He jerked his head back into the pillow, a breath screeching through his lungs. His muscles had knotted from neck to calves, arching his body against the restraints. He turned his head to the side and vomited, warmth drooling across his cheek onto the sheets.

“I’ll do it,” he said, in a voice so hoarse he didn’t recognize it as his own. “I’ll wire the money.”

43. Unleash Hell

43

Unleash Hell

Evan sat before the monitor in the study on the fourth floor, his hands on the keyboard. The computer was brand-new; he’d watched Xalbador remove it from the box. That it was air-gapped, having never been hooked into the Internet, was helpful, but whatever cloaking and encryption software René had in place to hide the wire transfers would not be as impenetrable and untraceable as those Evan used. He’d learned at the elbows of the best technical security specialists in the world.

As had Van Sciver.

Van Sciver had a team of them in his employ now and more data-mining capabilities than René could possibly dream of.

Click a single button and unleash hell.

Maybe unleashing hell was the only shot Evan had left.

The heated vent above breathed warmth down his neck, making him break out in a sweat. Or was it fear, only now worming its way out through his skin? He’d spent so many years safe in obscurity, unseen and unexamined. Now the carefully positioned boulder he’d been hiding beneath was about to be rolled back, his life exposed to a blinding light.

He thought about the infinity he’d spent strapped to the gurney, an infinity that had lasted precisely two flaps of a blowfly’s wings.

He looked over at René, a last-ditch effort. “You don’t want me to do this.”

René smiled, folded his hands. “I don’t?”

“The wrong people will come. You will not be happy.”

“I’ve done this a time or two,” René said. “My procedures are completely secure.”

Evan said, “You don’t have any comprehension of what secure is.”

René snapped his fingers. With extreme caution Dex handed him a syringe. The clear, viscous liquid rippled inside. A single drop had nearly undone Evan. He couldn’t imagine what horrors a full injection would bring.

Taking a deep breath, he keyed a series of pass codes into the Privatbank AG Web site. He paused. “Once I click this button, I can’t control what will happen.”

René jammed the needle into the side of Evan’s neck. He brought his ruddy face close, sweat drops clinging to the points of his hair. He spoke through locked teeth. “I am done negotiating.”

Evan felt the twenty-one-gauge stainless-steel tube embedded in his neck. A half-inch movement of René’s thumb and he’d be trapped in an eternity of suffering.

He felt something leak out of him. The last of what he had.