“Well, Marcus has some good reasons for staying away from you. We all do.” I looked at them pointedly. “I just came from Tyson Westbrook’s funeral, and I had an interesting conversation with his girlfriend, who was there when he died.”
“Ay! The young man in the news!” Rosario cried, dramatically tossing her hands toward the heavens before making the sign of the cross. “He was from your school! He was a friend?”
“My best friend.”
“Pobrecita.” She held out her arms for an embrace, and I took two steps back. I was not letting these people touch me again.
“Lo siento,” said Carlos, his face expressing the perfect amount of sympathy, as if he were an actor given a stage direction.
The fake condolences were getting ridiculous. I may not have been there to defend Tyson at the end of his life, but I would be there for him now.
“Are you kidding me?” I yelped. “I know everything. You know I know everything. Someone killed my best friend and then left me a message!”
They stared at me, unblinking, looking completely confused.
“A message?” Rosario’s perfect brow didn’t furrow, but it looked like it wanted to—Botox. “Are you okay? Is everything all right?”
“Of course I’m not okay!” I shouted, my voice bouncing off the marble.
“Please, lower your voice,” Carlos insisted, eyeing me carefully.
“Why? You don’t want me to shout it, right here in the lobby?” I saw a micro-twitch in each of their dark eyes as a few people in the lobby began looking our way. Maybe everyone in this place worked for Department D, or maybe they were oblivious. Either way, I was not going to stay silent anymore. Someone from this organization sent me a very violent message. Well, now it was their turn to hear what I had to say. “We all know what’s going on, we all know about my parents. If they’re alive, I have no idea where they are. And I have no intention of finding them or giving them to anyone. So stop killing my friends.”
“What? We would never!” Rosario gasped, as if truly appalled.
I almost believed her. That was the problem in dealing with spies: they lied with such sincerity you’d think you were getting the truth straight from the Pope. It was starting to make me crazy, like I couldn’t trust my own eyes, my own gut. These people worked for Department D. I knew that for a fact.
“Well, then, pass the message along to Randolph Urban.” I stepped toward them, my voice low and threatening as my heart crashed against my chest. “Baby pictures will not manipulate me. Neither will pictures of Marcus and me at a train station. I know that photo was taken in Cortona by a Department D agent. So whoever sent it to Regina wanted me to know it came from this company, right here.” I pointed to the big corporate digital screen. “They want me to know you killed my friend, one of you. What I don’t get is why. Why Tyson? Why now?”
It didn’t make sense. Keira and I had been safely reunited for more than a month. We hadn’t stirred any trouble, aside from locating Antonio, who was already one of them. So why kill an innocent kid? There were other ways to find my parents, if they were even out there.
Regina’s words replayed in my head, repeating and repeating, until my mind grabbed hold of a phrase I’d previously overlooked: If she thinks she can hide from us, she’s kidding herself.
I thought back to the timing of events. Charlotte told us about Tyson’s death while Keira and I were eating fish and chips, the day after we had decided to go into hiding. Was that it? Did they somehow know about our plan? Was Julian’s flat, his terrace, bugged? Maybe they heard our entire conversation as we toasted champagne; maybe they were trying to force Keira and I to keep searching for our parents, to keeping drawing them out? It was what we feared, after all—that Department D would keep coming after us as long as we played their game. It was why we wanted to walk away.
Maybe, somehow, Department D knew that.
“I don’t know what Antonio told you, but we have no involvement with that side of the business,” Rosario insisted. “What’s happened to you and your sister, it’s horrible. But that has nothing to do with us.”
Carlos stepped toward me, his dark eyes taking on an authoritative look quite different from the cheery disposition he’d expressed earlier. “I know you don’t trust us. You think Department D had something to do with what happened to Keira, to your friend, but if it did, that has nothing to do with our engineering firm.”
“Or us,” Rosario interjected.
“In fact, my wife and I are working to ensure that Dresden will thrive regardless of what happens to Department D. We know the FBI is building a case. It’s only a matter of time, and we want to make sure Dresden does not go down, too,” Carlos explained.
“We do good work,” Rosario went on, her eyes pleading with me to understand, as if my opinion mattered. It didn’t, not on this, but it was clear that their sons’ opinions mattered very much. “We save lives. We’ve even started a foundation to donate our technological advancements to impoverished communities worldwide. The Dresden Chemical Corporation is worth protecting.”
“But if you want to bring down Department D, and whoever is running things there, we won’t stop you,” Carlos offered, a bit too easily, like he was daring me to continue the fight, like he wanted me to light the match and watch the spies burn.
Wrinkles spread across my brow. If he were involved with Department D, he wouldn’t present me with a challenge to destroy it, would he? Maybe he was telling the truth and he was an engineer hoping to unlink his firm from criminal ties. But if so, then why didn’t he work someplace else? There had to be hundreds, if not thousands, of successful engineering firms. Why stay here unless he approved of their underhanded dealings? Or maybe he’d had a change of heart? The offer to go after “whoever is running things” could signify a break with Randolph Urban, and it could explain why Urban was in hiding. Maybe there was a mutiny on the corporate pirate ship.
“Where’s Urban?” I asked, hedging my bets.
Carlos and Rosario exchanged a look. “We shouldn’t have this conversation here,” she replied before her brown eyes shifted around the lobby and landed briefly on a security guard. He nodded her way, then she abruptly looked at her diamond watch. “You know, I didn’t notice the time. Why don’t we have lunch?” she suddenly suggested. “I’m free for at least forty minutes.”
“Splendid.” Carlos clapped once in agreement. “Aanastaaasthia, do you like sushi?”
“What?” My face twisted like they were performing some sort of improv show.
“No, how about steak?” Rosario offered, her hand on my back as she ushered me toward the sliding glass doors. The security guard stepped alongside her, as if he had been waiting for a signal, and all three of them casually led me toward the exit.
“I’m not having lunch with you! I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Well, there’s this great farm-to-table place—”
“Are you delusional?” I shouted as I was guided through the doors into a circular drive where a black car was idling, the driver looking directly at me. My heart seized.
They were throwing me into a car, they were kidnapping me, and they were taking me to an undisclosed location. Everything they’d said was bullshit; they were stalling, killing time until they could put their plan into action and drag me away. Every fear I’d had when I walked into the lobby was true. They killed Tyson, they wanted to kill my parents, and they’d do anything to make that happen.
I skidded to a halt and frantically glanced in every direction, eyes pleading for a place to run, when I heard the squeal of tires ripping into the covered portico. I shifted toward the sound as a midnight blue sedan screeched to a stop and its driver’s door swung open.
I didn’t know who I was expecting—a spy? An ax murderer? The police?
My parents?
When the figure stepped out, I sighed with relief. I recognized his face. And the bow tie.
It was Allen Cross.
Chapter
Ten
Allen Cross was the professor who gave me answers in Rome, who told me about Department D, and who helped me find my sister. He had been friends with my parents, he was a fellow spy, and now he was here.
“Thank God.” I shook Rosario’s hand from my back and put distance between us.
“What are you doing here, Allen?” Carlos asked, as if they had run into each other at the country club.
“What do you think?” Cross sounded like the question was dumb.
“We were just about to take Aanastaaasthia to lunch,” Carlos explained.
“Sure you were.”
“She’s been through quite an ordeal,” Rosario added.
“Yes, her friend’s funeral.” Cross looked at me. “That’s why I’m here.”
“I don’t care why you’re here, I’m just glad you are.” I moved away from the Reys, prepared to march to Cross’s car, but their hulking security guard reached out a thick fist.
“Let her go,” Cross demanded, his voice menacing for a man with a bald head and liver spots.
“Of course.” Rosario smiled cheerily. “Aanastaaasthia’s free to go wherever she likes. We were merely hoping to hear more about how our boys are doing.”
Cross pursed his thin lips like he expected a better lie. I didn’t. The Reys might be engineers, or they might be evil spy overlords, but one thing was certain—they did love their sons, or Marcus at least, and they did care what they thought of them. Their questions about their kids were the only part of our interaction I didn’t doubt, which meant if they did kill Tyson, if they did inflict this pain on me, on Regina, I was in possession of a surefire way to hurt them. Marcus would never forgive them.
I turned to his parents, my voice steady. “I saw Marcus’s face, when Antonio told him that you know about Department D, when his brother admitted he worked for the spies who kidnapped my sister, when he said you recruited him, made him work here. Marcus was broken. So how do you think he’s gonna look when I tell him you work for the people who killed my best friend?” Neither parent said anything, but their jaws stiffened, reality sinking in. “You see, I know how he’s going to look, how he’s going to feel. It’s the exact same way I felt when I learned the truth about my parents. And you know what I feel toward my parents now? Hate. Nothing but pure hate.” I ground my teeth, and Carlos and Rosario could see that I meant it. Their perky poker faces folded as they considered being loathed, beyond redemption, by their children.
Then I summoned my inner Phoenix, every lesson I learned from watching my parents control their tempers yet be dangerously threatening at the same time. “If you work for the people who sent me that message, if you are the people who sent that message, trust me, you will get a response. From me. And I will make sure it hurts you just as much. In every way I can.”
With that, I marched to Cross’s car, opened the passenger door, and sat down. No one stopped me. No one said anything.
Until Cross began to drive.
…
For someone who spent the last three years with a crippling fear of vehicular transportation, I tended to spend a lot of time in speeding cars. I sat rigid, one hand gripping the car-door handle, the other gripping my seat, while my mind spun faster than the tires. Usually, when a girl met the parents of a boy she liked, she worried about making a good impression—wearing the right dress or trying to look intelligent and well mannered. I, however, threatened the Reys and accused them of murder while trying not to be kidnapped.
Marcus’s parents killed Tyson, or they knew who killed him, or they worked with whoever killed him. How was I going to tell him that? OMG, your parents are so adorable! And they kill people! We had such a great time!
Or maybe they didn’t kill people. Hopefully, they didn’t. And hopefully neither did the guy sitting next to me.
“How did you know where I was?” I asked as Cross raced into a tunnel of Boston’s infamous Big Dig. Apparently, long before I lived in the city, the traffic was so clogged that they spent billions (and billions and billions) to build highways underground. Now we were left with a series of human-sized rat tunnels lit by rows of fluorescent lights that gave the feeling of a spaceship switching to hyper speed. I’d had numerous nightmares about stumbling in these dark channels unable to escape as flaming cars whizzed at me. I wasn’t a dream expert, but I imagined there was some symbolism in there.
“I heard about the death of Tyson Westbrook, and I had a feeling you’d turn up. I do not believe events transpired the way the police claim,” Cross said.
“No kidding.” I huffed.
I filled him in on my conversation with Regina and the deadly message she received while standing over her boyfriend’s lifeless body.
“Well, that communication was rather overt.” His face was flat, void of sympathy, as if the news were a memo from corporate.
I scrunched my nose at his reaction. “Tyson had nothing to do with anything. He was completely innocent. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“I’ve been in this business a long time. What do you expect me to say?”
I expected him to treat this as more than another bad day at the office. Tyson was a normal teenager. No, actually, he was an extraordinary teenager, one who faced more challenges than any kid his age should and who managed to handle them all, before someone Cross knew, someone he might have had dinner with, ended Tyson’s chance to rise above the circumstance he was born into.
“You’re as bad as the rest of them,” I spat.
“I probably am.” His eyes stayed on the road. “But would you prefer me to fill you with a bunch of I’m sorrys?”
“I don’t need a bunch, but one wouldn’t hurt. ‘Hi, Anastasia, I’m sorry your best friend died because of you…’”
“Fine. Hello, Anastasia, my condolences on the loss of your friend. I believe you were recently speaking with the two people who killed him.”
“What? No!” I yelped, feeling a pang so sharp, I grabbed my gut.
No, no, no! Not Marcus’s parents. Sure, I’d let my mind go there, I even threatened them, but I was really hoping it was some random Bob from Dresden Accounting, who had gone off his psychedelic meds in a rogue murderous rampage unaffiliated with anyone my friends or I had ever met. Not our parents, not any of our parents. My skull thudded against the passenger headrest. “It can’t be them. They couldn’t do that to Tyson, to Marcus. Are you sure?”
Cross glanced my way. “As soon as I heard of your friend’s death, I knew it wasn’t an arbitrary homicide. It never is.” He adjusted the grip of his hunter green bow tie, aggressively tugging it loose as if our conversation were suddenly choking him. Good. It should bother him.
“Department D wants your parents, and they are going to draw them out—for vengeance, for a public shaming, for the fun of watching their loved ones twist in agony.” He was spitting as he spoke, cracks showing in his perfect spy facade, which was oddly concerning and comforting at the same time. “They’re not going to stop. We already know Department D kidnapped your sister, and then led you on a wild chase to find her. Why? To get mummy and daddy’s attention. But what good did it do them? What did they achieve?”
“Nothing. It didn’t work,” I pointed out.
“Exactly. They didn’t get your parents. At least, as far as I know,” he continued. He started removing his black overcoat, while he was driving, at least twenty miles per hour over the speed limit, in a narrow city tunnel. I clenched the door handle tighter and noticed his cornflower blue button-down was blotted with sweat stains. “Every Department D plan has layers. And this one is meant to systematically destroy you, your sister, and everyone you love, bit by bit, until your parents either swoop out of the dark to help, or they accept that their revenge will be taken out on the next generation through a soul-crushing, never-ending cycle of pain.”
“Well, mission accomplished,” I quipped. “My soul is officially crushed.”
“I wouldn’t say that yet. Things can always get worse. Trust me, meth
ods for inflicting pain are pulled from a fathomless abyss…” His voice faded, hazel eyes twitching. This man didn’t flex a micro muscle of emotion in Italy, but now his face was growing openly upset.
“Are you okay?” I asked, unsure I wanted the answer.
“Of course.” He adjusted his posture, shaking off his heavy mood and clearing his throat. “I’m just an old man tired of old games.”
I chose to believe him, mostly because I preferred his stoic disposition and wasn’t sure I wanted to know what had him so rattled.
“This isn’t a game,” I pointed out. “My friend’s dead.”
Somewhere outside of this windshield, in a windy Massachusetts cemetery, Tyson’s body was being lowered into a pile of dirt. Forever. He’d have no college memories, no career, no first apartment, no dog, no piece of crap car, no kids, no life. Because he had the audacity to befriend me.
Cross sighed. “There will be more casualties. You need to prepare yourself, because they won’t stop until they get what they want.”
“Who is they? And why do you think Marcus’s parents are involved?”
While everything Cross had told us to date was accurate, I was not going to return to London and induct Marcus into the Evil Parent Club without proof.
“The Reys are highly intelligent, next-level geniuses. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve all got our gifts. Urban dreamed up all of this.” He said it like a compliment, the way you’d refer to Steve Jobs or Walt Disney. “Your parents, they were the ones in the field. They got their hands dirty, oversaw every mission, every agent, every win. But the Reys, they were behind the scenes, working in labs, sitting at computers, no one knowing what they were doing. Don’t be fooled by their charm. They’re vicious, manipulative snakes.”
“So they’re not nice people. None of you are.” Even I suspected Rosario and Carlos’s cheery personalities were about as authentic as a beauty queen during the interview segment, but that didn’t prove they were murderers. “How do you know they killed Tyson?”
“Because I know the Reys, the real Reys. They’re two of the brightest minds in the field of science worldwide, and they think that makes them invincible, that no one will suspect them. But I see them. And trust me, I know from experience that they are not above killing people to send a message.” His jaw was clenched so tight his lips barely moved as he spoke, beads of sweat forming on his bald head. He hated these people, passionately, but that didn’t prove they killed Tyson.
Lies That Bind Page 10