by Lynn Barnes
That was the point, I thought. Like the kingmaker, Mrs. Perkins played the long game. This was strategy. A carefully laid plan.
She’s not treating Daniela like a traitor. She’s treating her like competition.
“Now,” Mrs. Perkins said, turning her attention back to me. “Let us see how our little fixer did, shall we?”
Anxiety and adrenaline shot through my body. Ignoring it as best I could, I scanned the occupants of the room. Dr. Clark was sitting in front of a computer. Including the guards who’d escorted us up here, there were a total of four. And standing in between two of them was Henry.
Don’t look at him. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t feel his stare on your skin.
I focused on Mrs. Perkins and Dr. Clark instead.
“Money transfer came through,” Dr. Clark told Mrs. Perkins. “Twenty million, untraceable.”
I let out a shallow breath. William Keyes was a man of his word.
“Congratulations, gentlemen,” Mrs. Perkins said to the guards. “You’ll be getting paid.”
Mercenaries. My chest tightened. Guns for hire. That had been my hope. I couldn’t afford to show any visible reaction to the confirmation I’d just received.
“And what of Ivy Kendrick?” Mrs. Perkins asked me. “Did DC’s most notorious fixer step up to the plate?”
“She got your prisoner released,” I replied, glancing toward Daniela. “Didn’t she?”
Mrs. Perkins made a tsk sound under her breath. “There’s no need to take a confrontational tone, Tess. We’re all friends here.” She stepped forward and trailed the flat of the knife blade along my neck. “Now tell me, did Ivy happen to send us anything else?”
I nodded, as much as I could with a knife at my throat.
“Delightful,” Mrs. Perkins declared, stepping back. On the other side of the room, Henry stared at her, his jaw clamped closed.
I won’t let anything happen to you, he’d said roughly, his body less than a millimeter from mine.
“I believe you’re looking for this,” Daniela said, holding up the USB drive she’d taken from Priya. There wasn’t an ounce of tension in her voice—nothing but the barest hint of challenge.
She’s not afraid of them, I realized. They haven’t lifted a hand against her.
There was a plan. Daniela and I had a plan—but the reason I’d put my life in her hands, Priya’s life in her hands, was that I’d thought that our goals were aligned.
I’d thought she—and her child—were in danger.
Mrs. Perkins took the drive from Daniela and handed it to Dr. Clark. My former teacher plugged it in. A sequence of numbers and programming code appeared on the screen.
All eyes went to me.
“It has to be decrypted,” Daniela spoke up on my behalf, leaning back against a nearby table as she did. “Would you expect anything less?”
She’s on my side. She is. She knows the plan. She’ll stick to it.
“For your sake, Tess,” Mrs. Perkins said, her gaze lingering on my face, “let us hope it’s decrypted quickly.”
The sound of my own breathing was deafening in my ears, but somehow, I heard it—a light, high-pitched whistle.
Daniela eased herself off the table. The moment Mrs. Perkins attention was drawn to Daniela, I bolted.
Out the door, into the hall.
I made it two feet, maybe three, and then I was slammed into a wall. I heard a crack. My jaw. My teeth bit into my tongue.
One of the guards grabbed me roughly, my arms held so tightly behind my back that my shoulder threatened to dislocate. My eyes teared up. My vision blurred. I blinked.
Mrs. Perkins stepped out into the hall. She took her time and traded her knife for a gun.
My eyes found their way to Henry’s. For a second, I let myself pretend that none of this had happened. That it was just Henry and me. That he was the boy I’d known, the person I’d thought he could be.
“Stop, Kendrick. Please.”
I saw him say the words as much as I heard them.
Stop fighting. Stop taking chances. Stop.
I couldn’t. I had to keep Mrs. Perkins looking at me. I had to keep her attention on me for just a few more seconds.
“The program won’t work,” I said. “Ivy would never give you what you wanted. If she gave you anything, it’s a fraction of what she has.”
Mrs. Perkins raised her gun. “Thank you for your honesty, Tess.”
A second before she pulled the trigger, Henry threw himself forward. His body slammed into mine, curved around mine, shielding it, protecting it.
Protecting me.
I heard the gun go off. I felt Henry’s body lurch forward with the impact.
No. I thought the word, and I screamed it. And all around me, the world exploded into chaos.
I sank to the ground with Henry. Shot, just like John Thomas. Bleeding, just like John Thomas.
Not Henry.
Traitor—betrayer—friend—
Please, not Henry.
His blood was on my hands. My fingers frantically searched for a bullet hole, combing his back, the weight of his body in my arms.
“Up!” one of the guards yelled at me. “Get up!”
“Or,” a voice said behind him, “you could put your weapon down.”
Priya Bharani pressed a gun to the back of his head.
The plan is working, I thought dully. We’d taken our chances that the snipers’ attention would be on the FBI and securing the perimeter, not on the “body” killed within ten feet of the Hardwicke door. Priya was a trained operative. She could move quickly and silently. The plan is working. This was the plan. I should have felt a rush of victory. Relief.
I felt numb.
The guard lowered his weapon. Holding Henry, his blood thick on my fingers, I tried to stop the bleeding and took in the sight beyond us.
Mrs. Perkins was on the ground. There was a tiny, perfect bullet hole in the side of her head. Priya’s handiwork, thanks to my distraction. Daniela had taken out one of the guards. She currently held another at gunpoint.
That just left one guard, and Dr. Clark.
The sole remaining guard trained his gun on the dead woman who’d appeared in front of him. He wouldn’t make the mistake of underestimating Priya twice.
“Before you pull the trigger,” Daniela told him lightly, “you might consider the fact that by now, that twenty million dollars has been transferred again—into one of my accounts.” She smiled. “Were you hoping to get paid for this job?”
“You—” Dr. Clark couldn’t get out more than a single word. She looked from Daniela to Priya.
“It was our understanding,” Priya told Dr. Clark, “that what your colleague wanted was a very public show. So we gave you one.”
The knife sliding across Priya’s neck. The way she’d crumpled to the ground. The blood pooling around her wasn’t hers. The blood on the knife wasn’t hers.
It wasn’t even blood.
I’d been told such sleight of hand wasn’t hard, when the act was to be observed from a distance. I’d been told that people paid attention to threats, not bodies.
I’d known the plan. I’d come up with the plan. And still, it shocked me to see Priya standing there. She’d played her part well.
The blood.
The blood on the pavement hadn’t been Priya’s—but the blood on my hands was Henry’s.
“Can you get us out of here?” the mercenary asked Daniela, his gun still trained on Vivvie’s aunt.
“I have an exit strategy.” Daniela’s lips curved up slightly. “It will require some . . . sacrifices,” she said. “Are all the men here loyal to you?”
Are you loyal to all the men here? That was what Daniela was really asking.
The mercenary stared at her for a moment. “No.”
“Well, then,” Daniela said, “perhaps what I’ll need from you won’t be so much of a sacrifice after all.”
There was a beat of silence and then the mercenary lowered his gun. “I beli
eve I speak for the men on my team,” he told her, “when I say that we would like to be paid.”
“Congratulations.” Daniela lowered her own weapon, her eyes alight. “You now officially work for me.”
CHAPTER 63
The United States did not negotiate with terrorists. Now that Daniela had seized Hardwicke, that left her attempting to come to terms with someone else.
“You’re fine?” Ivy asked me, her voice shaking on the other end of the phone line.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You’re . . .”
“I’m fine.”
I heard Ivy suck in a breath. Even with a phone line between us, I could practically see her summoning up her composure with an uncanny level of emotional control. “You’re grounded until you’re forty.”
“We’re willing to accept those terms,” I retorted, exerting the same control of my emotions that she’d shown over hers. “All you have to do is provide transport.”
Across the table from me, Daniela tilted her head to the side, considering the phone, which I’d set to speaker.
It’s not over, Ivy. I willed her to see that. It won’t be over until we come to terms.
Daniela had taken control of Hardwicke. She was amenable to finding a peaceful solution—but that peaceful solution could not entail her going back into federal custody. The woman sitting across from me hadn’t engineered this situation. She hadn’t escalated it. But she held the reins now, and she wouldn’t hand them over until she was sure that it was in her best interest to do so.
Our prior alliance could only carry this so far.
“Transport?” Ivy repeated, after an elongated silence. “The whole world is watching. This doesn’t end with a cease-fire. This ends with a surrender. It has to.”
“A student was shot,” I said, feeling a bit like I was standing outside my body, watching myself dispassionately say those words. “He needs medical attention, Ivy.”
There was silence on Ivy’s end of the line.
“Henry needs medical attention,” I repeated, my grip on my emotions slipping finger by finger when I said Henry’s name. Please, Ivy. You’re supposed to be a miracle worker. Give me my miracle, just this once. “Daniela,” I continued, my voice remarkably steady, “needs safe transport out of the country for herself and a handful of men.”
“And if I’m going to make anything happen,” Ivy countered, “I need a surrender. I need terrorists in cuffs.”
Daniela leaned forward, folding her hands on the table. “Perhaps,” she said, “there is a way for all of us to get what we need.”
• • •
I ended up sitting on the floor of an empty classroom. Dr. Clark sat beside me, tending Henry’s wound.
“Don’t worry,” she told me, her voice oddly calm, given the circumstances. “Shoulder wounds are rarely lethal.”
He’s lost a lot of blood. I didn’t say that, couldn’t let myself say that. So instead, I said, “Why?”
“Unless the bullet hits a major artery—”
“No,” I said forcefully. “Why agree to turn yourself in?”
“Because,” Dr. Clark said softly, “it’s for the greater good.”
The United States government needed terrorists in cuffs. They needed a face for this horror. They needed to win.
Mrs. Perkins was dead. And the moment Daniela had asked, Dr. Clark had offered herself up. In penance?
No, I thought, watching her tend Henry with an unnatural calm. With purpose.
Even now, even after everything, Dr. Clark did everything in the name of Senza Nome.
Ivy would get her surrender. She’d get Mrs. Perkins in a body bag and Dr. Clark in handcuffs. She’d get two-thirds of the mercenaries.
The remaining men—the ones Daniela had struck a deal with—would get out of this alive and much richer, so long as they helped take down the rest. It was amazing how easy it was to find men willing to turn on their cohorts when there were $20 million and charges of treason at stake.
I heard the first gunshot.
The subset of the mercenaries Daniela had offered to Ivy on a platter wouldn’t go willingly. That was why Daniela had stationed two of her men at my door—and more at the doors of the other classrooms.
More shots. Coordinated movement.
Daniela had brought the snipers down. She’d allowed the SWAT team in, and now they were doing what SWAT teams did.
“She’ll make it out of this?” Dr. Clark spoke suddenly. “Daniela?”
That was the plan—and based on the tone in Dr. Clark’s voice, that was what she wanted. That was all she wanted.
“Are you really doing this for the greater good?” I asked. “Or for her?”
“We’re clear!” I heard someone shout from the hallway.
That would be the sign for the remaining mercenaries—Daniela’s men, the ones she’d struck a deal with—to leave. Daniela gets away. A small subset of the men get away. The government gets their body bags and their arrests.
And no one would ever know the difference.
“Not just for her.” Dr. Clark’s answer came on enough of a delay that I’d stopped expecting her to reply to my question at all. “I’m doing this for the man who recruited me. The one who recruited all of us, trained all of us.”
This was the first I’d heard a mention of a man, the first clue I’d been given that someone was in charge of Senza Nome.
“Daniela proved herself tonight,” Dr. Clark said. “She’s worthy.”
“Worthy?” My stomach twisted sharply. Daniela had been the devil I knew. She’d been the lesser of two evils.
But she was still a terrorist. My people, the organization I work for—they have been my family. Daniela’s words washed back over me as the door burst inward and SWAT officers poured in. I was taught, from the cradle, to protect that family.
“Worthy,” Dr. Clark repeated as the men threw her facedown on the floor. “She’s his daughter.”
“We’ve got one wounded!” a woman shouted, kneeling over Henry.
“Secure!”
Amid the shouts, my concentration was wholly absorbed in Dr. Clark.
“His daughter?” I asked.
To the people you have been dealing with, Daniela had told me, let us say that I am a concern.
Dr. Clark’s face pressed into the floor, her hands cuffed behind her back, she smiled. “His daughter. And now that she’s proved herself,” she said, every inch the true believer, “his heir.”
CHAPTER 64
The occupation of Hardwicke made international news. So, too, did the takedown. All the terrorists had been either apprehended or killed.
Or at least, that was how the story went.
As far as the world was concerned, Daniela Nicolae had served as a double agent, helping the SWAT team infiltrate the building and take down her cohorts inside. Both she and her unborn child had been killed in the process.
The United States government had their victory. The Hardwicke parents had their children back. And I had another truth—another secret—I didn’t want to know.
I wondered if it was the weight of secrets like this, as much as the fact that they served as a protective measure, that had made Ivy start keeping her files. She uploaded her secrets to the program. Maybe that meant she didn’t have to carry them inside.
“Raise your arm over your head. Now rotate it away from me.”
Grinding my teeth, I did as the doctor asked. I had a hairline fracture in my jaw, one hell of a headache, and a shoulder that the doctor subsequently informed me had not been dislocated, but that wasn’t very happy either.
I felt it. I felt all of it—all the pain, all the terror, all the ways this could have gone differently—now that the ordeal was over.
“What’s the verdict, doctor? Will our patient live?”
At some point, when I’d been caught up in the treacherous tangle of my own mind, Adam had entered the exam room. The doctor narrowed her eyes at him.
“Are you her father?” she asked.
Ivy was off running interference with the media, keeping them away from the hospital—away from Henry, away from Anna Hayden, away from me. If she’d had her way, Ivy never would have left my side.
“Uncle.” Adam answered the doctor’s question about being my father. I could see the woman on the verge of telling him she could only speak to my parent or legal guardian.
I spoke up. “Close enough.”
Adam kept his face carefully blank as the doctor rattled off the details of my condition, but I knew him well enough to see the emotions underneath. He was the closest thing I had to a father, the closest thing I would ever have, with Tommy dead.
Soon enough, the doctor left the two of us alone. Adam came to stand in front of me. After a long moment, he sat beside me on the exam table. He didn’t yell at me. He didn’t ask me how I was doing. He just sat there, and I leaned into him.
His arm wrapped around me, and I cried—deep, bone- shuddering sobs that racked my body and his. He held on, held me, and when I stopped crying and straightened, wiping the back of my hand roughly over my tear-drenched face, he didn’t say a word.
“I’m sorry Daniela knocked you out,” I said, beaten at my own game by his steady silence.
In reply, Adam raised an eyebrow at me. “Are you?”
“Not really,” I admitted, managing a small smile. “But I’m sorry it was necessary.”
Adam snorted. “I hear you’re grounded until you’re forty,” he said, pushing back any urge he might have felt to tear into me himself.
“I’m pretty sure Ivy was exaggerating,” I said.
Adam’s other eyebrow joined the first. “Are you?”
The door to the hospital room opened. I expected it to be Ivy or Bodie, who’d promised to bring me a snack, but instead, William Keyes stood there. He hadn’t changed clothes since the last time I’d seen him. His thick white hair was disheveled. He’d aged a decade in a day.
“You are unharmed?”
Those were the exact same words he’d said to me before, but this time, there was more raw emotion woven through them than I’d ever heard in his voice. I wondered if he believed, as the rest of the world did, that Daniela and the baby had been killed. Given everything I knew about the man, if he hadn’t uncovered the truth yet, he would soon.