by Meli Raine
And then Jocelyn comes forward.
Then her twin sister.
Next is Candace, who narrows her eyes as the scalpel cuts hers out. That’s her only reaction.
And one by one, they succumb, down to the smallest toddler.
The older ones do not cry, but they shake.
And the babies? They cry. Of course they do.
Freedom hurts.
When the last child is done, I look into the small container where Drew places the chips, a muck of blood and flickers of steel. So simple.
So complicated.
Jocelyn’s words haunt me.
We’re really never, ever going back?
As Kina soothes injured toddlers and smoothes the hair of older children who cling to her, everyone wearing tiny bandages on their arms, I walk away, knowing I have no role right now. I’ve done my job, showing them my truth.
To stay and talk, to try to convince, to persuade, would be a waste of time. My credibility rests on actions, not words.
The best I can do now is to let them process what they have seen.
Duff motions for me to follow him outside, the back door banging behind me as I step out into the brisk air. Tall pines tower over us like sentries, giving me peace of mind I don’t deserve.
My brother is ahead of me, reaching into a cooler as I approach the fire someone’s made.
“Here,” he says, offering the amber bottle to me, top already off as if he realizes my arm must sting from the quick-and-dirty surgical cut.
Who knew a beer could taste this good? It shouldn't, but it does.
Duff's trying to convince me that we're safe here at this bizarre campground, all of our fellow campers part of the private ops network Foster and Gentian seem to run. Duff works for Foster.
Apparently every single person here does, aside from those of us from the compound.
A long sigh comes out of Duff as he stares into the fire pit, flames licking at the air like they're climbing to the heavens.
“This is not how my day was supposed to go. I never thought when I woke up this morning that I'd smuggle a bunch of kids to safety under gunfire, airlift them to a staged campground and then cut their arms open to remove tracking chips,” he mutters.
I choke on my swig.
“No shit,” I cough, the words more bitter than the beer. “None of us did.”
“Least of all that baby who got gut shot.”
“Thomas. His name is Thomas.” I take a small swallow to clear my throat. “Any news?”
His head shake is about as sad as any gesture can be. “No. Still critical, but no new details. As soon as we know, we'll tell you.”
“Tell Kina first.”
“Of course. How is she?”
Pissed at me, I want to say.
I drink more beer instead. I can't get drunk, but I can take the edge out of my blood.
“You're good. Both of you,” he says in an admiring voice, the tone making my back teeth ache.
“Training,” I grunt out, ignoring the small bandage on my arm.
“When the shit hit the fan, you pulled it off. Lots of good work for people like you and Kina out here,” he says, toeing an acorn. “If you want it.”
“Kina's staying with the kids. It's what she does. What she likes. The cover story has to allow for that.”
“We're making her a new identity as we speak. There are plenty of places where no one would blink if a woman's the head of a group home for foster kids. We can hide and protect them all.”
“But not one hundred percent. An unexpected gas explosion takes out a foster care home. You know how it works, Duff. Intelligence agencies can do whatever they want to eliminate a threat. Do you think Stateless is any different?”
“We know exactly how dangerous Stateless is.”
“Then whatever you do with Kina and the kids has to be flawless.”
“No such thing.”
“Get damn close to it.” My now-empty beer bottle taunts me. I want another one.
I stop myself.
“You volunteering to stay with them? Because with someone like you on staff, right there, you up the chances of ‘flawless.’”
“I–” The reply catches in my throat, the implications of what he's saying making my tired and slightly boozy head spin. Take a place with Kina inside a cover story? Pretend to work with the kids in a foster home while I was really protecting them?
Protecting them against Stateless? The very people who trained me?
“Look, Callum.” The way he says my name makes something in me tighten. He wants to call me Wyatt. “You know damn well that the more we know about Stateless, the better we can protect all of you.”
“I've told you what you've asked.”
“That's right–what we've asked. We need more.”
“I don't know how to answer that.”
“You’ve given us the information that we’ve asked for. But how are we supposed to know what to ask?”
The long, slow inhale through my nose covers for my sudden uneasiness. “I still don't understand.”
“You're a robot,” he says slowly. “You're programmed to respond directly to the question. Give us information we don't know to ask about.”
“Like what?”
Frustration fills his reply, the rasp of rushed air from his mouth close to a huff. “Who is working with Stateless? On the outside?”
“Outside?”
“You’ve told us who the people within the leadership are. But who, inside the U.S. government, is part of it all? We know about the president.”
“And Glen,” I add.
He nods. “Who else?”
“Josephs.”
The guy goes pale. “Josephs? As in Marshall Josephs?”
“You didn't know?”
“You didn't mention it.” He waves Foster over, stands, whispers in his ear.
And I'm the one who gets cut in two by Foster's laser glare.
“Didn't bother to tell us that detail, Callum?” he demands, eyebrows up, hand tight on his soda.
“You didn't ask.”
“We shouldn't have to ask!”
“I shouldn't have to do your work for you. I've got more than enough of my own to deal with.” Instinct makes me stand up, taller than Foster but not by much. We're an equal match, physically.
“You realize who Josephs is?”
“Chief of staff for the president.”
“And your girlfriend's twin sister is his right hand.”
“She's not my girlfriend.”
I don't like the look they give each other.
“Your colleague's twin sister is Stateless. We know Harry's tied up in Stateless. Now you're telling us Josephs is Stateless. Who else?”
“In the White House?”
“In the administration, yes.”
“I'll need a white board and a few hours.”
Foster's jaw turns to stone.
“Come on,” I snap. “You knew all this. We've been infiltrating for years. From bootcamps to NORAD. From government study weeks in DC for middle school kids to House interns to committee chairs. There isn't a division in any federal government building that doesn't have someone from Stateless working in it.”
“You got a strong hand?”
“What?”
“You're going to need to document everyone.” He purses his mouth, then looks at Duff. “Get him a pen and paper. This just got way worse.”
“Why?”
“Because Josephs has been calling Lindsay lately. Trying to get her to spend more time with her father. Jane, too.”
Duff's eyebrows rise, dragging up the scar along the side of one eye like a lightning streak.
“And he wants pictures with Emma.”
“Emma?” I ask.
“My daughter,” Foster says, softening. “Our daughter. The president's only grandchild.”
“The perfect family,” I reply.
“That's what Harry wants. He and Alicia Ludame plan to
announce their engagement soon, and Marshall's been sniffing around Lindsay, asking to bring Emma so they can do a photo shoot like JFK Jr. in the Oval Office. 'Good optics,' he says, over and over.”
“Feel-good political spin,” I mutter. Hearing President Bosworth casually referred to as Harry makes me think of Glen.
I don't want to think about her.
“Exactly. The president is the closest thing to royalty we have in this country.” He clears his throat. “Josephs visits my wife. He plays peek-a-boo with my kid. He's Stateless?”
I nod. “High up. Meets with Svetnu all the time. I've had numerous meetings with him.”
“Any chance he's a deep-cover plant?” Duff asks Foster, who shakes his head.
“If he is, I haven't heard about it.”
“That means Glen's rise to Harry's office wasn't on merit,” Duff says.
“She slept her way there,” I explain.
“We know that,” Foster says pointedly. “I mean Josephs must have helped her.”
“He did. Scouted her. Plucked her from a political campaign she was working on.”
“That wasn't an accident,” Foster says, blinking hard, thinking. “She was planted from day one. But why wasn't Kina taken out of the compound, too? If we had identical twins as sharp and trained as you guys, we'd use that to our advantage on intelligence operations.”
I really wish I had another beer.
Kina walks over to us, the fire's glow highlighting her slumped shoulders and the tired tilt of her elbow as she sinks into a cheap cloth camp chair.
“I wasn't put in The Field because someone wanted to hold me back,” she jumps in before I can answer. “We don't know who.”
“We know it was Glen.”
Sharp eyes cut me a glance that says I need to be quiet.
“No,” I reply to words she hasn't said. “We have to tell them everything.”
Duff offers her a bucket filled with bottles of beer. To my surprise, she takes one. We've all showered, wearing clothes that don't quite fit but aren't covered in someone else's blood. I’ve got jeans that need a belt, a thick flannel shirt, and my own shoes. Kina's oversized hoodie sweatshirt is perfect for the occasion as she stretches the cuff of her sleeve over her palm and deftly twists the top off her beer.
I wonder where she learned that standard frat party maneuver.
“Everything?” She takes a long gulp of beer, frowning at the bottle afterward as if she blames it for her choice, the sleeve of her hoodie sliding up to reveal her bandage. “We're going full traitor?”
“Traitor?” Foster says the word with laughter.
“That's what someone who gives information to the enemy is called, right? You don't have a different word for it in mass society, do you?”
A head shake is all she gets from him until he frowns deeply, standing quickly as someone emerges from the trees behind me.
“Lindsay?” he says disbelievingly. I turn to see his wife, the president's daughter, standing in the shadows, flanked by two guys in black.
“Hi.” Her hand moves in a curt wave, mouth smiling without showing teeth. She looks like she's ready for a fight, eyes on her husband, who approaches her with quick steps and what appears to be a flashpoint temper.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he hisses as he pulls her away from us, the security guys moving away to give them privacy, but scanning the area closely.
“Emma's with Jane,” she says, heading him off before the obvious interrogation. “But I realized something.” She looks at Kina openly.
“What?” he snaps.
“Her. She's the key to it all.” One finger aims straight at Kina, who turns.
“Me?”
“Yes. You. I have an idea for how you can bring it all down.”
“ME?” Kina repeats, loud and incredulous.
“Yes. You. I can get you into the White House. Or my father's house in California. I can get you where you need to go to find out the truth. But only if you do exactly as I say.”
Chapter 7
Kina
“You're insane!” Drew Foster says to his wife, who gives him a sweet, slightly vacant look that makes me realize she's anticipated all of this, planned four steps ahead, and has a list of answers to every objection.
Which is only going to piss him off even more.
“I'm not,” she replies, one hand on the crook of his arm, her body language that of a confidante. “I'm right.”
“No.”
“It's already in place. I'm not sure where Daddy is tomorrow, but if we set it up right, Kina and I can make this work.”
“TOMORROW?” Drew shouts. “You expect me to set up a full operation and get Kina in to impersonate Glen by tomorrow?”
“He's on a two-week junket in Europe starting in three days. It's now or it's too late.”
The air between them has an energy about it, their emotions obvious but the dynamic secure. Trusting. Challenging, but clear:
They have each other's backs.
He views himself as her protector. Her literal human shield. And yet she was President Bosworth's human shield when her mother tried to shoot him.
These two are complicated.
“Then we'll wait until he's back in DC,” Foster says, unconvinced by his own words.
“If we wait, how many more innocent lives are lost?” Lindsay counters.
“Too many,” I say, stepping closer. Her eyes meet mine and my heart beats harder.
She understands.
She really, fully, understands.
“This isn't about waiting until the moment is right, Drew,” she pleads. “It's about making sure no one else dies for the sake of people in power playing a high-level game of one-upsmanship!”
“It's not about who is right and who is wrong any longer,” I add, Lindsay nodding, ceding the floor to me. “I wonder if it ever was.” My voice trails off in a whisper.
“It's about the kids now. About figuring out who decided to terminate the compound,” Callum says. “And finding out what else they decided to do.”
“There are news reports about settlements in the Middle East being bombed. Over one hundred children dead in the attack,” Lindsay says, her words making Drew Foster press a finger to his ear and speak into his phone. He looks down at the ground, grimaces, and says something else, his intensity level spiking.
No one needs to be specially trained to read his body language.
“That could very well be one of our compounds,” Callum responds, rubbing his chin with his hand, drawing attention to his day's growth of beard.
Exhaustion crashes into me like a boulder in a rock slide, a sudden weariness that forces me to grab the back of a chair for support. It must be well past midnight, which means mere hours have passed since we escaped. How many? Five? Eight? The fire shimmers before my eyes as I fight to breathe.
“Kina,” Callum says, his hands on my waist, steady and worried.
“I'm fine.”
“You look like you're about to collapse.”
“And can you blame her?” Lindsay says urgently, her attention on her husband. “What if it were Emma going through everything those kids have gone through? Kina's like their mother.”
At the mention of his daughter, Foster's demeanor shifts to a blend of higher intensity and an emotional urgency that I can feel.
“You think getting Kina in with Harry can make a difference?”
“It can,” Callum says. He bends down, whispering in my right ear. “The divisions within Stateless.” The murmur isn't meant to be only for the two of us.
“Divisions?” Drew asks sharply.
“You know that the leaders I work with have told me there are others at high levels who are at war with them. Stateless is not immune from the kind of petty tyranny that causes factions to form,” Callum explains. “I suspect we're the collateral damage in a fight within Stateless.”
“So there are some leaders who don't want the children eliminated? Who aren't a
gainst us?” I gasp, struggling to get my brain to process it all. I feel like I'm swimming in an oil spill.
“I assume so, yes. Svetnu said there were other Stateless leaders who didn't agree with his decisions. Who were fomenting chaos within Stateless as much as we did out in mass society.”
“It makes sense. Power corrupts and all that.” Duff's voice makes me turn and look up. He's behind me, the fire outlining his tall, broad body, the flicker of light barely illuminating his face. Dressed all in black, he looks like a solid piece of iron, standing firm.
“How do we know who is on which side?” I ask.
“That's just it,” Lindsay says, her voice filled with a jumpy excitement that makes me frown. “We know which side some Stateless operatives aren't on. Like your sister.”
“What about her?”
“She's, well...”
“You think Glen isn't working with Svetnu? That's she's not allied with the core leaders?” I gasp.
“Oh, man,” Callum groans. “That would explain a lot.”
“Wait. Wait,” I snap. “It's one thing to say that Glen isn't allied with us,” I hiss, gesturing between me and Callum. “But you think she's working with some other faction in Stateless?”
“I don't know,” Callum replies. “But she's capable of anything. I wouldn't put it past her to double cross our leadership.”
“And the only way to find out is to get you into my father's office,” Lindsay says as Drew scowls. “If you can find out what Glen knows, we can regroup. Save more of the–what did you call them? The place you lived?”
“Compounds.”
“Sounds like an island,” she mutters. Drew looks at her with a pained expression.
“Some of them are,” I answer truthfully. “Callum would know more about them, though.”
“That's not what I meant,” she responds quickly. “It's, well… anyhow. I've met Glen, both at the White House residential quarters and back at The Grove.”
“The Grove?” I ask.
“His private home,” Callum says. “But you need to go to bed. Get some sleep. We can work on the details of this in the morning.”
“No,” I say, before my body betrays me with a long yawn.
“Yes,” Lindsay whispers as she offers me a hug. I stiffen when she touches me, but I put my arms up under hers, patting her lightly. We don't hug adults at the compound. Anyone over the age of four, actually.