by Jillian Dodd
Daniel takes my hand in his, brings it to his lips, and sweetly kisses it. And I know exactly what he’s doing—setting up his own family, so no one will be shocked when we get engaged.
MISSION:DAY SEVEN
I wake up to a call from a London phone number that I don’t recognize. But I do recognize the adorable sound of Chauncey’s voice.
“Lorenzo calls and talks to me almost every day. You never do.” I can picture his cute little face with his bottom lip puffed out. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. I’ve just been busy with work. How is school?”
“We get out for the summer on Thursday. You need to visit me.”
“I’ll be in London for work soon. I promise I will.”
“Yay!” he yells into the phone. “She’s coming to visit! She’s coming to visit.”
“Who are you talking to?”
“Cookie!”
“You’re talking to a cookie? Aren’t you supposed to eat them?” I tease.
“No, silly. That’s what I call Lorenzo’s chef because she makes me cookies every day after school.”
“Sounds like you’re getting spoiled.”
“She does it because she knows I’m sad, and I miss my daddy.” He lets out a little sniffle, and I want to reach through the phone and hug him. “Huntley, I’m sad because of something else. Something I saw on the telly.”
“What did you see?” I ask him, praying it’s nothing about The Priest.
“Lorenzo is going to marry someone named Elizabeth. And I don’t like her.”
“Have you ever met her?”
“No,” he says.
“How do you know you don’t like her then?”
“Because you are supposed to marry Lorenzo and be my family in case my daddy doesn’t come home. His job is dangerous. I’m scared he’s not coming home. Ever.”
What he said breaks my heart.
“I promise I will come visit you.”
“Can we go on holiday together? To the beach?”
“I’ll do my best,” I promise.
It’s not until I hang up that I realize I have tears flowing down my face.
“Who was that?” Daniel asks, rolling over in his bed to face me.
“Just a friend in London.”
“And why are you crying?” he asks, leaping on my bed and gently wiping my tears away.
“Because he asked why I wasn’t the one marrying Lorenzo.”
“What kind of ring do you want?” he asks, causing me to immediately visualize the one Lorenzo slipped on my finger and remember the beautiful words he spoke.
“I don’t know about getting engaged, Daniel. I don’t think your plan will work, and I don’t think I could go through with it. Please don’t ask me. And certainly don’t ask me in public. I don’t want to embarrass either one of us.”
“Guess I’ll have to surprise you then.” He hops out of bed, grabs his backpack, rummages around the bottom of it, and then tosses me a velvet box.
“What is this?”
“The ring I bought for Lizzie.”
“You were going to propose?”
He drops his head down and nods. “Yeah. Here at the Trials.”
I wrap my arm around him in a hug, understanding all too well the freshness of his pain, and then open the lid.
“This is beautiful, Daniel. And it looks like a ring Lizzie would have loved.” I gaze at the simple platinum setting that enhances the beauty of an emerald-cut diamond solitaire.
“It’s classic, right? And classy. Like her. ‘Big enough but not too big,’ is what she told me her ideal ring was. It’s smaller than what Lorenzo gave her. If nothing else, I take comfort in the fact that I know she hates the nine-carat ring she has to wear.”
“Don’t buy me a ring, Daniel. Seriously. I just feel like this is a bad idea.”
“Trust me,” Daniel says, carefully putting the ring away.
The skybox is a lively place today with Daniel’s family all in attendance as well as numerous other guests. We had food catered in all week, but today’s spread is much more extravagant with carved beef tenderloin and a particularly delicious mashed potato bar.
Daniel’s only heat today is the all-important-to-him hundred butterfly final since he is the current world record holder and is hoping to best it today. Although he is still sad about Lizzie, he seems to be doing better and is most definitely performing better in the pool. It’s hard to believe that, just a few days ago, he almost didn’t qualify for one of his best events.
When he does exactly what he set out to do and breaks the record by two-tenths of a second, the crowd goes crazy, and when he rushes over to give me a hug, I tell him I’m taking him to the Bahamas tonight to celebrate.
“This is crazy,” he says as we board my plane.
“You don’t want to go to the beach for one night of just letting loose?”
“Just how loose are we talking, Huntley?” he fires back with a smirk, followed by a pained grimace. His flirting comes so naturally, sometimes he forgets how sad he is. “Would you be upset if we just went back to DC? I’m not trying to be a party pooper, but I’m exhausted.”
“And probably hungry,” I tease. “DC it is. Your place or mine?”
“Yours,” he says, suddenly looking very tired. “It will be way quieter than the White House, and I can’t face my townhouse alone. Last time I was there was when Lizzie visited.”
I let the pilot know the change in destination and then collapse onto the sofa next to him. He lies down with his head on my lap and immediately falls to sleep, leaving me with some time to think about my next move.
I’ve been trying to determine who’s been watching me. The logical choice is the CIA, but they aren’t technically supposed to operate on our homeland. That’s the FBI’s job. They could follow me though, if I were suspected of terrorism or if they thought I was spying for a foreign country. Since Mike Burnes tried to recruit me, I don’t think that’s the case. It could be British intelligence, ordered by Intrepid, but I believe he would only do that if he thought I was in danger—or if he didn’t trust me. Neither of which I think is true.
That leaves the bad guys or Black X.
MISSION:DAY EIGHT
Daniel spent the night here last night but was up and out the door early to meet his trainer at the White House pool. You’d think, after successfully qualifying, he might get a day off, but the Olympics are quickly approaching, and he needs to be in top form.
And I know that I do, too.
I’m going to search every square inch of Ares Von Allister’s home. I need more than speculation. If something is going to start in Montrovia, at the Olympics—which has to do with seeds or maybe food, as it seems my mother suspected—I need solid proof. A six-year-old coded note with a few words on it isn’t going to cut it. You’d think, if Mom had figured it all out, she would have had actual proof and left it in one of the safety deposit boxes. But maybe that’s why she called her handler, saying she’d discovered a plot to end the world. Maybe she only knew enough, like I do now. But she didn’t know how. Maybe she was going to bring it to the CIA to get help in figuring it out.
I run through what I do know.
—Ares Von Allister used quantum technology to create the TerraSphere and was in a research-based financial partnership with the United States government. That contract is expiring, and its extension will be voted on at the Von Allister board meeting.
— Before an extinction event occurred, Ares wanted to create the perfect world for humanity by living in harmony with our planet.
—A group started by Lorenzo the Magnificent is still in existence and wants to create Ares’s Arcadia, a worldwide Montrovia full of wealth, beauty, and power.
—Montrovia will be the capital of Arcadia.
—The group designed the Georgia Guidestones.
—The group wants the population reduced drastically.
—My mother’s clues consisted of words and places she deemed impo
rtant. Arcadia referred to Ares’s plan and the name on the dollar bill with Alessandro’s photo—and, later, Ophelia’s. Lorenzo the Magnificent started a secret group along with his brother, Giuliano Medici. A group that today is called The Society. She listed two names—Harrison McClellan and John F. Hillford. One would assume they were members of the secret group, possibly its leaders. She also listed the word Trojan Horse and took me to see a statue of a prince fleeing Troy. I still don’t have any idea what that means.
If Lorenzo the Magnificent started with ten members and there were ten chairs when Ares was asked to join, that means there should be ten rings. I know Ares was given one. I have Dupree’s. One sits in the Victoria and Albert Museum. And one is locked away in the Montrovian royal vault. I’m going to assume that McClellan has one and that Hillford did, too. That’s six out of ten.
Who are the other players?
My mind immediately goes to Malcolm Prescott and Aleksandr Nikolaevich, Ares’s best friends, who have vaults, follow The Society’s rules, and speak passionately about the history of the group.
Considering this hurts my heart a little. Both men have been so nice to me, so welcoming … so eager to discuss my father.
It’s also a little odd that Lorenzo would just happen to choose a suite of jewels to propose, to want me to wear on our wedding day, with the name Arcadia.
Did they recruit him since using Ophelia hadn’t worked?
And why hasn’t Ari been contacted? Or has he? He never heard of Black X when we first were paired up. What if he’s part of this group already? What if he’s working for them?
I shake my head. That couldn’t be. Dupree said when Ari takes Ares’s place at the table, indicating that he hasn’t yet. And it sounded like he wouldn’t be asked until after the world became Arcadia.
The world I was supposed to be the queen of.
I take a deep breath, wondering what to do about Lorenzo. I love him. Although it hurts that he did the press conference, I understand his predicament.
I trusted him implicitly, even after all that—until the video game. He’s the only one who knows I have Dupree’s ring.
That means one of these things:
—Black X, who knew I had seen the ring at the museum, assumed that, if I saw the same ring on Dupree, I would take it.
—Black X wants me to know the rings are actual keys and wants me to steal the one from the museum, get Dupree’s, or find the one that belonged to Ares.
—Black X wants me to use the key at the TerraSphere.
I close my eyes and rub my face, not wanting it to be true. Not wanting people I care about to be part of something that not only caused my mother’s death, but also wants to cause the deaths of millions.
Since I don’t know who to trust, I go back to searching the house for the ring and anything of possible significance, being sure to check for hidden doorways and safes. I find a few of those but nothing of significance to the case, so I give up and make my way down to the gun range.
After shooting enough targets to make me feel better, I find the entrance to the vault hidden in an alcove at the end of the range. As I enter the code—032 872—I realize something important. I can’t believe I missed it before, but then again, when Ari told it to me, he said it that way—032 872 as opposed to 03 28 72.
March 28, 1972 was the date of my mother’s birth.
Maybe Ares did love her.
The vault setup is very similar to the one at the Prescotts’ London home, but I get to explore it further. Not only are there stacks of gold bricks, seeds, water, rations, supplies, and weapons, but there are also very comfortable living quarters in the back with numerous old books, paintings, gems, stones, and historical artifacts that rival a small museum. It’s all very well organized, but it would take me weeks to go through it all in search of a clue, so I only do a cursory check.
I give up, go back upstairs, and head over to the lab, where I sit on the floor and pretend to pet the dog, taking myself back to that day. Mom was either investigating Ares or investigating something related to him.
The fact that we were at his office should indicate that she was investigating something related to him. I have to assume she got the Arcadian currency from him. Really, it could have been as simple as that. Trying to figure out why Giovanni’s brother wanted him dead—a search that revolved around history, secret societies, and conspiracy theories. A dollar bill. A list left in code. A ring.
Tears spill from my face as I realize that Ares was a part of that group and, ultimately, he was responsible for the death of the woman he cared for most.
My phone buzzes, startling me.
“We’re in town,” Peter says. “Daniel and Viktor are being party poopers. Are you going to be?”
“I don’t know,” I say with a laugh. “What do you have in mind?”
“There’s this party.”
“Isn’t there always?”
“When I’m around, yes, there is. Daniel said that you are at your father’s house. Did you find the gold?”
“Of course. After what you told me, I had to look. It’s all really amazing. But it worries me.”
“Why? You are well prepared.”
“I guess the thought of needing it. Of other people dying while I’m still living in luxury. And what if I don’t like what is left of the world?”
“You think way too much. What I want you to focus on is getting a killer dress for tonight. It’s an engagement party for some college friends of mine. Way too young to get married. And, of course, Viktor isn’t that tired, but the whole getting married thing is still upsetting to him, apparently. The priority now is the dress. Do you have something appropriate, or do we need to go shopping?”
“Hmm, let me take a look.” I run up the stairs, to my room, and into the closet. Thankfully, it is still fully stocked with dresses to kill. I make myself laugh with my own little joke. “I should be good.”
“Can I come over, like now? Don’t laugh, but this guy who invited me is sort of a rival of mine.”
“Why bother then?” I ask.
“Because I used to date his new fiancée.”
“Peter! You shouldn’t even be going.”
“I have to. He thinks that he’s won. I can’t have that. We have this thing. With girls. He tends to see them first. I tend to date them first. Now that I think about it, that was how I came to date the girl he’s engaged to now.”
“Oh boy. Am I supposed to be, like, your date for this?”
“Yes, take pity on me. He invited me at the last minute on purpose because he thinks I won’t have time to find a date, especially since I’m sure he’s seen Allie’s engagement announcement on social media. My not showing up—or worse, showing up alone—would be a sign of defeat.”
“Peter, you’re better than that. Let’s just go out and have some fun. Have dinner or go dancing or something.”
“Oh, trust me. This will be fun. I will be there at six to help you pick something to wear. How does that sound?”
“Sounds fun,” I quip before ending the call.
I take a luxuriously long bath, using three bath bombs, and think about Lorenzo before getting ready. I have champagne sent up to my room and then go into my closet and am pulling out six possible options when Peter arrives.
“Maybe you should just wear that,” he says, giving my skimpy dressing robe a once-over.
“It’s nice to see you, too,” I tease. What can I say? I’m starting to really like him. He makes me laugh. “Which one do you like?”
“I have to see them on to answer that for sure, but,” he says, running his hand down an ivory Gucci dress trimmed in red and blue that I didn’t choose for tonight, “you have to wear this to the White House tomorrow.”
“Really? I was thinking it was like a backyard barbecue. More casual.”
He rolls his eyes at me. “It’s obvious, based on the notes on the clothes here, that you have a personal shopper. You should hire her to work for you full-t
ime. You’re becoming a fashion icon. You don’t want to make a wrong move. And it’s a backyard barbecue that only a President could throw. We’re talking staff, military, dignitaries, and celebrities on the White House lawn with food, games, concerts, and fireworks. Really, you’ll want multiple outfits for the day. Have Daniel or his mom send you a schedule of events.”
“Um, okay. Thank you. I know what I like when she brings me things. But you’re right. All this society stuff is very new.”
“Lucky you have me.” He studies the dresses I’ve chosen. “No, no, and no. Try on the others while I pop the champagne you so graciously had sent up.”
At Blackwood, my uniform consisted of black yoga pants and a T-shirt or hoodie with a black workout bra. Getting dressed up as Huntley Von Allister seemed foreign at first, but as I slide a designer dress onto my body after a week of wearing jeans and Daniel’s T-shirt at the Trials, it feels like I’m back in my own skin. Like I’m me.
But Peter is frowning.
“You don’t like any of them?” I ask.
“The girl we’re trying to one-up dresses in bold colors and styles. She’ll be in something utterly outrageous and expensive, probably custom, for her party. I like the black glittered mini, but it has that big bow on it, which is something she would love. You’re bloody gorgeous. I’m thinking we should go subtler.”
He grabs the bottle of champagne from the bucket and takes a few chugs while he goes through my entire closet.
“This one. Soft pink, corseted top, fierce leopard appliqué at the waist.” He glances at the label. “And Dolce & Gabbana. What more could you want?”
When I come back out of the bathroom with it on, he lets out a whistle. “And practically see-through. That’s the one.”
“Really? But it has long sleeves and hits well below my knee.”