The first thing she noticed when stepping inside the visiting room was Peter’s eyes. They were a slate gray today, mimicking the cement walls. Those piercing eyes appeared to be glued onto a marred, plastic face. Beasley’s Rottweilers had shredded every bit of his lips, leaving a flat effect between his weak chin and nose. He sat in the corner near the back of the empty room as if observing something from a ghost’s perspective. His catatonic demeanor came to life once Mary Jane sat across from him.

“I assumed Dylan Wulf was here to visit me.” Peter’s mouth dipped into a gnarled smile. “I’m truly delighted that my dearest wife has paid me a visit.”

She sat down across from him. Ariel had her listen in to a message from dispatch. Jake had called in threatening to murder another Mary Jane again within the next twenty-four hours. However, he hadn’t provided any information as to his whereabouts. A bud was wedged into her ear, and she was awaiting Ariel’s prompt since none of the other agents had gotten a word out of Peter.

“You deserve to die.” She made the statement, no dose of maliciousness riding along in her tone, but just offering facts. “You deserve it, but not as much as you deserve to live. As your assistant, I grew to learn how prideful you were. I know the power, the confidence that consumed you once your next facial product hit stands and you were revered.” Mary Jane paused.

“You must be angry with me, eh? My beautiful wife? No divorce but death? You want your husband dead?” he taunted.

“Laugh now, Peter, but I hear that you have…what was it? Thirty consecutive life sentences? This is a cage; it’s the type of place that will consume a man like you. A man that needs to rule. It has, hasn’t it?” She smirked. “The hours upon hours of solitary confinement. Nobody to praise your latest genetic discoveries. It’s already fucking with you, right?”

He held onto the frown that itched at the corners of his mouth.

“You’ve screwed with my mind, made me afraid of me. Afraid of my own thoughts! Can I trust myself?”

“What is it that you want?”

“Nothing, Peter. I have something for you.” She licked her lips. “I can make you feel better.”

The light danced in his eyes. He was intrigued.

She pulled out a Glock. “There’s statistics on the affluent, how they fall, how they aren’t resilient and commit suicide once the power they held is gone. Do you mind if I ask, is it better to have had said power and take your life, or just live life like commoners?”

A crazed chuckle licked annoyingly at her ears as Peter shook his head. “You were such an intelligent woman—when you were Mallory Portman, of course. We could’ve gone far as husband and wife, the two of us. If only you had just taken the story I gave you. Stayed away from your family.”

She contemplated his words. “And followed your orders.”

“Yes. That’s true. Albeit, two heads are better than one, but it would’ve been lovely, just the two of us. Taking over my businesses.”

She inched the Glock closer to him, but with his wrists in shackles, Mary Jane could taunt him more. “Let’s return to the present. Too late to speculate on our perfect life together,” she spat the words. “You’re drowning here. No more students to revere you. No computer in solitary, right?”

The tendons in his jaw constricted. “What the fuck do you want, bitch?”

“Tell me about Jake.”

He sniggered. “I’ve been told he’s acting up.”

Juarez: Good, now ask him who has given this information to him.

“Who told you?”

“My ex-wife, Linda. A few months after that whore and I split ways, she got nosy about investors seeking information in Grienke Pharmaceuticals. I didn’t know that vindictive bitch was searching for a paper trail, something to say I’d already signed deals before our divorce. She found out about my dealings with Beasley. That’s a more lucrative business, sweetheart.”

Mary Jane asked naturally, “So you can’t do anything without her?”

Juarez: Good job.

“She actually assisted me with the computations in order to cut down on the length of time it took for the brain to become more malleable. We both have keycodes.”

“And—”

“Tsk, tsk, we’re being listened to, my lovely wife. That’s all I’ll say.”

“Oh, really, you’d rather let her run rampant taking over your business. That’s not your character, Peter.”

“Tell me, Mrs. Grienke, have you begun to dream of Wulf’s death at the hand of Jake?”

She gulped down the rock lodged in her throat. The night Mary Jane had been so spontaneous, wanting to go out to dinner and the subsequent dining with Amy and Tom had begun with a torturous dream. The dream had started coming to her a few months back, and it just clung to her for hours in the middle of the night. She’d be too afraid to wake him, too afraid to say something for fear that it would come true.

“Keep fucking with me, Mrs. Grienke, and—”

“Fuck you!” Mary Jane slammed her palm down onto the table.

“You are an adulterer. You disgust me.”

“Peter, you stole me from my family and the man I was to marry!”

“Tough shit,” he snarled. “You left Keegan for me, like a common whore. Then you ran off on me with that…”

Juarez: Pull back a little. He’s getting angry. We don’t have time to bait him.

“You’re just like Linda.”

“So we screwed you over, Linda and I? Is she calling the shots for Jake?”

Juarez: Great.

“Jake has literally lost his mind—aside from the cognitive conditioning,” Peter huffed. “I paid him in full to murder you if you didn’t cooperate with Beasley. That idiot is—was the dumbest person ever, but greed is the one caveat that made me utilize Beasley’s resources. He would be loyal for the money.”

She inched the Glock forward, just out of his reach. “How can I find Jake?”

“He’s got a tracker, sweetheart. A chip in his brain. Give me the gun.”

Juarez: We need all the details we can get on that tracker, please.

“Since we’re both aware that the Feds are listening, tell me more, Peter. Just get it over with.” Mary Jane shrugged.

“You’ll give me the gun?”

“I promise.”

His pearly white teeth came out and bit down on the plastic-skin of his top lip. Peter caved. He told her about how to find Linda and even gave the password to one of the firewall systems that had not shown up on the computer systems the technical team had worked on in the past.

“Don’t insult me, Mrs. Grienke! Give me the gun!”

Mary Jane waited until Juarez’s voice chimed in her ear. They had a moving location on Jake. She gasped, standing to her feet.

“The fucking gun, bitch! I look like a chew toy. I want out of this stupid place one way or the other.”

She headed toward the door with a smile, then at the last second tossed the gun back toward him.

Mary Jane’s eyebrow arched as he pointed the gun at her instead of his own cranium. Water spouted toward her.

“Funny story. The Feds had to personally speak with the warden to agree with that illegal water gun, Peter.” Mary Jane curved her lips slowly into a smile.

The guard shut the door and boom the automatic lock confined Peter in the nightmare of his own making. She leaned against the wall, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Crossing paths with the man who’d ruined her entire life and not murdering him, well, that had been the hard part.

Ariel offered a look of sympathy. “We found Woods, as you know, but there was a call from LAPD. Looks like we’re going to need you after all.”

Mary Jane’s heart sank.

“I wasn’t going to put you in jeopardy if I didn’t have to; however, Woods has Officer Jones’s daughter. We will do our best to—”

“Just take me. I’ll do whatever needs to be done,” Mary Jane said.

She and Wulf didn’t do much talking about his nephews and little niece in the past, but she’d heard him on the phone with each of the three kids during their subsequent birthdays over the year. He loved them, and so she’d do whatever she could to save his niece.