by Rebecca Rode
I followed and skidded to a halt. He’d simply vanished. This section of the city was especially dark; no transports went past, and there were few lights in the windows. A wave of exhaustion swept through me. It had to be past four thirty now, and we still had to run back the other way before the city awoke. “Chan?”
“Here,” Chan whispered from the shadows.
I followed the voice to a small gap between two tall homes. Chan gripped my shoulder and pulled me even deeper into the gap until we could barely see around the corner.
“This is it,” he whispered. I could barely hear, even though he stood right next to me.
A narrow three-story home stood in front of us, its windows glowing with a dim light even at this hour. This was where Chiu was staying? I’d expected something in the upper levels, something lavish, a dome like mine. But this building looked to be hundreds of years old with its peeling paint and short, narrow front door.
“Are you sure—” The words had barely escaped my lips before he clasped a hand over my mouth. A second later, the door of the three-story home opened, flooding the sidewalk with light. Two figures walked out and trotted down the steps. A transport darted up, stopped abruptly, and opened its door for the passengers. No driver.
One of the men said something to the other as they climbed in, and the other laughed. Then the door closed behind them. Three seconds later, the transport was gone.
“How did you find this place?” I whispered.
“After we separated at the library, I told your dad I wasn’t tired and wanted to go for a walk. I passed a night shop and saw two of Chiu’s men leaving. I followed them here.” He paused. “Do you hear that?”
I listened for a moment, straining for any sound. It was a long moment before I could make out the musical sound of a woman’s laughter. “That woman?”
“People think she’s his lover, but she’s actually his personal bodyguard. She never leaves his side. That means they’re still here.”
“Good.” I peered around the corner at the front doors. “No guards?”
“They’re inside. I don’t believe he wants the neighbors to know who is staying here.”
That would explain the run-down quarters he’d chosen. He’d be livid to know how unwittingly his guards had betrayed him tonight.
“And none of his guards are British?”
He turned to look at me, his features too dark to discern. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”
“Never mind.” I studied the house for a moment. Chiu’s house was only two yards from his neighbor’s building, which left a narrow, dark area of opportunity. I flipped the receiver on and examined it. It was supposed to work through walls, but exterior walls hundreds of years old? Only time would tell.
I opened the suction clasp and walked casually toward the house, keeping my head down for any security cameras. Then I ducked between the houses and immediately began scanning the building.
Chan had followed me. “Beneath that ledge?” he suggested, his whisper barely audible. I followed his gaze to a ledge two stories up beneath a window.
“That would be perfect,” I whispered, “if I had wings.”
He took the receiver and examined it for a moment, then stepped away from the building. Before I could ask him what he was doing, he leaped onto a crate and pulled himself up along the bricks. A few more meters of climbing and he stuck the receiver on the wall beneath a window and tightened the suction. Then he climbed down and dropped silently to the ground. The receiver was invisible in the darkness and probably barely visible in daylight.
“Huh,” I said. “Wow. I didn’t know you could do that.”
Chan stiffened. The voices inside had grown louder. “They heard us. Time to go.”
We bolted from the alleyway and sprinted toward the street just as the front door opened, lighting the sidewalk. A female voice spoke in Chinese, followed by several male voices.
“You two,” she said in broken English. “Stop. What were you doing back there?”
Chan lowered his head. “Apologies, Miss. Just trying to find a bit o’ food to eat in your dustbins. We’ll move on.”
Chan’s accent was close, but not quite right. She wrinkled her nose at us, and for a moment I was glad we looked and smelled the part of beggars. If only I had a stunner.
The woman was silent, as if weighing the situation. Then she barked an order in Chinese to the men in the doorway behind her.
“Come on!” Chan yanked my arm, pulling me after him at a sprint. Footsteps immediately pounded after us.
Fates! This wasn’t going as planned.
Chan ran beside me, muttering something like “Faster, faster, must go faster.”
Any exhaustion from earlier was gone now, my mind cool and focused and imagining all the possible endings to this chase. Those guards would know my face. If they caught us, they’d take us to Chiu, no question. I could imagine what he would do then. Blackmail Dresden? Shoot me on the spot?
“You do not run like beggars,” the woman shouted. “If you don’t stop, I will assume you are spies and shoot. You have five seconds.”
I glanced back to see her still pursuing us, several strides ahead of her male counterparts, a typical Chinese stunner in hand. Her longer legs let her eat up ground like a racehorse. Her stunner’s accuracy would suffer at this speed, but I knew what that thing was capable of.
I put on a new burst of speed, and Chan did the same. My lungs were on fire. I couldn’t keep up this pace much longer.
Suddenly the street lit up and a strange, distant whining sounded from ahead. Then a transport zoomed by, sending my hair flying behind us. Maybe the street wasn’t the ideal place for this chase. If that woman didn’t shoot us first, we’d get hit by a speeding transport. But the sidewalk was too full of wastebins and trash. Today must be pickup day.
That recording had better be worth this.
Chan stumbled and went down with a yelp.
I skidded to a halt and pulled him up. The woman slowed and raised her weapon. But before she pulled the trigger, she froze and stared at me in recognition.
Fates.
Chan stumbled forward, a noticeable limp in his step. He was done running.
“I know who you are,” the woman said as the other guards pulled up next to her and raised their weapons. “Put your hands up, Ambassador. The Dragon will be eager to speak with you.”
A distant whine tugged at my subconscious, and that strange light flooded the street again, partially blinding our attackers. I grabbed Chan’s shoulder and threw him toward the sidewalk.
At the last possible second, I leaped. Something buzzed near my ear and the air filled with electricity. They were shooting at me.
My feet hit the sidewalk just as a man shrieked, then there was a sickening thud. The vehicle streaked across the road at an angle and slammed into a building with a sickening crunch, sending stone and dust into the air. The old structure shuddered overhead and screams sounded from inside. Rubble settled around the transport, still and dark.
An inhuman howling had filled the night air. It looked like the woman had jumped aside just in time, but two of her men were on the ground and another two were injured, moaning in pain.
“Quick,” Chan whispered. “Let’s go.”
I hesitated and turned back to the figures on the ground. There was no question they were dead. Their broken bodies lay mangled on the concrete. The woman stood over them, swaying as if in shock.
“Come on!” Chan hissed again and pulled me after him.
We stumbled numbly into the night.
I slipped into my bedroom and closed the door, my heart still hammering. All was quiet here. We’d taken a roundabout way home just in case we were followed, but it meant an extra thirty minutes of running. My muscles shook with the exertion of the night, but my mind was completely numb. At least two people had died tonight.
It had to be worth it. I’d given Chan the other receiver, the one that stored data. Hopefully he’
d find something useful before the convention committee made a decision.
The wall screen read 06:20 a.m. If I could get my racing heart to calm, maybe there were a couple hours of sleep in my future. After a hot shower, of course. My dirty hair hung limp in my face, and I felt filthy down to my bones. The climb up the chute hadn’t been quite as easy as the slide down.
“Lights on,” I said wearily, and the room flooded with brightness. Then I released a strangled cry and stumbled backward.
Vance stood in front of me, glaring, his arms folded.
“Don’t scare me like that!” I hissed. “I thought you were . . .”
He dropped his arms and swept a frustrated hand through his messy hair. “Who, Treena? Who did you think I was?”
“Never mind. Just don’t do that again.” I kicked off my shoes and headed for the washroom.
“That’s it? Don’t do that again? That’s all you have to say?”
“Yes, Vance. I’m tired. Let’s discuss this in the morning.”
Vance reached me in two steps and placed himself between me and the washroom door, holding up the notepad with my scrawled message about going for a walk. “It is morning. Where have you been all night? I searched everything within a square mile of here.”
He’d gone searching for me? I tried to swallow the guilt and stared at the ground. “I may have gone a little farther than that. But it wasn’t a big deal.”
“Not a big deal? You slipped out in the night by yourself without telling anyone. Did it not occur to you how dangerous that was?”
“You were asleep,” I said lamely. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
It was the wrong thing to say. His eyes widened, then narrowed in anger. “So you went out into the city by yourself rather than waking me up? Why am I even here, Treena?”
“I knew you would overreact,” I said defensively.
He threw his hands in the air and stalked away. “Unbelievable.”
I folded my arms and plunged on. “I’m not here for a sightseeing trip, Vance. I have work to do. And I can’t do that work with you being so overprotective. I need to go out into the city once in a while.”
“Overprotective?” Vance whirled on me. “Do you realize what I left behind to come here? Do you have any idea what I sacrificed? I didn’t do that for myself. I wanted you to be safe. And I can’t do that when you sneak out of the city in the middle of the night by yourself.”
“I wasn’t alone. I’m not that stupid.” The truth wasn’t much better, but still.
He went quiet. “You were with Prince Augustus.”
“No!” I snapped. “Of course not. I just went walking with Chan. He was passing along some new intel.”
I could see the doubt in Vance’s face. What was so important that it couldn’t wait until morning? But then some of the fight left his body, and he suddenly looked more weary than I’d ever seen him. Guilt panged my stomach at the thought of him waking up and finding me gone. He had a right to be angry.
“With Chan,” he muttered. “Next time wake me up, all right? That’s why I’m here.”
Was it? Had he come to support me or protect me? Was he here to be my boyfriend or my bodyguard? Because I wasn’t enjoying the bodyguard part all that much. If he was going to be like this our entire trip, hovering and anxious, it would drive me absolutely out of my mind.
“I’m sorry,” I said. He had no idea how sorry. “You’re right. I didn’t think it through.” Because I’d put a stupid receiver over everything, I’d risked Chan’s life and mine as well. I’d risked nearly everything we’d come to do, and I’d broken Vance’s trust in me.
His dark eyes were almost black as he examined me.
I tried to see myself as he did. Still breathing hard, my skin glistening from my long, hard run. My shirt was damp from the mud, my hair gritty and hanging into my eyes. I smoothed it back.
Stupid, stupid. No wonder he didn’t believe me. I looked like I’d been attacked.
He folded his arms again. “Can you at least tell me what you were really doing out there?”
I ignored your wishes and convinced Chan to find Chiu’s house. We ran across the city while completely exposed, placed the receiver on the outside wall, got caught, and somehow managed to escape without getting shot or hit by a speeding transport. The other guys weren’t so lucky. Oh, and they recognized me, and they’ll be watching for me in the future.
I couldn’t do it. He’d never let me out the door again.
“Soon,” I managed. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s just—it’s complicated.”
“Fine,” Vance said. “I’ll give you space to figure things out, but I’m also doubling your security. And if you sneak out again, maybe that means you don’t really need me here at all.”
As I styled my hair in soft waves that evening, I kept looking at the empty doorway. Vance hadn’t stopped in since our argument at sunrise.
He wasn’t staying away because he was angry, I assured myself. He had plenty going on right now. Not only did he have to get himself ready for the gala, he also had to arrange the security detail. It would be tricky with Augustus’s men accompanying us as well.
But deep down, I knew why he didn’t come. And as the minutes wore on, my stomach twisted. I had betrayed him. Just like everyone else in his life, I’d betrayed Vance. And now I was paying the price.
I swallowed my disappointment and took one last look at myself in the mirror. The dark-green dress accented my brown eyes and warm chestnut hair. The green was the same color as the one Lillibeth had loaned me months before, except the cut couldn’t be more different. It followed my curves and hugged my hips. The neckline hung slightly lower than I liked.
I’d given Chan the responsibility of listening to Chiu’s recordings and combing them for anything I could use, but keeping it a secret from Jasper would be tricky. Since my father was coming to the gala, Chan would only have a few hours to study today’s recording. He had promised to send word tonight if he found anything.
In the meantime, maybe the gala would be my best opportunity to convince some ambassadors to side with us. There would never be a better opportunity.
I played with my hair in the mirror for another minute before letting it fall freely again, the way Vance liked it. Then I stepped outside to the waiting transport.
Surprisingly, Finley was the only person there besides Augustus’s guards. I’d nearly forgotten about the woman. She wore her NORA dress uniform, and her hair was pulled back in an intricate braid. All business, she nodded to me as I approached.
“Have you seen Vance?” I asked. “Or my father, Jasper?” The convention allowed one guest per ambassador and one unarmed guard. I’d invited my father to come as my escort since Vance would be on duty. Now I was glad, with this new tension between us.
“Hawking is already at the event,” Finley said. “He asked me to escort you. I haven’t seen your father, though. Would you like me to have someone search for him?”
I shook my head, trying to hide my disappointment that Vance had already left. “I’m sure he’ll be out soon.”
“Men,” Finley said, her expression softening. “And they say women take too long to get ready.”
I chuckled. “True.”
Moments later, Jasper emerged from the building below in a sleek black tuxedo. His graying hair was combed back and slicked so it shined. When he set eyes on me, he lit up and strode over.
“You look wonderful, Ametrine. So grown-up. I barely recognized you.”
“Let’s hope this dress gives me a few more years,” I said. “Say, thirty? Forty?”
“You’d still be the prettiest lady there.” He winked and offered his hand to help me into the transport.
I didn’t need it, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Jasper was still trying hard to make up for abandoning Mom and me before I was born. I accepted his help and was glad I did when I tripped and nearly fell in my ridiculously tall shoes.
Jasper
frowned when he noticed them. “You sure you don’t want to wear something more practical?”
“Today these are the most practical shoes I can wear.” I had an impression to make. I needed the extra centimeters. I settled awkwardly into my seat.
“Where’s Vance?” Jasper asked, sliding in beside me.
I forced a smile. “Hard at work.”
“What could be more important than escorting such a lovely woman to the ball?”
I shrugged and turned away as Finley closed the door behind her. “Saint George’s Hall,” she ordered, and then we were off.
Despite the city’s myriad grand skyscrapers, it seemed the Nations for Peace ball would take place in an older section of town. Traffic faded to a trickle as we went on, and security increased. Officials in stationary air transports waved or stopped vehicles all around us. Our transport kept a steady pace, but I worried what we would do if an official waved us down. Was there a manual feature on this thing?
My worries faded as an official glanced at us, nodded, then turned away. I wasn’t sure how they could tell the difference in vehicles, but I wasn’t about to complain.
“Arrival at Saint George’s Hall,” an automated voice said. “Welcome, Ambassador Dowell.”
Finley hopped out first, then Jasper. He turned and held out a hand to me.
I positioned my feet carefully and took his hand, then stepped out of the transport. I brushed the folds of my dress down and forced a smile. The structure before us could have been the Council Building it looked so similar. Tall Roman columns graced one side, and wide steps led up to a grand entrance. Colorful lights shone on the outside—blue and red and brilliant orange. A long cable stretched across the front, sporting dozens of small flags.
I scanned them and frowned. Ours was missing, but that was no surprise. We’d shunned the convention for years when they’d tried to initiate contact with NORA. I’d be more surprised if our flag were actually there.
“You ready?” Jasper asked.
I nodded and took his arm. Then we climbed up the steps, Finley trailing closely behind.