The Debt Collector (Season Two) Page 9

  Moloch’s chuckling and sharing a grin with Zachariel.

  Which only hikes up my heart rate. “Look, why don’t you just tell me what you want? Otherwise, I’ll be on my way.” I make a move for the door, which Zachariel quickly blocks, giving me a chastising look, like I’m a small child misbehaving.

  The humor drops from Moloch’s face. “I told you, already. I think we should kill you. As charming as you are, Wraith, you haven’t yet given me a reason not to.”

  Frustration curls up my fists. “Okay, fine, Mr. Vague. I think you want me to do whatever your dirty work is here.” I gesture to the clinic around us. “Or maybe you have some other illegal activities you need a few spare debt collectors to help out in.” That doesn’t ring true, even in my own head—this Zachariel character told me before that Gehenna aims for big things, important things, and those things don’t seem nearly big enough. “If you’re looking for a debt collector to put in a few extra volunteer hours—”

  Moloch cuts me off with a flick of his hand. By the stormy look on his face, I think I’ve insulted him. Good. Maybe now I’ll get some answers.

  “We are not a charity,” he says. “And you have much more to give us than your meager services transferring life energy. The problem is… I’m not entirely convinced you would ever truly commit yourself to Gehenna. You are far too independent-minded, you revile the very nature of debt-collecting, and your parents were both cashed out early in their lives. Perhaps a tradition that will now be passed down in the family.”

  “You’re right,” I say. “I’m not like you. Not even a little. So, whatever your recruitment quota is, I’m not your girl. And I’m seriously not worth the bother. You’re much better off just letting me go.”

  The storm on his face moves up to darken his eyes. “Unfortunately for you, that is not an alternative.”

  I have the feeling he’s losing patience with me. That I’ve pushed him too far. I glance at Zachariel, but his face has gone grim as well.

  I put my hands up, just in case they’re thinking of finishing me off right now. “Look, I don’t know anything about what your group does—”

  “And you won’t,” Moloch says archly. “Not when you’re likely to run off to the Department of Life and Health or the Senate Committee on Collection the moment you leave here.”

  “I’m… I’m not going to do that.”

  “No.” Moloch’s steely blue eyes peer into mine. “You’re not.”

  I think he means I won’t because I’ll be dead.

  “She has access to the lab at Sterling.” Zachariel’s voice is soft, but it saves me from the heart attack I’m about to have.

  Moloch whips his head to him. “There are other technology companies.”

  “None as advanced as Sterling.” Zachariel shrugs. “There’s a reason they lead the industry.”

  Moloch frowns and looks back to me. “We could certainly change that by exposing the current owner of the company as a debt collector. Or eliminating her. Or both.”

  “Or you could bring her into the fold,” Zachariel says calmly.

  They’re talking about me in the third person. An urge to interrupt seizes me, but I resist. I don’t know why, but Zachariel’s arguing for my life, so I keep my mouth shut and let him.

  Moloch’s still drilling into me with those cold blue eyes. “She’s not going to understand what we’re working toward.”

  “She’s a debt collector.” Zachariel’s looking me over as well. “One that’s been hiding ever since she found out what she was. I would think she’s uniquely positioned to understand.” He turns to Moloch. “Besides, I like her. She doesn’t put up with your stuffiness.”

  Moloch shakes his head, but a grim smile has worked its way onto his face. “A quality I’m not sure I find quite as attractive as you do.”

  Zachariel smirks, then he gets serious again. “Even if you don’t think she’ll be all-in on the cause, there’s one thing I imagine she’ll want badly enough to do anything you ask, Moloch.”

  They exchange a look. They must know what they’re talking about, but I sure as hell don’t. What could I want more than my own life? Or keeping my secret safe?

  Moloch gives him a barely perceptible nod, then turns back to me. “There’s a bill that’s going through the Senate right now. It has to do with tightening the regulations on transfers for medical needs. I believe you know which bill I’m referring to, given your father was one of the lobbyists who wrote a significant portion of the bill itself.”

  I hold still, trying to navigate this sudden change in topic and figure out where it’s headed.

  “I helped my father write it,” I say. It’s the bill Wyatt was talking about yesterday. The one Lifetime wants me to testify about before the Senate committee votes it out to the main floor tomorrow.

  “I want you to kill it.” Moloch gives me a cool stare, and my heart ices over with it.

  “Kill it,” I repeat. “I can’t… how do you expect me to…”

  “I’m sure a smart woman like you can figure out that part,” Moloch says. “I’m simply saying that if you can manage that small task, then it might be worthwhile not to kill you.”

  My mouth works, but no words come out. It’s one bill. They can always write another one. And yet… it’s the culmination of two years of lobbying on my father’s part. I would literally be killing a part of his life. In exchange for my own. In a bid to keep Moloch from exposing me and bringing down everything else my father has built. Everything I believe in.

  I’m not answering because I’m having a hard time breathing. I can’t even begin to think of what Wyatt will do when he finds out. And he will find out—if I can even pull it off, I can’t imagine him not figuring out what happened. And if I start sabotaging my father’s work when he’s barely a month in the grave… I won’t have to be a revealed as a debt collector to cause everything to come crumbling down.

  The chute-less jump is sounding more attractive by the minute.

  Moloch frowns, like he’s a bit confused by my response, or lack thereof. “If your life is not a sufficient enticement, perhaps finding your father’s killer would be.”

  I huff in a gasp of air. “What did you say?”

  Now his blue eyes are sparkling. This is definitely a game to him. “Your father’s killer. I could give him to you. Would that interest you, Ms. Sterling?”

  I flick a look to Zachariel, but he’s not moving a muscle, watching the interplay between us.

  I swing back to Moloch. “You know who killed my father?”

  “Know him? Oh yes. And I could hand him to you for whatever punishment you felt appropriate.” He watches me as I process this.

  My heart is pounding in my ears. Kill my father’s work… but bring his killer to justice. Or let my father’s work stand… and let his murderer go free. I get the sense Moloch could just as easily keep the debt collector who killed my father forever out of my reach, as hand him over, bound and tied.

  Moloch cocks his head to the side, then steps closer.

  Too close, in this tiny room. I lean back.

  He drops his voice, speaking softly, but with words that chill my heart. “That is the kind of power I have, Wraith. The kind of power you could have within Gehenna. We are not here to make small transfers of life energy from an impoverished man to his ailing wife. We do not exist to simply work within a system that has already been established. We are here to change it. And our plans are not small. These changes, when they come, will be the likes of which you cannot even imagine. I know you’ve spent your life living with them, with the humans, but you’re one of us now. You’re a collector. You belong in Gehenna, whether you realize it or not.”

  The way he says human… like he’s not one… it turns my stomach, but at the same time, it rings a bell of truth inside my head. I’m not like any of them: Wyatt, Miral, even my father. I love them dearly, but I don’t really belong in their world, any more than they belong in mine. And if I want to keep them se
parate, I had better figure out a way to give Moloch what he wants. At least until I can figure out a way to stop him from destroying everything and everyone I love.

  “If I stop this bill,” I say, “then you’ll give me the name of my father’s killer.”

  He smiles, like he’s proud of me, but then it turns indulgent again. “No. If you stop the bill, I will consider the possibility that you might truly be able to join Gehenna after all. Which would save me from the unfortunate need to kill you.”

  I swallow. “I can stop the bill.”

  His grin is wide now. “Excellent.” He glances over his shoulder to Zachariel. “You may have been right after all.” Then he looks back to me. “But we’ll see if Wraith is someone who we can trust to be true to her word. Or not.”

  Somehow, I don’t think I’m going to get a second chance at this.

  Moloch steps back, and Zachariel punches the button for the door. They’re letting me go, off to do their bidding and undo my father’s work. My legs are locked, and I have to convince them to move. I shuffle sideways toward the exit, not turning my back on Moloch even though he’s never lifted a palm toward me. Yet.

  Zachariel stands by the door, waiting. I feel like I should say something. I think he just saved my life… or at least forestalled my death. Which, when you come down to it, is pretty much the same thing.

  Before I can decide what to say, he gives me a tight smile. “Well, you’re not dead. That’s a good start.”

  I dip my head and hurry out of the illegal life energy clinic as fast as I can.

  The makeup hides the dark circles under my eyes, but there’s nothing that can cover up the fact that I’m about sully the Sterling name. Or at least confuse some of California’s leading politicians, most of whom my father has spent years courting to the cause of eliminating debt collection.

  While I wait to be called to testify, I reapply lipstick that doesn’t need reapplying then put away the mirror. My slatted-wood bench is hard and unyielding. The inlaid-marble floors of the capitol hallway glisten with a hundred years of polish. The walls are hung with real gold-leafed frames and thick oil paintings. The only modern tech in sight is the door punch button for the committee room. It’s the kind of décor meant to impress, to exude importance, and to make the mere flesh-and-blood visitors feel their tiny impotence.

  I’ve been here before, a dozen times, but always with my father. And Wyatt. Our hard-soled shoes and custom suits were at home in the halls of power, and my father was especially skilled in flattering the Senate staff and plying them with free lunches and bounteous reports for the policy wonks. Our visits to Sacramento were the pinnacle of our work for change. It always felt like a triumph just to be heard. Now, on my own, with the intentions I have… it’s more like awaiting the sentence at my own trial.

  Inside the Senate Subcommittee on Collection, the droning of standard roll call and orders of business carry on. I elect to wait in the hall to gather my thoughts, but my nerves are stretched too thin. The nausea and other after effects from my payout at the hospital yesterday have faded, but it doesn’t take long for the need for a hit to claw its way back. Under normal conditions, I would be seeking out a new target from Jax within a day or two. But doing dirty work for a rogue debt collector group is not normal conditions… and the need for another collection rages inside me.

  I stand and pace to the far end of the hall, my black stiletto heels sounding like hammer strikes on the capitol’s granite floor. I peer out the ceiling-high window to the gleaming green of the capitol lawn. There is no smog in Sacramento. The sky here, even at ground level, is the color of Wyatt’s eyes. Once upon a time, the state capitol was as badly polluted as LA, but the powerful exported their pollution just as they did most of their problems: by forcing someone else to generate the power that fed their all-electric transport system. The result? A ring of smaller, less influential cities surrounding the capitol, all wrapped in a blanket of cancer-inducing haze. But the views from the Senators’ offices are pristine, so apparently that’s all that matters.

  I straighten my trim, power-red designer suit, the one special-ordered by Wyatt for appearances like these. I successfully avoided him at the office, calling in sick and deleting his messages while I recovered from the payout. Then, just when he was sure to be wondering if I would testify at all, I dropped him a message as I boarded the Sterling corporate jet. I’m certain he’s seething right now in LA, cursing my name for ditching him, but I simply couldn’t look him in the face while I killed my father’s bill. He’ll have to hear it on the live-cast along with everyone else with a stake in the life energy and cybernetic markets.

  I’ll deal with his horror and judgment when I return. Besides, it’s not like I have a choice in any of this.

  Moloch made my options very clear—kill Senate Bill 1321 on Requirements for Medical Needs Transfers, and he would allow me to live, maybe tell me the name of my father’s murderer, and possibly even let me join his bizarre Cult of Death, Gehenna. I still haven’t figured out the angles on that group. But over the last twenty-four hours since meeting with him and the witty, but probably deadly, Zachariel, one simple idea slowly formed in my brain: Moloch believes Gehenna is on some kind of unholy mission. His cryptic rantings about debt collectors being superior… his plans to change the world… even his crazy, killer-cold-blue eyes… all of it adds up to a fanatic that just might have the fortitude to accomplish his goals, whatever they are. And while taking a chute-less jump off an LA skyscraper would end my problems, neatly and without the kind of scandal that would come from being exposed, the idea that a coordinated group of debt collectors is bent on some nefarious larger goal?

  It chills me to the core.

  And, perversely, gives me a reason to live.

  Because there’s apparently something worse than government-sanctioned debt collections and mob-facilitated life energy trades. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but if my father were alive, he would find out. And he would do whatever it took to stop this new dark… entity? Cult? I’m not even sure what to call them.

  Hard-soled steps echo in the hall behind me. My time is up. The staff is coming to gather me to testify. I step back from the window and turn, a smile plastered on my face… then freeze.

  Wyatt is striding down the hallway with a look fit to kill.

  My heart seizes, and I glance to the committee door, but he’s already closer to it than I am. There’s literally nowhere to run. I shove down the feeling of being a mouse trapped in a corner and straighten my shoulders in time for him to arrive, chest heaving, in front of me.

  “Alexa.” He’s shaking his head, like he doesn’t know where to start.

  I pray for someone to come out and interrupt us, but I’m not sure who I’m kidding with that. Prayers don’t get answered for people like me.

  I turn my palms up, like I’m equally exasperated with him. “I told you I would take care of this, Wyatt. How did you even get here?”

  “How did I get here?” he asks, like this is the most ridiculous question of all time. “I flew, Alexandra Morgan Sterling. On a flight I booked weeks ago. Economy class. You should try it some time.”

  He’s only mad because I didn’t bring him along in the jet, but the scathing tone still hurts. I try to harden my heart against the accusation in his eyes, the bite in his words, and that stormy look he’s giving me. Because it’s all about to get a lot worse.

  “You didn’t need to come,” I say coolly.

  His anger is swept away by a pained look. His gaze moves from my face to focus outside the window over my shoulder. “This is about the kiss, isn’t it? I ruined everything with that.”

  “What? No… Wyatt… this has nothing to do with that.” I’m trying to get him to look at me, but he won’t.

  “I thought you wanted…” He nods to himself. “It was a mistake. I made a mistake. I promise it won’t happen again.”

  Somehow that stabs me more than anything.

  His gaze float
s back to me, but he’s put on a mask. The stony one he wears when he doesn’t want me to know what he’s really thinking. Only I can always tell.

  “If you’re going to fire me,” he says, “just do it to my face, all right? That’s all I ask.”

  My internal torment reaches up to strangle me. “Wyatt, I can’t fire you.” My voice is thick.

  “Why not?” It’s a challenge. Like he wants me to admit I wanted the kiss as much as he did, possibly a great deal more. But what I want has no bearing on anything. Least of all him. If the world were made of wishes, it would be a far, far different place.

  “Sterling would be better off with you in charge,” I say with conviction. It’s no doubt true. Especially now. “You were like his son, Wyatt.”

  He presses his lips together, and I glimpse a small sliver of the pain I know he’s been holding back all this time. A pain that’s just going to get worse because of me. I should have known the universe wouldn’t let me escape Wyatt witnessing my dirty deeds first hand. Just then, a wiry, stylish staff member pushes open the committee room door and beckons me with her knobby fingers. I glance at her and nod, then look back to Wyatt.

  He steps closer, blocking my escape path. “Tell me we’re okay, Lexy. Tell me you’re not going to hold a moment of weakness against me. Just… tell me.”

  I look up into his sky blue eyes and hold his gaze for a moment. This is probably the last time he’s going to look at me with anything other than hatred in them.

  “It wasn’t your moment of weakness,” I say, softly. “It was mine.” Then I brush past him and stride toward the committee door. I don’t hear his hard-soled shoes following me, but I’m sure he’ll find his way into the committee room after a moment or two. I almost wish I had sent him away, but in a sense, this is a penance I know I have to pay. No sense putting it off.

  The staff member has already disappeared into the committee room. When I push open the door, all eyes are on me. It’s a small room, only a dozen committee seats along an elevated, stainless semi-circular table, each with a personal screen embedded in front of them. Three large wall screens all mutely display a waving flag and the California Senate seal. The tiny audience is comprised of three staffers and one reporter with an ear-mounted camera. He looks more interested in his hand-held than the meeting. I march up to the table and chair in the center reserved for testimony.