The Gender Lie(17)

Everyone froze and Thomas cocked his head at me, studying me behind the lenses of his spectacles. He pushed them up the bridge of his nose. “As a matter of fact, I have,” he said, his voice flat and even.

I could feel everyone’s gaze fall on me, waiting for my response. “But why?” I asked, not sure why anyone in their right mind would want to do that.

Thomas gave a small shrug. “Because I like math problems,” he replied.

My jaw slackened as I took in the diminutive man in front of me. Everything about him—from his pudgy middle to his balding head—seemed so non-threatening that it was hard for me to wrap my head around his answer.

I transferred my gaze to Owen, who chuckled. “Thomas is good at what he does, Violet. He’s a strategist.”

Thomas nodded several times, reminding me of an over-eager child searching for his parents’ praise.

“I… see…” I replied, uncertain of what else I could say.

Thomas and I eyed each other warily until Owen clapped his hands together. “Thomas, could you please bring us up to speed on the information you’ve gathered about the facility?”

Thomas moved to his workstation while the rest of us huddled close. He started clicking a few keys on the keyboard when he froze. “Do you mind?” he asked, and we all backed off. Solomon and Quinn busied themselves with dragging a few chairs over from near the walls, while Amber began to follow my lead and strip out of her costume.

Only Owen and I remained behind Thomas, watching the smaller man work. He was humming something under his breath, but I couldn’t make out the tune, until I caught a word—“programming”—and I realized he was singing instructions to himself.

The mannerism was so strange that I had to shoot a glance at Owen to see if he heard it too. His blue eyes found mine and crinkled in a smile that made me want to throttle him for a moment. Him and his damned secrets—there was no reason for him not to tell me about Thomas.

In fact, I was even more irritated with Owen for putting us in a room with a clearly deranged lunatic. Who knew what sorts of things were going through his head? Was he calculating how to kill the five of us if the mission went bad, or had he already done that? Would he sell me out to the government? I wasn’t naïve enough to think that the Patrian government had not put a hefty bounty on my head.

Thomas lifted his hands up in silent victory, breaking me out of my suspicious thoughts. He clicked a few buttons, and then the screen directly in front of us—which took up almost the entire wall—lit up to show an empty road.

We all fell silent as we searched the image, trying to see what Thomas saw.

It was Owen who spoke first. “All right, I’ll bite, what is this?” he asked.

Thomas beamed up at him, his face squishing together like a toad about to fall asleep. “It’s the only camera feed I could find remotely near to the location you and Desmond provided,” he said, an edge of excitement to his voice.

Owen frowned, his eyebrows coming together. “Thomas… this video shows us absolutely nothing.”

Thomas nodded. “They run their cameras on a closed system,” he said, standing up. I watched as he waddled over to some file cabinets that were tucked away in a corner. He pulled open a drawer and retrieved a thick folder. “You and Desmond are definitely onto something—it took a lot to get these blueprints.”

He rolled out the bundle of papers on the table. “They don’t even exist in digital media—if they had, I would’ve found them. As it stands, I had to liquidate the supplier just to be sure word about this didn’t get out.”

Owen’s gaze found mine and I frowned at him, crossing my arms over my chest. “Thomas… you know you’re not supposed to liquidate the assets,” Owen said.

I rolled my eyes at him. If he thought I was so dumb as to not know what an “asset” was or what it meant to “liquidate” one, he had another thing coming.

Thomas raised a dismissive hand, his entire focus on the blueprints in front of him. “He wasn’t an asset,” he said. “Not one of yours, anyway. The Porteque gang are the only ones who will miss him, and as far as they are concerned, he just disappeared.” Thomas looked at me, his lenses reflecting the white coming off the screen. “I know how to cover my tracks,” he finished.

The words sounded threatening, and I didn’t like them at all. I took a step forward, but Solomon placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. I looked up at him, and he shook his head, mouthing the word don’t at me.

I felt my mouth flatten into a thin line as a wave of irritation rolled through me. I backed off though, distancing myself a few steps. Thomas was dangerous—he had just confirmed it—and for some reason he had decided to focus on me. I wasn’t sure why he had, but if he did try anything, I was going to be ready for it.