All I know is that one of us was just killed, and it could have been by anyone.
The briefing room is erupting into an outburst of arguments and heated discussion now that everyone knows what happened. Alpha is standing protectively behind my chair, but he doesn’t move or say anything. I don’t either. It’s too chaotic and confusing in here, and I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Kilo might have been killed by someone in this very room.
Finally, Agent Novenine reaches into her pocket and retrieves an electronic device, setting it on the conference table. She doesn’t bother trying to speak over the noise. She just presses a button and waits as the device begins to emit a high-pitched whining, one that makes everyone immediately stop arguing and file out of the briefing room in silence. As operatives, we all know our place. The Executive is in full control here. If Agent Novenine wants to institute a curfew, she can. If she wants to sentence us to solitary confinement, she can.
If she wants to retire us all, she can.
Back at the dorms, Juliet collapses onto her bed, clutching a framed picture of Kilo and Tango in one hand and a half-empty vodka bottle in the other. She gazes at me and says, through her tears, “It was my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I say. “This would have happened even if you weren’t on a mission.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She shakes her head miserably. “I was going to change my identity and leave the Executive forever. Kilo was helping me, and now he’s dead.”
It’s somewhat surprising, but I’m not all that shocked to hear that Juliet has been trying to run away. She’s tired of the missions, tired of killing target after target, tired of being forced to use sex as a weapon. Even when we were children, she’d always talk about what life in the real world must be like. Other kids have something called recess, Echo. And birthday parties, and ballet recitals, and television...
“I thought the Executive would stop anyone who tried to run,” I say.
A horrible expression crosses Juliet’s face, as if she’s tasted something incredibly bitter. “You don’t think the Executive did it, do you?”
“No,” I say flatly. “They would have just retired him.”
“I guess you’re right,” she says. But her eyes are gazing off into the distance, and for a moment they’re filled with a shadowed darkness that makes me feel as if I’m looking at someone else.
“Do you know who killed Kilo?” I ask slowly.
“Would I be sitting here if I did?” Her tone suddenly turns caustic, to the point of lashing out. “We all know it was someone hired by Ophidian. This is what happens when people find out you’re with Mongoose, Echo. Not all of us are too scared shitless to join.”
Okay, so this is going to be worse than I thought. Juliet must have been drinking ever since she found out about Kilo’s death, and now she’s blacking out, turning into an alternative version of herself filled with hatred. There’s no way she’d be saying all this to me otherwise. I’m sure she won’t remember a single thing that’s happened after she got a third of the way through that vodka bottle.
“I did join,” I say defensively. “Alpha brought me on board.”
Juliet scrutinizes my expression, then gives a scornful laugh. “And yet he still didn’t tell you about the shipments, did he? I guess it must be nice to be allowed to live under a rock. Heaven forbid the goody-two-shoes Echo finds out we’re not some kind of angels seeking justice.” She flings the framed picture across the room, where it shatters against a wall. “No, Echo. We’re all just people.”
Now I’m starting to feel pissed off. If Juliet thinks I should know about the shipments, why doesn’t she tell me the truth instead of treating me like I’m a child? Even now, while blackout drunk, she isn’t letting anything slip. But the closer I get to Jamison Hart, the more inevitable it becomes that I’ll find out eventually. August will never allow anyone in Mongoose to tell me what’s in those shipments, because he doesn’t want to see me hurt.
But he can’t keep me safe forever.
I turn to Juliet, intending to convince her to tell me about the shipments, but she’s already passed out on her bed. There are more pressing concerns right now, anyway. Kilo’s death proves that Ophidian is way more dangerous than I realized, assuming they really did kill him, and I can’t keep wasting time like this. I have to get closer to Jamison Hart and retrieve the manifest as soon as possible, before even more people die.
Jamie texted Lily Bass’s phone yesterday, after August brought me to the safe house. I haven’t responded yet, but this is the perfect time to do it.
Jamie: You disappeared on me again, Lily.
Jamie: Are we still on for the wedding?
Me: Yes! Sorry. Just send me the details.
Jamie: Does this mean I’ll get to kiss you again?
Me: It depends on where you want to kiss me...
Jamie: Oh, you know where.
Me: Then I don’t see how I could possibly refuse. ;)
Jamie: Perfect.
Jamie: ;)
I take a deep breath, feeling myself calm down. August will watch over me at the wedding, and the Executive won’t notice if I stray slightly from the script to find the manifest. All I have to do is keep up the act of being in love with Jamison Hart for the rest of the mission.
But then I notice another text message, one that came through a half-hour ago, while everyone was in the briefing room.
Unknown: This is Kieran. If you’re receiving this, it means I’m dead. I love you, Teresa. Please give Joey my love.
I swallow down the sudden lump in my throat and glance over at my roommate, but she’s still passed out. These are the real names of Kilo, Tango, and Juliet. How did Kilo text me after his death? And why would the message have gone to Lily Bass instead of Tango? I should wait and ask Juliet after she wakes up, but given how much she’s been drinking, she might not even remember at first that her partner is dead. No, I need to know everything about this text message and why it was sent to me, right now.
And I know who can tell me.
sixteen
I’ve never interacted with Query before, at least not on my own. He rarely leaves the Executive in his wheelchair, and he supports his partner remotely through an earpiece and up-to-date intel. I remember when he was brought to the Executive a few years after I arrived, already paralyzed from the waist down even at the age of five. By now he’s learned how to hack into any classified files on the Executive’s own system. He wouldn’t be a decent Query if he couldn’t.
In the computer lab, the operative is sitting behind a messy desk in the back corner. He’s wearing a slouched knit hat and fingerless gloves on his hands, as if he’s outside in the midst of winter, and his glasses are thicker than Agent Novenine’s spectacles. There are four computer monitors on his desk, as well as a mountain of empty soda cans behind him. He barely glances up as I approach.
I clear my throat, unsure whether to interrupt. Even though he’s in Mongoose, I still don’t know who killed Kilo. Someone must have helped by disabling the security cameras. It could have easily been Query, and either way I don’t know if he’ll report this to the Executive.
“I already told Alpha it’s done,” he says finally, typing on his keyboard, his eyes not leaving his screen. “I modified the autopsy report to say that the cause of death was fire, and the police report to say that the fire was started by faulty wiring in the... treehouse mini-fridge, whatever that means.”
“Um,” I say, briefly thrown off. He must be referring to the dead butler. “Actually, I have a question about something else. It’s kind of sensitive.”
“Frame it as a hypothetical,” he says, sounding impatient.
“Okay,” I say, after a pause. “Let’s assume I received a text message from an unknown number claiming to be an operative. What would you be able to find out?”
Query stops typing all at once, and the computer lab suddenly feels too silent, as if everything has been frozen in
time. He swivels his wheelchair around to face me and says accusingly, “Kilo didn’t text anyone before he died.”
“I thought you said this was a hypothetical!”
“That’s just what I say to get people to tell me things,” he says, shrugging. “And you made it more than a little obvious that it’s about a dead operative. What did Kilo send you?”
I try not to grit my teeth. “Tell me why I should trust you first.”
He considers my expression for a moment, then offers me a hand. “Why don’t we start over? My name’s Quinn.”
After a moment, I reluctantly shake his hand. “Eliza.”
“Nice to meet you,” he says. “Look, Alpha trusts me enough that he’s talked to me about you. I already know he told you about Mongoose. I’m not going to turn anything over to the handlers, if that’s what you’re worried about. And yeah, I can hack into the security cameras whenever I want, but I had nothing to do with Kilo’s death. I want to find his killer as badly as you do.”
Query doesn’t seem to be lying, at least, and I know he’s one of the few people August regularly talks to at the Executive. Based on what he included in Code Name Alpha, I’m pretty sure he knows a lot more about me than he’s letting on.
And besides, what other choice do I have?
“Kilo texted the phone I’ve been using for my mission,” I say finally. “It was a message for Tango, but I received it less than an hour ago.”
Query raises his eyebrows and leans back in his wheelchair, thinking for a moment. “Okay, so this is what I can do for you. I can trace the number and see whose phone he used and where he got it from. I can track the location and see where he sent the message from. If there was a security camera nearby, I can see if it was really him and if anything prompted him to send it. I can run the message through a text analyzer, based on the Executive’s files from his previous missions, and see if he really wrote it. And I can check the timestamp and see how it matches up with what the autopsy report says is his time of death.” He grins. “That good enough for you?”
I blink at him. “Sure, but I can’t leave the phone with you. I need it for my mission.”
“Cool,” he says. “It’ll only take a few minutes. Let’s have at it.”
I hand over Lily Bass’s cell phone, watching as Query connects it to his computer with a thin cable. He pulls up the data on a monitor and swivels it toward me, coughing awkwardly when he sees the latest text messages between me and Jamie.
“Sounds like you have a hot date planned,” he says. “How unfortunate for Alpha.”
I barely register his comment. “It’s the message from the unknown number.”
Query whistles. “Yep, I see it. Kilo sent that almost eight hours after he died.” He swivels another monitor around to show me the autopsy report, then returns to typing again. “Text analyzer says he was the one who wrote the message, at least.” But then, several minutes later, he emits just one word: “Huh.”
The tone of it, and the way he says it, is enough to make me question everything.
“What is it?” I ask, feeling a certain amount of dread.
“The message was sent by a burner phone,” he says. “There was a dead man’s switch on it. If Kilo didn’t press a button every eight hours, a prewritten text message would be sent to Tango. Her number must have been changed to yours in his phone at some point.”
“So Kilo couldn’t press the button after he died,” I say slowly. “And then his phone texted me because the dead man’s switch activated?”
“Well, not exactly. This is the location of his phone every time the button was pressed over the past few days.” Query swivels yet another monitor around to face me, displaying a grid of recordings from security cameras around the city. The same figure is in each one, glancing at a phone and tapping something on it.
It isn’t Kilo.
“But that’s Romeo,” I say, feeling numb. “Are you sure it was him?”
“Yep,” says Query. “Any idea why your British friend would have Kilo’s burner phone?”
It doesn’t make any sense. I haven’t even seen Reese since the day of the sailing race, when we kissed in the safe house and he told me about Mongoose. Lawrence Fisher allegedly died in a highly publicized explosion, so I’d assumed Romeo was long gone by now. I can’t wrap my brain around the possibility that he might have been the one who killed Kilo.
He wasn’t trying to kill me when he injected venom into my bloodstream, was he?
I sink down into a chair across from Query, my legs feeling too weak to support me anymore. My entire world has been gradually falling apart, bit by bit, ever since the Woodland Castle. My unexpected feelings for Jamie, the ups and downs in my partnership with August, whatever has been happening with Reese... It’s all been slowly breaking me down to the point where it’s finally too much.
No wonder Juliet has been treating me like a child. I’ve always been a qualified operative, but I’ve never been willing to do anything that might go against the Executive. I’m too scared of solitary confinement, too terrified of realizing that my world isn’t what it seems. No one will tell me about the shipments. My own partner has been the leader of Mongoose for who knows how long, and I never even suspected a thing.
But as I stare at the monitor, watching Reese press a button on Kilo’s phone again and again, I notice something. In four of the recordings, he actually seems to glance directly into the security camera right when he presses the button. It’s barely noticeable, but it has to be on purpose. Like all operatives trained by the Executive, Romeo would never make this kind of mistake accidentally.
I lean forward, peering closely at the monitor. “Are these in chronological order?”
“Yep,” says Query, restarting all the recordings with a single click. “There’s a timestamp in the corner of each one. Why, see something?”
It takes me another minute to piece it together, but I finally figure it out. In the first of the four recordings, Romeo is standing outside a butcher shop, underneath a small sign that says “MEAT MARKET.” In the second recording, he’s sitting on the patio of a French café, eating a piece of white cake. In the third recording, he’s reading a copy of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables while leaning against a statue in a park. Finally, in the last recording, he stands still for exactly one minute, starting at midnight, before leaving.
I almost laugh with relief. It’s a coded message aimed at me. Romeo wants to meet in Paris while I’m at the wedding with Jamie. Near the Arc de Triomphe is a famous statue of Victor Hugo, where he’ll be waiting for me at midnight. Not everyone thinks I’m a child after all.
But why would he have gone through all this just to set up a meeting? Romeo must have changed Tango’s number in Kilo’s phone so the dead man’s switch would text me instead of her, prompting me to check the security cameras and figure out his message. But he could have just contacted me directly or through another member of Mongoose.
Which has to mean that someone close to me is compromised.
Seeing my expression, Query says, “I’ll keep this under wraps. But you...” He hesitates, then swivels the final monitor around to face me. “You should try not to let things get out of control.”
The monitor is displaying a page from a draft of Code Name Alpha. In the first panel, September is saying to January, “I can never give you what you want. But Rho is the same as you. He can give you what you need.” In the next panel, a man with a shaved head is kissing January while holding a poison-marked bottle at his side. The radioactive green poison dripping out of the bottle trails into the last panel, where September is lying on the ground, a farewell letter to January penned in above his head.
“I want you to have the life you deserve, Epsilon. Every time I see you crying because of us, another piece of my heart breaks. You can never be truly happy with me. I’m sorry, but it has to be this way.”
And then, in hard capital letters, the final words of the comic book.
“I lov
e you, January. Goodbye.”
seventeen
Over the next couple of weeks, I find myself working closely with Alpha as we plan the mission to kill Jamison Hart and retrieve the manifest. It’s as if everything is back to normal, including the two of us being on a no-touching, no-hug basis. But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about my partner, even if there isn’t any sign that what happened in the safe house will ever be possible again. Instead I’ve found myself dreaming about August on a nightly basis, waking only to find myself on the verge of crying because he isn’t lying next to me.
When the day of the wedding arrives, I gaze into the full-length mirror in my closet, checking my appearance one last time. I have to act like I’m still trying to impress Jamison Hart, so I’m wearing yet another strapless dress. This one is flowing and formal, a pale rose that matches the faded highlights in my hair and conceals a bulletproof corset underneath. I definitely can’t wear sneakers to someone else’s wedding, so I’m in off-white heels instead, which at least are a reasonable height that still allow me to run if necessary. As for my hair, I’ve pinned it up in an elegant hairdo with antique silver hairpins, making sure my makeup looks professionally done as well.
I make a face at myself in the mirror, even though I look exactly as I should. Nothing is out of place. Even the stray hairs around my face are strategically placed to make me seem as casual and accessible as possible while still remaining a catch. But I don’t feel the way I look. I don’t feel like this person standing in front of me, this impeccable rebel who’d never give a second thought to a man in her life who wasn’t throwing himself at her. All I’ve been able to think about is my partner, though I’ve done my best to think about my target instead.
For the first time in my life, even though all I’ve ever done is wear fake identities, I feel like a fraud.
Just get the manifest, Eliza, I tell myself. Then you’ll never have to see him again.
Code Name Echo Page 10