by Eva Chase
There was a bike rack out front, half full. I slowed as a group of twenty-somethings barreled past the door and headed down the street. Then, when no one around was paying us any mind, I walked past, setting the scarf over one of the bike rack’s posts as I went.
It still might not get to the owner. But there was a much better chance of her finding it now. Every risk I took, every offering I made in gratitude for being out here alive and free at all instead of locked away in some underground prison, involved a little compromise.
Carina looped her arm around mine as we walked on. “We did it,” she said, sounding a bit giddy. She paused. “You know, I might be able to help you with things like that. If it’s something misplaced recently. I’d at least be able to go back and get a look at the person who dropped it, eavesdrop on their conversation in case they mentioned something useful.”
Affection swelled in my chest, fast and heady. I stopped and pulled her into a kiss. “I’d like that,” I said after, our heads still bent close together, my hand on the side of her face. Carina beamed back at me.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I took it out, too caught up in emotion to even worry about what I might see on the screen. Then my eyes registered the words. It was an SOS, from my Dad’s number.
I stopped in my tracks, my heart lurching. “Alpha Project tracked down my parents.”
20
Carina
At Nick’s words, I froze in my tracks, a chill washing over my skin. “What’s happening? Can we do anything?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shoving anxious fingers through his tawny hair. “It was just a brief text, the way we alert each other that we’ve run into trouble. If my dad can say more, he will.”
He turned back toward the hotel, an urgent briskness in his strides that hadn’t been there before. I picked up my pace to keep up. The chill pooled in my gut.
“When was the last time they had to send you a message like that?” I asked.
“They haven’t,” he said roughly. “Alpha Project has never gotten close enough—not since we were kids. We weren’t even sure they were still looking for us, or that they even still existed. But after the dust-up in San Jose, they’ve been getting closer…”
“And even closer after I tipped Frederick off about their location in Croatia.” I swallowed thickly. “They had a whole day to start sniffing around there. Maybe they found your parents because they caught some sign of them leaving. If I hadn’t passed that on—”
“Carina.” Nick didn’t slow down, but he reached over to grip my hand. “Alpha Project pretty much brainwashed you. You thought you were doing your job, that you were helping them bring in dangerous criminals. Murderers. You can’t beat yourself up about that now.”
I could, though. I already had been, since the moment I’d realized how wrong I’d been, but now the guilt jabbed at me ten times as sharp.
“I knew you better than that then. I was starting to have doubts. I was just nervous because I was so confused—I wanted to prove to myself I was still on track. Damn it.”
Nick squeezed my hand. Of course he needed to be thinking about what he could do for his parents, not trying to comfort me over the ways I might have hurt them.
My stomach continued to churn all the way back to the hotel. We’d just burst into the room when Nick’s phone buzzed again. He’d kept it in his hand. The second he saw the new text, his stance relaxed slightly.
“They haven’t been captured. They’re still okay, for now.”
We sat on the edge of the bed, Nick relating information as his dad passed it on. “They noticed some people who looked out of place poking around in the town where they’re staying. My mom gleaned some of their thoughts and could tell they were with Alpha Project. But they have the train station staked out, and there’s only the one. And they’ve got some kid with them, Dad figures he’s only eleven or twelve, who seems to be using some kind of talent for them. Something they’re using to try to find Mom and Dad.”
I thought of the younger kids I’d seen around when I’d lived on the Alpha Project compound. “I don’t know what talents the younger ones had. They wouldn’t normally put anyone with that little training and experience in the field. They didn’t let me go much outside the compound until I was eighteen, and I didn’t come overseas for the first time until I was twenty.”
“They must be breaking their own rules now that they see how close they are to catching us,” Nick said grimly.
“What are your parents doing now? Can they get out?”
He shook his head. “They’re keeping their distance, moving from place to place as surreptitiously as they can, but there’s no way for them to get on a train or a bus unnoticed. They don’t want to risk getting close enough for my mom to get a read on the kid to figure out what he’s doing either, in case he’d be able to sense it.”
He typed something into the phone and set it down on his lap. His expression had hardened. “I have to go out there. They need a distraction, something to draw attention away from the train station for long enough that they can slip through.”
“What?” The icy guilt in my belly washed away with a rush of panic. “You can’t go out there. Alpha Project might grab them and you.”
He looked at me, his brow furrowing. “I’m the closest. I can get there the fastest. Someone has to help them.”
“How are you even going to do that?” I said, the words spilling out more harshly than I’d have wanted, before I’d had a chance to think them through. “How can you use your talent to cause a distraction? You’re going to sense impressions really loudly or something?”
Nick stiffened. “Maybe my talent isn’t going to be a whole lot of use there,” he said tightly, “but I am capable of doing other things. Maybe Jeremy will come help too. We have to get them out of there safely.”
My own voice dipped. “Maybe they’ll figure a way out on their own. Is it really worth the risk?”
“My parents risked everything for me, for our family.” Nick stood up, flicking through his phone. Checking train times, I realized. “I’d be an asshole if I wouldn’t stick my neck out for them. I can do this. We’ll get past the Alpha Project goons. We just have to be fast and smart.”
A weird twinge shot through me at the determination in his words. I had no idea what it was like to have parents who’d risk everything for me. I had no idea what it was even like to have parents willing to risk anything. That girl I’d seen on his laptop screen—I had no idea whether she’d fought for me at all. She might have happily handed me over. She might have pretty much forgotten all about me in the last twenty-three years, if she was even still alive.
It was a sickening sensation, jealousy and fresh guilt twisting together in my chest. I shook the emotions away as well as I could and pushed myself onto my feet.
“You don’t have to come,” Jeremy said. “It’s a risk for you too. Maybe even more so, since they’re more familiar with you than they are with me. You could wait here, or somewhere along the way, and once my parents are out I’ll come back and we can figure out where to go from there.”
I had to do something. I felt that just as strongly as Nick clearly did. But viewing the past wasn’t going to do us much good wherever his parents were either. It was an investigative talent, not an offensive one. And the thought of Alpha Project squads like the one I’d seen chasing after little Nick and his parents in Paris descending on us, on me, made my skin creep.
I’d just gotten away from them. Langdon must be so angry. If they caught me now…
Before I could untangle that terror, Nick’s ringtone sounded. He snatched up the phone, frowning when he saw the name.
“Hey, Liam,” he said. “You heard about Mom and Dad? I’m about to head over there now.”
He hesitated halfway through picking up his pack. Then he slung it over his shoulder as if in slow motion. “What? How do you—” A pause. “Oh, that’s good—I mean, good that you figured that out. And a good thing I’m
already leaving. Shit. Thank you for the heads up. Yeah, don’t worry. Same to you.”
He swiveled to face me again. “At least a few Alpha Project agents are headed to Amsterdam. Liam was trying out some new tricks with the facial recognition software he’s been using, and he was able to ID a couple people who were in San Jose from the security footage at St. Pancras Station. They bought tickets to Amsterdam. It took him a while going through the footage—they left hours ago, but we’ve still got a little time before they get here.”
My throat closed up. They were coming here—already? “How did they—that scarf. I told you to leave it alone.”
Nick let out a choked laugh. “Carina, I just did that half an hour ago. These guys were already halfway to us by then.”
Shame flushed my face. “Right. I’m sorry. I just…”
“You’re scared,” Nick filled in when I didn’t. “Me too. I have no idea how they figured out where we’d gone so soon. But we’re leaving anyway, right? The only question is how far you’re coming with me.”
He looked at me, his eyes holding a question and so much hope it made me queasy all over again. I couldn’t stay here, but was going with him really going to help anyone? All of the danger he and his parents were in, it was because of me. The thought of waiting alone in some waystation while he was off in the line of fire made me shudder, but so did throwing myself unprepared into whatever situation Alpha Project had created.
When I hesitated, Nick took a step closer. He rested his hand gently on my arm. “I care about you a lot, Carina. I want you with me. But I have to go now. Whether you come, what you do, it’s up to you.”
Heat filled the back of my eyes. He was giving me a choice, like Langdon and the others never had.
And I knew right then that I had to use that choice to hurt him, at least temporarily.
“I’m not coming with you,” I said. “I’m—I’m going to go back to London.” I held up my hand to stop the protest I saw about to come. “That’s the last place they’ll expect me to be now. And I’ve spent more time there than anywhere else in Europe. At least I’ll know my way around.”
The way his face fell killed me more than anything else. But he nodded and reached for his wallet. “Okay. I can give you enough cash to get you back there and keep you going for a little while.”
I wished I didn’t have to take that generosity from him, but I didn’t have much choice. “Thank you,” I said, and tipped my head toward the phone, the one I hadn’t seen before last night. “If you give me your number so I can check in with you, make sure you made it out okay, and we can talk after…”
Nick hesitated. His jaw worked. “I need to get another one. I’ll find a different way to reach out. We’re Facebook friends anyway, right?” His smile was painfully crooked. He bent and pressed a kiss to my lips, so quickly I only had a moment to kiss him back before he was pulling away. Then he was heading out the hotel room door.
I watched it close behind him, with a sinking feeling in my stomach that I might have made the worst possible choice after all. But it was the choice I’d made. I gathered myself and set off in my own direction.
21
Nick
“We’re about to get into position,” Jeremy said into his phone. “Be ready to run. The train we’ll get on leaves in ten minutes.”
Mom and Dad must have indicated they were ready to go. My brother lowered the phone and nodded to Grace, who was standing near the ticket booth. She gave him a thumbs up—we were all covered.
Beneath his shaggy dark brown hair, Jeremy’s face was even more serious than usual, his jaw set tight. We could see five of the Alpha Project people loitering just outside the train station in the yellow lights that cut through the deepening night: one pretending to flip through a newspaper, another having a conversation that might very well have been imaginary on her phone. They were watching the people coming into the station, though, not the people who’d newly arrived. So far they hadn’t even glanced our way.
“Are you ready?” Jeremy said to me in a voice full of brotherly concern, as if we were teenagers again and the two years he had on me meant much.
I gave him a small smile and patted the small shoulder bag I’d grabbed to hold the only item I needed for this operation.
A half hour ago, Jeremy had stared when I’d pulled the pistol out of my travel pack.
“Where the hell did you get that?” he’d asked, his surprise almost satisfying.
I’d shrugged. “I found someone in London who sold them under the table. I figured given that I can’t throw things with my mind or start blazes, it was the kind of thing I’d want to have on hand, just in case I ended up in a standoff.”
The truth was it rankled a little that my talent was absolutely no use here. I was playing the same role I might have if I’d had no talent at all. Carina’s voice, demanding with a sarcastic edge to know exactly how I thought I could help, rang through my memory.
But the point wasn’t how I helped my parents. The point was that we got them out of here one way or another.
“Let’s move,” I said to Jeremy now. I stepped closer to the maintenance door at the far end of the station, which Liam had identified as an alternate, secluded exit via blueprints of the station he’d dug up. From the thrum of his voice over the phone, I was pretty sure he was peeved that he couldn’t be here helping in any sort of hands-on way himself. But Tokyo was too far. He wouldn’t have made it here until the morning at the earliest.
With a twitch of his head, Jeremy released the lock. We ducked through before any of the station employees could notice us.
The door led out into a narrow alley backed by the station-side shops, all closed for the night now. Jeremy raised his hand to knock his knuckles against mine and took off in the opposite direction. I loped east, opening the bag and sliding my fingers around the gun.
The plan was five blocks. I covered them in a minute. I waited at the corner we’d decided on, breathing hard, scanning the streets. Hardly anyone was nearby in this part of town at this hour. One young man hustled past, and I ducked deeper into the alley. Then the phone in my pocket vibrated with Jeremy’s signal. Now.
Bracing my shoulders, I lifted the gun, pointed it at an abandoned factory across the street, and pulled the trigger. One, two, three. Bang, bang, bang. Each squeeze made my ears ring and the muscles in my arms jerk with the recoil. A tart smoky smell coated my nose.
Five blocks from the other end of the station, Jeremy would be heaving a car up into the air, swinging it around, and letting it fall with a thump the Alpha Project goons shouldn’t be able to miss. Some of them would have to dash this way to investigate, and some in the other direction. We were hoping they’d abandon the train station completely for the moment, but at the very least we’d cut down most of their number. Enough that Dad could deal with any still around
I spun on my feet and raced back toward the station. The train we wanted was just pulling up to the platform. With my heart thudding as loud as my hasty strides, I scrambled back through the side entrance just as Jeremy came around the side of the building. Our gazes connected. He gave me a hint of a nod.
Grace was waiting in front of the turnstiles. She motioned toward the doors. Two figures were rushing up the steps, and at the same moment I saw two more leap forward to intercept them.
Jeremy’s hand jerked. One of the Alpha Project agents lurched to the side as if he’d been hit hard across the head. The other yelped as her shoes caught fire. I grabbed Mom’s arm as she barreled in first, her gray-and-red curls tucked tight under a knit cap. Dad charged in right behind her.
The train gave a warning chime to indicate it was getting ready to leave. We bolted past the turnstiles and stumbled into the nearest car just seconds before the doors slid closed. As the train glided out of the station, I saw the man Jeremy had walloped dashing across the platform after us, too late. I couldn’t help smiling at the fury on his face.
Dad gripped my shoulder and pulle
d me into a hug. It’d been a couple years since we’d been in the same place at the same time. His light hair might be more gray than blond now and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes might have dug a little deeper since last time, but he still had a powerful embrace. All the years on the run had worn him down, but he was hardly worn out.
Mom squeezed Jeremy in a hug of her own and exclaimed at the sight of Grace. This was the first time our parents had met Jeremy’s fairly recent but rather serious girlfriend too. After Mom had gotten in her hugs, we settled into two facing rows of seats. Dad cleared his throat.
“That was some fine work. I don’t even know how to start thanking you. Or how to get over the humiliation of having my sons have to come rescue me.”
His tone was wry. I rolled my eyes at him. “Come on, Dad. It’s not as if we’re kids now.”
“What’s the plan?” Mom asked with her usual upbeat energy. “It won’t take long for Alpha Project to check which way this train was headed.”
Jeremy motioned to the window. “We’re getting off at Prague and heading in a different direction. I was thinking Zurich? A reasonable amount of distance and a well-connected airport if you need it.”
“Ah, Switzerland. The ultimate neutral ground.” Dad stretched his arms. “Sounds good to me. That’s the last time I stop anywhere that only has one train station, even just for the night.” He paused, his gaze flicking across the interior of the train. “Where’s your, ah, partner in crime, Nick?”
Carina, he meant. My heart sank. The whole way out here, I’d tried not to think about her, about the look on her face right before I’d left the hotel room.
“She didn’t think it was worth the risk,” I said. “Especially when they’d already managed to follow us to Amsterdam too. She headed back to London.”
Mom’s eyebrows arched. “To London? Where they already had her stationed?”