by Black, Jenna
“Maybe now is a good time to tell me what’s really going on,” Dante prompted when Nate failed to pull himself out of his panic nosedive. Dante frowned at the rearview mirror, once again letting Nate know how unhappy he was about Agnes’s presence.
Nate turned in his seat so he could meet Agnes’s eyes. “Can I trust you not to repeat everything I say?”
“Will you believe me if I say yes?” she countered.
Good point. He still didn’t quite know what to make of her. Clearly, she wasn’t the meek little pushover he’d thought, but he had no clue what she was really made of. Hell, for all he knew, she was a spy planted on him by the Chairman to try to eke out his secrets. Though surely if she were meant to act as a spy, she would have better-developed social skills.
“You know, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Tell anyone you think should know.” His neck was getting stiff from the awkward position, so he shifted in his seat and faced forward once more. Maybe it would be easier to talk about what had happened if he didn’t have to look into someone’s face anyway.
“Nadia was arrested on suspicion of treason a few weeks ago,” he started.
“Yes, I know,” Agnes said. “But she was cleared of all charges.”
“Well, yeah, but it’s the why of it all that gets us into trouble.” He sneaked a glance over at Dante, who was watching the road with studious concentration.
“She was wearing a transmitter when she was arrested,” Nate said. “I went to try to help her, and got into a big fight with my father and our late chief of security, and they said some things they would never have said if they’d known about the transmitter. They said things so incriminating that once they found out Nadia had been transmitting to a secret location, and that she’d set it up so that the recordings would be released if she died or disappeared, they had to let her go.”
Nate stalled out, remembering the horror of seeing Nadia strapped to a table with Thea poised to vivisect her. Nadia had been gagged, unable to reveal that she had the transmitter on her and therefore unable to use the information to save herself. If Nate hadn’t figured it out …
“I don’t understand,” Agnes said. “You got into a big fight and they said ‘incriminating things.’ In front of you. I mean, I get that they didn’t expect Nadia to be able to tell anyone about it, but what about—” She interrupted herself with a gasp.
“You’re a Replica…”
Dante frowned and looked at Agnes in the rearview mirror. “Surely you already knew that.”
Nate couldn’t help turning in his seat again, despite the stiff neck. Agnes’s shocked expression told him that whatever she might lack in social graces, she had one hell of a sharp mind. She was making all the connections, despite having very little information to go on.
“He felt free to talk in front of you because he was planning to kill you,” she said in a horrified whisper. “Then he was going to use an old backup to make a new Replica who hadn’t heard any of his secrets.”
Nate nodded, but Agnes wasn’t finished making connections yet.
“What happened to the original Nathaniel Hayes?”
Nate and Dante shared a look. Dante knew the answer to that question because Kurt had witnessed the murder. It had been passed off to the public as the work of Dirk Mosely acting alone. But after everything Agnes had figured out so far, she was never going to buy that story.
“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Nate answered grimly. “The only reason my father didn’t kill me the second time was because of those recordings. And the only thing that’s kept him from killing Nadia is that she had those recordings hidden and had arranged for them to be released if anything happened to her.”
Nate had turned to face front once more, so he couldn’t see Agnes’s reaction to the news. “I got word during the opera that Nadia’s sister had just died in an ‘accident.’”
“And you think she led your father to the recordings and now he’s going to go after Nadia,” Dante finished for him.
Nate nodded and chose not to mention the likelihood that he was on the Chairman’s hit list as well.
There was a long silence as everyone stewed in their own thoughts.
“What do you know that’s worth killing so many people over?” Dante asked.
“I can’t tell you that.” Even if he trusted Agnes and Dante completely, he doubted he’d tell them about Thea. She was dead and gone, and telling people about her would serve no good purpose.
“Did you tell Bishop?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but no.”
“Who’s Bishop?” Agnes asked.
Nate didn’t consciously intend to answer that question with any real honesty. He could tell her Kurt was his old valet, and it would be completely true. But his subconscious had other ideas.
“He’s my boyfriend,” Nate blurted, then blinked in surprise. But really, what was the point of keeping that particular secret any longer? Under the circumstances, he had no choice but to flee his Executive life anyway, so why should he keep pretending? He’d always hated having to hide that side of himself, hated having to live a lie.
Nate didn’t look to see how Agnes was taking the revelation. Dante shrugged, as if it were no big deal—which to an Employee, it wasn’t.
“I must admit,” Dante said, “I’d wondered about you two. You seemed way more attached than an Executive would normally be to his valet.”
“Well, now you know.” Nate resisted the urge to squirm. He felt like Agnes was probably staring daggers at him from the backseat, but he didn’t have the guts to check. It wasn’t like she’d been hoping for high romance in her marriage with him anyway, but he supposed the news still had to come as something of a shock. Maybe she was now regretting having helped him. He was certainly regretting his impulse to bring her along in the first place. When he and Dante had tried to leave her behind in the trunk, Nate had tried to warn her what kind of danger she was walking into, but he hadn’t fully appreciated it himself at the time. It wasn’t just her reputation she had ruined by running off with him; it might well be her very life. What were the chances his father would believe Agnes didn’t know any damning secrets after all this? Finding out the truth about his sexual preferences was the least of her troubles.
Nate reached up and rubbed his eyes, as if he could somehow wipe away everything that had happened in the last few hours.
“When were you planning to tell me this?” Agnes asked, her voice cold for the first time he could remember.
Nate sank down a little lower in his seat. “I wasn’t. I’m sorry if that makes me dishonest, but I couldn’t risk you outing me. I have no interest in being ‘reprogrammed.’ But hey, look on the bright side: I’m going to be either dead or in hiding when this is over, so you won’t have to marry me after all.” He didn’t have the heart to break it to her that she would be in the same boat.
“You think your father would really kill you?” Dante asked. “Now that the Replica program is on hiatus?”
“Let’s just say I wouldn’t put it past him. Now why don’t we talk about something more important, like how we’re going to get Nadia out of the Sanctuary, and once we work that out, where the hell we’re going from there.”
They’d finally reached a highway, and Dante gunned the motor. A warning light on the dashboard came on, telling him he was exceeding the speed limit. With a growl of frustration, he slowed down. If he didn’t, the car would automatically send out a signal to the highway patrol, and he would have a hell of a time explaining why he had Nate and Agnes in the car with him if they were pulled over.
“I don’t suppose you know how to disable that sensor?” Nate asked, and Dante shook his head.
“I’ll get us there as fast as I can without drawing attention. When we get there, can you use your status to talk the retreat guards into delivering Nadia?”
Nate gave Dante an incredulous stare. “That’s your rescue plan? We just drive up to the gates and ask th
em to hand her over?”
Dante’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, and a muscle in his jaw twitched. “I’ve never tried to break someone out of an Executive retreat before, so excuse me if I’m a little out of my depth.”
“Can’t your … contacts help somehow?” The resistance had been able to get to Nadia at Tranquility, so surely they had someone on the inside at the Sanctuary, too.
Dante clenched up even more, anger radiating from him in waves. “No,” he said through gritted teeth.
At first, Nate thought the anger was directed at him, for asking uncomfortable questions, but then he realized he was being an idiot. The resistance had been willing to help get a message to Nadia at Tranquility in return for the information Nate had promised them. He had nothing left to bargain with, except for information he didn’t dare share. Though perhaps Dante’s resistance bosses didn’t have to know that …
“Don’t bother,” Dante said, as if reading his mind. “They have zero interest in getting involved. This is too dangerous, and she’s too high-profile. It wouldn’t matter if you offered to solve the mysteries of the universe for them, they wouldn’t bite.”
Nate did a double take. “But you’re going after her anyway. And you’re using one of their cars…” He was talking too much again, giving Agnes more clues than it was safe to give her. If she went blabbing to someone about this conversation, Dante could very well find himself brought in for questioning. Then again, who would she have to blab to? Her life was as ruined as his.
Dante nodded grimly, watching the road. “I’m disobeying direct orders. But I am not abandoning Nadia. I promised I would get her out of there…”
Nate wondered when that had happened, but he kept his curiosity—and the habitual pulse of jealousy that came with it—tightly leashed. Right now, he had to concentrate on coming up with a plan. Even though he kind of sucked at planning. He was more of a “charge in and hope everything works out” kind of guy, but that wasn’t going to be enough tonight. He tried calling Nadia’s emergency phone again, but was again dumped into voice mail.
“The place is guarded out the wazoo,” Nate muttered, hoping that maybe thinking out loud could help. “The fence is electrified, and they have freaking watchtowers!”
“And security cameras,” Agnes added from the back. “I noticed those when we went through the gates for the funeral.”
“Not only that,” Dante contributed, “but it’ll be almost three in the morning when we get there, and we don’t know exactly where Nadia is. If we don’t get through to her on the phone, she’ll probably be fast asleep and have no idea she’s in trouble or that we’re coming.”
Nate told himself not to panic, no matter how insurmountable the problems seemed. But in all honesty, he had no idea how they were going to pull this off without getting themselves captured and condemned to a fate worse than death.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The constant flow of adrenaline through her veins made Nadia want to run as fast as she could, but her best chance of escape was to move slowly and cautiously. She tiptoed down the dormitory hall and used Lily’s key card to unlock the hall door. The door made a soft beep when it approved the key card, and Nadia winced. But though this place felt like a prison to her, it wasn’t one. There were no guards posted to keep the inmates locked in, no one to come running to investigate the unexpected sound.
Nadia cast a wary eye on the security cameras as she slipped out the door. She had to assume that Lily had disabled them so as not to catch the planned murder on them, but how many of the cameras had she disabled? All of them? Or just the ones that might have caught her doing something incriminating? If any of the cameras were active, Nadia’s escape attempt would end before it truly began.
Closing the door behind her as softly as possible, Nadia cautiously stepped out of the dormitory hall and went for the main staircase. She had to pass through another security door to get there, but Lily’s key card once again did the trick.
The main staircase and the lobby it led to were both dark, only a few dim night-lights offering any illumination at all. That was a good sign, Nadia decided. It meant the staff of the night shift didn’t frequent this area. Nadia suspected they used a service stairway to gain access to the second floor, where the dormitory was located.
Creeping forward, listening for any sign that she was not alone, she headed toward the office, where she could use the phone to call for help. She hated to put anyone else in danger, but escaping the Sanctuary penniless, on foot, and in uniform wouldn’t do her a whole lot of good. She held her breath as she passed a door with a discreet placard declaring it to be the security center, but, though she heard voices, no one leapt out at her.
Like just about everything else in this damn place, the office was locked, with entry allowed by key card only. Nadia put her ear to the door, trying to guess whether anyone was inside. She didn’t hear anything, and the longer she lurked in the lighted hallway, the more likely someone was going to happen along, so she quickly ran her key card through the reader and pushed the door open, canister held out in front of her like a gun.
She needn’t have bothered. The room was dark and empty. She let out a sigh of relief as she closed the door behind her. She leaned her back against it and closed her eyes, trying to calm the frantic beating of her heart and take a deep breath. She still had a long, long way to go before she was out of here. There was no time to indulge in relief or search for calm.
Nadia plucked the nearest phone from its cradle, glad that she’d had the foresight to memorize the number for Dante’s secure phone instead of depending on the address book in the phone he’d given her. A quick check of the time showed her that it was past 2:30 A.M., and she hoped and prayed that Dante was a light sleeper and would hear his phone ringing.
Her knees went a little weak when he answered on the second ring, and she had to sit down on the edge of the desk to stay upright.
“Nadia?” he asked, sounding not at all like someone who’d just been woken up at 2:30 in the morning. “Is that you?”
“Yeah,” she said. There was a quaver in her voice, and the hand that held the phone was shaking slightly in delayed reaction. But she was still in dire trouble, so she ordered herself to delay the reaction even longer. It didn’t stop her hands from shaking.
“I’m in trouble,” she said. “I need help.”
“What’s happened?”
“Someone just tried to kill me.” Her voice was shaking more now instead of less. She had to get ahold of herself. “I’m fine, but I have to get out of here before they try again. I didn’t know who else to call.” And she didn’t know what she was hoping Dante could do for her. He was at least a four-hour drive away. It wasn’t like she could afford to wait for him before making her move.
And that was when her mind finally processed the fact that there was noise in the background on Dante’s end of the line, noise that didn’t sound like it belonged in a bedroom.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“About fifteen minutes out from the Sanctuary. Hold on and I’m going to put you on speaker. I’ve got Nate and Ag— Miss Belinski with me.”
Nadia was glad she’d already sat down or she might have collapsed in shock. “What?”
The background noise became louder and tinnier. “We’re coming for you, Nadia,” Nate’s voice said.
It should have been good news. They were only fifteen minutes away instead of four hours, and that greatly increased her chances of escaping. But they wouldn’t be coming for her in the middle of the night unless something gave them reason to fear for her life. The dreadful suspicion she’d been trying to hold off crashed through her mental barriers.
“Has something happened to Gerri?” she asked, willing them to tell her no.
There was a silence in the car, and she imagined them looking at each other, each waiting for someone else to answer. It was Dante who finally did.
“Her car went off the bridge into the East
River.”
Pain stabbed through Nadia’s heart. “No,” she moaned, pressing her free hand against her sternum as if that would somehow ease the pain. It didn’t.
“I’m so sorry,” Dante said softly.
Nadia wished he were here with her, wished she could throw herself into his arms and sob until her eyes could produce no more tears. But she didn’t have time to lose herself in grief. Not here, not now.
There was a mother lode of anger beneath the grief. Anger at her parents for not letting her talk to Gerri. Anger at the retreat staff for taking her phone away. Anger at herself for not having told Gerri the truth in the first place. But most of all, anger at the Chairman, who had ordered both her death and Gerri’s. Nadia tapped into that well of fury to hold the grief at bay.
“Are you all right?” Nate asked, though he had to know the answer was no. “It’s not a coincidence that you’re calling right now, is it?”
Nadia remembered she hadn’t been on the speaker yet when she’d told Dante what had happened. She hoped Nate would take the news as calmly as Dante had.
“Don’t get hysterical,” she answered. “I promise you I’m fine, not a scratch on me. But someone just tried to kill me.”
“We don’t have time for you to freak out,” Dante said, and Nadia presumed he was talking to Nate based on the sharpness of his voice.
“I’m not freaking out, and I’m not getting hysterical!” Nate snapped. “I’m just so pissed off I want to punch someone. Maybe it doesn’t bother you that someone just tried to kill Nadia, but it definitely bothers me.”
“Don’t start, guys,” Nadia said, wondering how the two of them had managed to survive a four-hour car ride together. And what had Dante said about Agnes being with them? She’d have asked about it, except she didn’t think they had the time to waste. She’d get them to fill in the many details she was missing when she got out of here.