Page 4 of Critical Strike

Ballard shook his head. “You should’ve just minded your own business. I gave you the perfect out. Told you I’d take care of it. You should’ve looked the other way.”

He nodded at the man holding Julia and almost before Claire could process what was happening, the man grabbed Julia by the head and snapped her neck.

Claire clapped her hand over her mouth as she watched Julia’s body hit the ground, her eyes still open staring toward the laptop.

“Take care of this.” Ballard gestured toward Julia. “Make sure the body is found far away from this building and that it looks like an accident.”

Claire pressed a hand to her chest, her heart thumping uncontrollably against her shaking fingers.

Julia was dead.

Ballard had just had her killed.

“Go down to her office and get the drive she was sending the data to. Bring it back up here so I can look through it before destroying it.”

Claire had to get out of here. She pressed the key on Julia’s computer that downloaded the recorded interactions they’d had on each other’s screens.

Including, in this case, Julia’s murder.

It went straight onto the Passage Digital hard drive where Claire would be able to access it later.

But something happened on Ballard’s end, tipping him off.

“What the hell? That bitch was recording this whole thing?” Claire jumped back as Ballard’s face jerked right up to the camera. He couldn’t see her, but it sure felt like he could.

“We need to get to her office right away. Damage control.”

The monitor went blank.

Claire sat there, eyes wide, trying to draw enough air into her lungs. What should she do?

She could leave the drive, leave the footage of Julia’s death on the system, and nobody would know Claire had been here at all. But as soon as Ballard got hold of the drive and footage, he would wipe them both completely clean—and all proof of his wrongdoing would be gone.

Claire only had two or three minutes tops before Ballard’s men got here. If she was going to do something, she had to do it now.

Almost without conscious thought, her fingers were flying over the keyboard. She buried the footage of Julia’s murder deep inside the Passage Digital system. When Ballard tried to access it, it would look like a corrupted file—damaged beyond utilization. No link to Claire.

But if she took the hard drive, Ballard would know someone had been here. He wouldn’t know it was her, but how long would it take to figure it out? She stared at the drive, about twice the size and weight of a smartphone, still plugged into Julia’s computer.

She couldn’t let Ballard get away with this. With any of it.

She yanked the cord from the computer and grabbed the drive, then walked to the door. When she opened it, she expected to find the entire third floor staring at her, but no one so much as glanced in her direction.

Keeping her head down, she walked toward her desk. Nobody tried to engage her in any sort of conversation, as usual. Thank goodness.

She wasn’t sure what to do. Should she stay at her desk? Wait stuff out? Should she move? Get out of the building?

A voice from her group foster home days floated back into her mind. A voice she trusted.Luke.He’d never let her down, always protected her.

If you can walk away rather than fight, then do that. Especially you, kitten.

He’d never walked away from a fight. But for her, his advice had been true then and was true now. She grabbed her purse from her desk drawer, tossed the drive inside it, and walked down the corridor between rows of cubicles.

All she could hear was the thrashing of her own heartbeat in her ears when she saw Ballard’s men rush toward her. She couldn’t let them take her. She knew what would happen if they did.

But they didn’t even so much as glance at her, just brushed right by her, beelining for Julia’s office.

Claire didn’t look back, just kept a steady pace until she’d made it to the elevator. The doors couldn’t open fast enough, and she rushed inside the moment there was sufficient space, pounding the garage-level button with more force than necessary. Once the elevator had begun its descent to the lowest level, she began to shake.

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