both had a fondness for spy novels and what ifs. Imagine my surprise when Liam told me that he’d created a drug that would enhance our agents’ capabilities. We could have had the strongest espionage force in the world.”

Armbruster’s eyes shone with a fanatical light. He really had believed in the experiment. Zeke couldn’t wrap his head around the man’s complete disregard for reality and for other human beings. This was the man who was the champion of the field agent.

But instead of yelling at him, Zeke tried to keep Armbruster talking. “But the experiment, the drug, didn’t work.”

“Liam desperately wanted the drug to work. He’d been looking to adapt the enhancement drug for cancer therapy. He wanted to keep going even after it was clear, from the unfortunate circumstances surrounding Brad Johnson’s death, that the drug was not at the stage where we could use it in the field. Or anywhere for that matter.”

“But Liam and Susan kept going anyway?”

“So bothersome.” Armbruster brushed some sand from his jacket. “The experiment could not continue. But Liam wouldn’t listen.”

“So
you
shot Liam?”

“He was dying anyway.” The cold-hearted statement might have been surprising since Armbruster and Liam had been friends since they were pre-teens. Except for the fact that Armbruster had ordered twelve people killed, collateral damage okay, including his own father. All to preserve his own way of life.

“It really is a shame that you had to keep digging. You’re an exceptional employee.” Then Armbruster got angry. “What the fuck made you keep going on this anyway? It all happened so long ago.”

Zeke grinned at the irony. “That would be you.”

“Me?” Armbruster sputtered. “But, you didn’t even know it was me.”

“Nope. But when you decided to use the 5491 descendants as guinea pigs for Liam’s experiment, the drug triggered a higher level of pattern analysis in my brain. Even once I was given the antidote, I knew there was an underlying pattern, and with my OCD I just couldn’t let it go.”

“Balls,” Armbruster muttered. “Well, we’d best get on with this.”

Zeke wasn’t ready to die yet. But he had no idea how they were going to get out of this. “So were you the one who allowed Oliver Krychef back into the country?”

“Ah, yes, Oliver. I’m hoping he will dispose of Ms. Chen.” He grinned. “That will tie up that thread nice and neatly.”

“You helped her escape?” Zeke raised his eyebrows.

“Quite right.”

So Armbruster didn’t know that Carson and Jamie had picked up both Chen and Krychef.

Sunshine fluttered her hands in front of her face. “I don’t feel so good.”

“Don’t worry dear, it won’t be for much longer.”

She fell into a graceful faint, but as she was falling she shot Zeke a look of pure intent.

He dropped to his knees beside her. “Sunshine!”

Armbruster grumbled. “Just get her up. Story time is over.”

While Armbruster’s attention was fractured, she shoved the Taser toward Zeke. He could hear it powering up. “God, Sunshine. What’s wrong? Are you okay?” he cried melodramatically, hoping his babbling would cover up the noise while the Taser juiced.

“I trust you,” she mouthed. “Do it.”

Armbruster scrambled over the sand toward them. He held his weapon like he knew how to use it. After all, he’d been a field agent at one point in his life. Zeke, on the other hand, spent most of his time at his computer.

“Get her up,” Armbruster commanded as he trained the gun on Zeke.

“I’m surprised you don’t have backup with you.” Zeke commented as he lifted Sunshine to her feet, carefully keeping the Taser out of view. He shifted her body so that she was slightly behind him because there was an off chance that Armbruster would discharge his weapon when Zeke tased him.

“Let’s go,” Armbruster commanded gruffly. As soon as he waved the gun, Zeke pressed the button and jammed the Taser against Armbruster’s neck.

Armbruster reflexively pulled the trigger. The double action revolver pumped out two bullets. The first one seared past Zeke’s bicep. The second went wild.

The burn from the bullet grazing his skin hurt like a son of a bitch. But Zeke ignored it, his mission was to protect Sunshine.

Armbruster had dropped, unfortunately right on top of Sunshine. She hit the sand with an oof.

“Jesus. Are you okay?” Shit, what if he inadvertently caused her to get shot? “You aren’t hit are you?”

“I’m fine.” Her voice was muffled as Zeke helped her shove Armbruster’s dead weight off her. “But we probably need to get him tied up before he regains consciousness.”

“What are we going to use to restrain him?”

They’d already used the bungee on her stepfather. She tugged on her gray shirt to straighten it out.

“Aha!” Sunshine chortled.

“What?”

She quickly unhooked her bra and with clumsy moves pulled the straps out the bottom of one sleeve and then the other.

“Impressive.” Zeke grinned.

“Ha!” She held up the pale pink elastic and cotton in triumph. Zeke laughed.

“You want to do the honors?” He gestured to Armbruster.

She quickly wrapped his wrists in a figure eight similar to the way she’d restrained her stepfather. Zeke’s mouth quirked at her handiwork. “I like that use for your bra a lot better than the other one.”

She snickered.

He bent over the man who had caused him and his family, and the rest of the people on the 5491 list great pain and resisted the urge to kick him. “He destroyed dozens of lives, altered our destinies, without a single shred of remorse for the way he fucked with us all.”

Sunshine squatted beside Zeke. Her arm curled around his shoulders and her head rested in the crook of his neck as she looked down at the man personally responsible for ravaging her family.

“But not everything bad came from what he did,” she said softly.

He didn’t know how she could say that.

She trailed her fingers across the back of his neck and his skin tingled at the casual, intimate touch. Maybe she was right. There were definitely some good things that had ultimately come from Armbruster’s actions.

“It’s all over.” The relief that zoomed through Zeke was overlaid with the bite of pain as warm blood ran down his arm. Adrenaline still pumped through him at warp speed, dulling the true pain and making him feel like he could jump tall buildings in a single bound. Or at least he could save the girl. Maybe even keep the girl.

He straightened and held out his uninjured arm.

Sunshine jumped up and gasped. “Oh my Goddess, you’re bleeding!”

“It’s just a graze.” He grinned, ignoring the fact that it hurt like hell and blood was running down his arm.

“So tough?”

He cupped her jaw with his good hand. “You’re okay?” He skimmed his hand over her searching for any injuries. Searching for any hurts he could make better.

“I…think so.” She shifted her gaze out to the ocean. “Physically anyway.”

Zeke curled her into his embrace. Her forehead rested against his jaw as they stared out at the waves. The water rushed up on to the shore. And Sunshine didn’t even flinch. The cold seawater flooded around their ankles, and then scurried back out to the vast ocean.

“It’s a lot to take in.” She let out a gentle sigh of contentment. “A lot to look forward to.”

She squeezed his torso.

Zeke bit back a groan as the pain from his wound was starting to make itself known. He’d live, but he was going to hurt like hell for a few days. The water rolled over their feet again. They needed to get out of the cold and make some phone calls. Get this trash cleaned up.

“You’re going to be just fine, Sunshine Smith.” Zeke held her jaw and pressed four sweet kisses on her lips. He was just about to dive in for one more earth shattering kiss—

“Hands in the air.” The sound of multiple weapons being cocked sent a spear of ice through Zeke’s heart. Thank God he hadn’t told Sunshine how he felt about her.

Shit. This was it. He was going to disappear. Never to be seen again. Unless they could get Armbruster to confess again. Unless he could get someone to believe him over the far more powerful Armbruster.

“It’s been a hell of a ride.” He groaned and lifted his arms, his palms flat. “I’m cooperating.”

“This is crap.” Sunshine raised her hands above her shoulders.

“Honey, don’t argue with them.” Zeke warned her. “You’re not in any trouble. They’ll let you go once they figure that out.”

Zeke was another story.

“I couldn’t have said it better, dear.”

Zeke turned slowly at his mentor’s voice but kept his hands high.

“Uncle Carson!” Sunshine stomped her foot. “Fix this.”

“Sunshine, keep your mouth shut. You don’t want to bring any of my problems onto you.” Zeke was desperate to protect her.

“Forget that.” Sunshine said, “You were trying to help me.”

Before he could argue with her, Carson said, “At ease, soldiers.”

“We have so much to tell you,” Sunshine continued. “Zeke didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I already know.” Carson’s bald head shone as the sun speared a single ray through the heavy clouds. He made his way toward Zeke and Sunshine.

“Good work, son.” Then he pulled something from Zeke’s collar.

“You bugged me?”

“Jamie did.” Carson frowned. “When she made contact with you in the reptile room at the zoo.”

“So you knew all along it was Director Armbruster?”

“No. But I was starting to have my suspicions.” Carson smiled. “Thank you for getting his confession. Pretty sure there’s a cell at Guantanamo with his name on it.”

The tide rolled toward them. The swell, much larger than the previous ones, ran over their feet but no one moved. Sunshine and Zeke still hadn’t been given permission to move.

Then Sunshine yelled, “This is great and all, but he’s
bleeding
.” She stomped her foot again and the excess water splashed up onto Carson’s pants.

Carson said, “You can lower your arms.”

Sunshine and Zeke both dropped their arms.

Zeke wanted to groan at the ache but he didn’t care about his arm. Joy bubbled through him. He curled his non-injured arm around her waist and yanked her against his body.

She’d just been hit by a small wave and hadn’t even noticed.

“Oomph.” She muttered against his lips. “Be careful.”

“I’ll be fine.” Zeke kissed her. “Look at where you are.”

Sunshine crabbed. “I’d rather a doctor look at your arm.”