She gently smiled and bustled out. “I’ll get you some coffee.”
I smiled back weakly. Coffee would suffice, but the only things that would really make me feel better were a case of wine and a voodoo doll of Li Na Zhao. But as neither would magically appear in my office, I sighed and picked up my phone.
I called Clive’s lawyer first.
“Hello?” Her voice was hoarse, and she was sniffling.
“Jennifer? It’s Lauren Taylor, returning your call. Are you okay?”
“No.” She blew her nose. “Clive Warren is dead. The guards found him this morning.”
I slumped back in my chair. I felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me. “What? How?”
“Someone stabbed him multiple times. No one knows who, and none of the prisoners are talking.”
“Jesus.”
“I thought you should know right away. Clive said if anything happened to him to call you first.”
“Did he say why?”
She sniffled. “To warn you. He said it was to warn you.”
“Okay,” I said, even though nothing was okay.
“He gave me something for you,” she said after a pause. “A sealed letter.”
“Doesn’t that need to be admitted into evidence?”
“Not yet. It’s currently protected by attorney-client privilege. He told me he wanted you to read it before anyone else saw it, including me. I’m having it couriered over. It should be there shortly.”
“Okay,” I said again.
“It’s not okay, and we both know it.” She blew her nose again. “I’ll speak with you soon, Ms. Taylor. Stay safe.”
Chapter 25
I sat in my office, stunned, until the letter arrived.
Dear Lauren, it read.
If you are reading this, it means that my attorney sent it to you. Good. She’s hot, and she follows instructions. Unlike you.
If you are reading this, it also means that I’m dead, or in an everlasting coma or something. Not good.
If I were a different sort of man, I would start here with an apology. But am I sorry for the things I did to you? Only some of them. Only a little. I absolve myself from some of the responsibility because I gave you an opportunity to turn this around, and you didn’t accept it. So we’ll be sharing some of the blame for what’s happened, you and me.
The one thing I am sorry for is that I ever got involved with You-Know-Who. I told you that you reminded me of her. I guess if I apologize to you for anything, it should be that. You’re not that nice, but you’re still much nicer than she’ll ever be.
Not that being nice is going to help you.
This letter is my warning to you. I already told you that if they couldn’t figure out the patch on their own, they would come for us. If I’m dead, my guess is this: they’ve pinpointed where they’ve failed. But they still haven’t perfected the technology. They know you’re very, very close to your launch, and they want to stop you.
So they’ve stopped me first. I’m a weak link, and she’s meticulous. She doesn’t like to leave behind any loose ends. First, I botched the relationship with you. Then I sold them technology that didn’t work.
And then I turned myself in.
She would never have accepted that. I should have thought it through, but I panicked. My incarceration would be intolerable for her. It makes her vulnerable, and she doesn’t do vulnerable.