Page 61 of Critical Mass
“Mr. Shaw?”
Margaret’s voice snapped Hudson back to the present. She’d finished her call and was looking at him with mild concern.
“Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Hudson forced himself to relax his shoulders, to breathe normally.
That couldn’t have been Brass.
He couldn’t be alive. He couldn’t be here. Hudson had simply been seeing things—ghosts from the past, from his nightmares.
He forced himself to look casual as he looked back at Margaret again. “I’m fine. Just thought I saw someone I knew.”
“Oh?” Margaret glanced down the hallway. “Did you want to go say hello?”
“No.” The word came out too quick, too sharp. Hudson modulated his tone. “No, I was mistaken. Wrong person.”
But as he returned to his chair, his mind kept replaying what he’d seen.
Brass. Alive. Walking through Richard Ravenscroft’s office building three years after he’d supposedly died in a helicopter crash. The guy he’d worked with during that chemical weapons attack.
The same kind of chemical weapons that were about to be deployed.
Hudson’s phone felt heavy in his pocket. He should call Colton. Should report this. Should?—
The door to Ravenscroft’s office opened, and Natalie emerged, her father right behind her.
Hudson stood automatically, forcing himself to focus on the mission, on playing his role.
But his mind kept circling back to that face in the hallway.
Brass is alive.
And if Brass was alive and working in Ravenscroft’s building, then everything—absolutely everything—about this operation might be wrong.
Could Richard Ravenscroft really be a criminal mastermind plotting to kill thousands of people?
Hudson knew the answer. The evidence was overwhelming. The financial records, the communications, the connections to known terrorists—it all pointed to one conclusion.
But standing here, in Ravenscroft’s legitimate business headquarters, surrounded by the trappings of respectability and success, it was almost hard to believe.
Almost.
Hudson had learned long ago that evil rarely looked like what people expected. Terrorists didn’t always wear explosives strapped to their chest and shout manifestos. Sometimes they wore expensive suits, donated to charities, and raised daughters who loved them.
That made them more dangerous, not less.
Natalie stepped toward him, her face pale but composed. Hudson moved toward her instinctively, playing the concerned boyfriend.
“Everything okay?” He kept his voice low.
“Dad’s invited us to dinner tonight,” Natalie said, her voice sweet and pleasant—and fake since Margaret was listening. “Seven o’clock. His house.”
Hudson’s mind immediately went tactical. Ravenscroft’s house—more security, more control, more danger.
But also more opportunity to gather intelligence.
“Okay,” he said. “We can do that.”
