Page 36 of Destroyed With You

“Collins?” he said. “Dustin Collins?”

Her brow furrowed as she studied him. “Yes. Why?”

“You’re with ID-9.”

Her eyes went wide. “How the hell do you know about ID-9?”

He exhaled, then dragged his fingers through his hair. “Because, darlin’, your Mr. Collins is the son of a bitch that Bartlett’s going to testify against.”

“What?” She shook her head. “No, that can’t be.”

“It is.”

“And you know this because Seagrave told you.”

He tilted his head. “And Collins told you.”

She closed her eyes. “Fuck.”

“That about sums it up.”

She started to rise, then cursed when her leg caught. She sat down hard, then held up a hand. “Give me a sec to think.”

“Hell, I need a second, too.”

After a moment, she took a long swallow of wine, then said, “We need to find Bartlett. Find him, then we see what’s on his laptop ourselves.”

It wasn’t a bad idea, Winston thought. Except for one little problem. “No,” he said.

She gaped at him. “No?”

“How can I ensure that this isn’t a full-blown secondary protocol for you to reacquire Bartlett and take him out?”

“You aren’t serious.”

“It would be exactly the kind of next-level planning a division like ID-9 would put in place.”

“Winston, this is absurd. I can’t prove a negative. You’re locking us into doing nothing. Are we supposed to just sit here until Bartlett decides to come back? Because that’s not happening.”

“We have the laptop.”

“It’s not hackable.”

“I have some very smart friends.”

She dragged her fingers through her hair. “Weren’t you briefed? That laptop has every sort of countermeasure imaginable. One wrong move and the information is erased.”

“That’s good if it’s full of the names of deep cover agents.”

“And bad if it also erases evidence of who collected those names in the first place,” she shot back. “Or if it’s not agents at all, but accounting information, just like you said. Payouts for information leaks. Do we really want to risk losing that kind of evidence?”

“We don’t,” Winston admitted. “But I think we’re at an impasse.”

“Shit.”

He chuckled.

“What?” she snapped.