The Long Game

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  I surged upward, pushing off from the wall and closing the space between my lips and his. For a split second, he stiffened, and then his hands dug into my hair, and he was kissing me back.

  I would have pegged Henry Marquette for a gentlemanly kisser—restrained, a little too proper, a little too controlled.

  I would have been wrong.

  Henry Marquette kissed the way I fought—fiercely. No fears. No hesitations. No regrets. Just Henry and me and a hunger I’d never recognized in either one of us. For this.

  For us.

  I broke away first, my lips lingering near his for a second or two. Breathing raggedly, I forced myself to get it together. We didn’t have time for this.

  “We can’t turn ourselves in, and we can’t stay here.” I took a step back and turned my attention back to the tablet in my hand. I didn’t look at Henry, couldn’t look at him. Instead, I scrolled through the video feeds. “I was going to try to get to the security offices, to see if there was a way of getting a message out.”

  There was a beat of silence.

  “You are aware, I assume,” Henry said, “that this is the single worst idea in the history of the world?”

  Do you have a better suggestion? I let a raised eyebrow do the talking for me.

  Henry stared at me. I could see the wheels turning. He was thinking something, feeling something, but the exact meaning of the tension in his jaw, the way he was looking at me—that, I couldn’t diagnose.

  “The tunnel.” Henry’s voice was—if possible—quieter than it had been up until that moment.

  “The one Di had us use to break into the Aquatics Center?” I said. “I thought of that, but there’s no way we can make it out of the main building. There are snipers on the roof and armed guards at every exit.”

  Henry shook his head. “That’s not the only entrance to the tunnel.”

  My mouth went dry. Suddenly, I was back in the library, watching Anna and her Secret Service agent. I hadn’t asked myself why the agent had chosen the library for his standoff with the guards.

  He told Dr. Clark that he had to get Anna out.

  I grabbed Henry’s arm, the way he’d grabbed mine in the hall. The part of my brain that was driven by instincts—by an ancient and unmentionable fear of predators, of darkness, of death—kicked into high gear. I ignored the vicious and incessant beating of my own heart. I ignored the lead that lined my stomach when I thought about the fact that I was risking Henry’s life, as well as my own.

  “I think I know where to look for the entrance to the tunnel in this building,” I told Henry. I checked the tablet feeds, then nodded toward the stairs. I forced myself to let go of his arm, forced myself not to touch him, not to think about touching him. “Move.”

  CHAPTER 52

  We made it three-quarters of the way to the library before a man with an assault rifle caught us, head-on.

  “Down on the ground!”

  I recognized the man as the one who’d hit Anna Hayden over the head, the one who’d implied that he was taking orders from Dr. Clark for now.

  Mercenary. Unpredictable.

  I dropped to the ground. The guard rounded on Henry.

  “You!” he said, jabbing the gun in Henry’s direction.

  Henry held his hands up. He slowly lowered himself to his knees. I saw a flicker in the gunman’s eyes. He stepped toward Henry.

  “Marquette,” I blurted out Henry’s last name. “He’s Henry Marquette. I’m Tess Kendrick Keyes.”

  Henry stared down the gun—and the man who held it. When he spoke, each word was deliberate and crisp. “You want us alive.”

  Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot him. Please, don’t—

  After an elongated moment, the guard lowered the gun ten or fifteen degrees—just enough to start my heart beating again in my chest, not enough to stop me from picturing him changing his mind and pulling the trigger.

  The guard shifted his gaze from Henry to me. He removed one hand from his gun and lifted it to his ear. I realized that he was talking to someone, sending a message. “I’ve got eyes on—”

  One second, Henry was beside me, and the next, he lunged for the man’s gun.

  No.

  Henry’s hands closed around the barrel of the gun and he slammed it back into the gunman’s face, throwing his whole body after the blow. The two of them went down. The gun went off.

  No.

  I leapt forward, nothing in my mind except getting to Henry. If I could get to him, he would be okay. If I could touch him, I could save him. I could make him fine.

  Please, God, let him be fine.

  “Tess.” Henry stood up off the guard. I looked for blood, looked for a hole in his shoulder or chest. “Kendrick.” Henry’s voice was sharper this time. “We need to go. Now.”

  He’s okay. Henry’s okay. As we took off running for the library, I fought the urge to glance back over my shoulder. No blood, I thought. There was no blood. Not on Henry. Not on the gunman.

  “He’s unconscious,” Henry said as we hit the library door. “He won’t stay that way.”

  Maybe one of us should have grabbed the gun—but I didn’t know how to shoot it. I doubted Henry did, either.

  We have to find a way out of here. We have to find the tunnel before someone comes looking for the man Henry took out.

  How long did we have? Seconds? Minutes?

  Fueled by adrenaline, I pushed forward. Where had the Secret Service agent been heading?

  If I were an entrance to an underground tunnel, where would I be?

  “The tunnel’s under us,” I told Henry. “The entrance probably is, too.”

  I squatted down, running my hands frantically over the floor. There had to be something. I looked for a flip, a switch, a crack in the floor—

  “Here,” Henry called. He threw his weight against a bookshelf. It creaked, then started to move. I hurried to help him, not questioning how he’d found it, how we could have possibly gotten so lucky when—

  “This way!”

  I heard the shout, and then I heard running—toward the library, toward us. The bookshelf gave way. Something clicked, and a second later, I was looking into a dark hole.

  The tunnel—if we were lucky.

  “You go first,” Henry told me. “Give me the tablet, and go.”

  There was no time to think, no time to waste. I handed him the tablet, then dropped down into the hole and landed hard. I looked up.

  “Go,” Henry told me again. There was a finality to his tone, and I realized then why he’d asked for the tablet.

  He’s not coming.

  “Henry!” My yell was lost to the sound of the bookshelf moving back into place. A second after the entrance closed, there was silence, and a moment after that, I heard the sound of feet overhead.

  Of gunshots.

  They won’t hurt him. He’s a high-value target. He has to be—

  There was no way back up.

  I have to go.

  I had to get help. For Henry—and Vivvie and Emilia and all the others. I stumbled in the dark, feeling my way to the tunnel wall. It was cool and damp to the touch. I kept moving—running, stumbling, falling and getting back up.

  I’d crawl if I had to.

  They have Henry. I didn’t let myself consider the possibility that there was no Henry anymore, like there was no John Thomas. I didn’t let myself think about Henry’s face belonging to a body and not a boy. They have Henry. They have Vivvie. They have Emilia.

  I pushed myself forward. Finally, finally—there was a break in the darkness. The closer I got to the end of the tunnel, the easier it was to make out the slants of light. On the ground, I could make out the outline of two long-dead glow sticks.

  Three days. It had been three days since the party, one week since John Thomas had been killed.

  It had been less than ten minutes since I’d left Henry, less than an hour since the armed men had fired their first shot.

  I put my hands flat on the iron doo
r to the tunnel and pushed. My body protested. So did the hinges on the door, but a second later, it gave. I heard the sound of running water. It must have rained, I thought. The drainage ditch had been dry on Friday, but now I slogged through water to get to a single metal rung. I put my foot on it, hoisted myself up. Removing the grate was easy, but getting through was harder wet and alone than it had been on Friday.

  I threw my upper body against the ground overhead for purchase. I made it out. I made it to my feet. And then I heard the voice behind me.

  “So nice of you to join us, Tess.”

  I turned slowly. Mrs. Perkins stood behind me. She wasn’t visibly armed, but the guards on either side of her were.

  Henry stood just behind them.

  I could feel my body getting ready to give out beneath me. Henry was alive, I had failed, and the adrenaline that had kept me going for the past hour drained out of me, leaving my body feeling like little more than a shell.

  I stumbled. Henry moved past the guards to catch me. The terrorists didn’t turn their guns on him. They didn’t so much as bat an eye as he steadied my body with his.

  Henry held on to me a second longer than he had to. He whispered two words directly into my ear, and then he let me go.

  “Take her to the third floor. Put her with Raleigh.” Mrs. Perkins offered me a smile, too sharp-edged for her soccer-mom face. “I’ve heard you fancy yourself an expert problem solver, Tess. I’m interested to see what you make of my current problem.”

  I barely heard her. I was fixated on two things—the words Henry had whispered in my ear and the fact that the order to take me to the third floor hadn’t been issued to the guards.

  Mrs. Perkins had issued that order to Henry.

  And the words he’d whispered to me as he’d caught me, his body keeping mine vertical?

  I’m sorry.

  CHAPTER 53

  Kendrick, what you don’t know could fill an ocean.

  Mrs. Perkins reached out and laid a hand on Henry’s shoulder. Henry didn’t stiffen at the terrorist’s touch. He didn’t bat an eye.

  We’re all liars sometimes, he’d told me.

  We infiltrate. Dr. Clark’s words to Emilia in the library washed back over me. We observe, we influence, we recruit.

  “Don’t fight this,” Henry told me. His voice was quiet. I wished he didn’t sound like the boy I’d known. I wish I couldn’t see my Henry in his eyes as he continued. “Don’t fight me.”

  Armed men bound my hands behind my back. They bound me to a chair, and Henry watched.

  He knew that when I’d been kidnapped, I’d been bound. He knew that I couldn’t even see a roll of duct tape without flashing back, and he watched.

  “Leave us,” Henry told the guards.

  I thought of the armed man in the hallway, the way he’d looked at Henry as he said: You.

  Not you as in now you get on the ground. You as in I know you. You as in what are you doing with this girl?

  At Henry’s request, the guards left us. I stared at the boy I’d kissed less than an hour earlier. I forced myself to look at him, to take in every line of his face, features I’d memorized, features I knew—

  “Kendrick.”

  Full lips, wide jaw, piercingly clear eyes.

  “Don’t call me that,” I told Henry. “Don’t call me anything.”

  He lowered his voice. “I tried to get you out.”

  Anger bubbled up inside me and came out as a strange, dry laugh. “You tried to get me out,” I repeated. “What about Vivvie? And Emilia?” I didn’t give him time to reply. “What about all those freshmen who think you hung the moon?”

  Henry’s jaw clenched. “I never meant for any of this to happen. If you understood—”

  Understood?

  “These people killed John Thomas!” The words ripped their way out of my mouth. I hurt, just saying them. “Emilia accused Dr. Clark, and do you know what she said? She said that it wasn’t her idea. That she’s not the one who pulled the trigger. But she didn’t deny that Senza Nome was behind it.”

  “I didn’t know.” Henry’s reply was guttural. I barely heard it. “About John Thomas, about his father. Until this weekend, I never even suspected—”

  “I had John Thomas’s blood on my hands,” I choked out. “And you . . .”

  He’d washed it off. He’d given me his shirt. He’d taken care of me.

  “I didn’t know,” Henry repeated. “I swear it. No one was supposed to get hurt.”

  I heard what Henry wasn’t saying. No one was supposed to get hurt here.

  Henry had told me that his grandfather’s death had taught him that the people in power couldn’t always be trusted. I’d kept the truth about the conspiracy from him for fear of what he might do if he knew. And when he’d heard me mention the possibility of a fourth conspirator, he’d been devastated. He’d told me that he wished I’d told him.

  Not because he didn’t know, I realized, unable to keep from trying to make sense of how a boy who believed in honor—who believed in protecting people who couldn’t protect themselves—could have let himself be recruited into a group like this.

  He already knew the conspiracy wasn’t over. They told him first.

  If Senza Nome was trying to manipulate Henry, they might not have told him there were suspects, plural, for the remaining conspirator. They might have led him to believe there was only one.

  “The president.” I forced myself to say it out loud. “They told you that the president is the one who had your grandfather killed.”

  Henry stood, staring down at me with the same sick masochism that kept me from looking away from him. He didn’t speak—didn’t confirm what I’d implied, but didn’t deny it, either.

  They told you the president killed your grandfather. They made you believe they could make it right.

  “They just asked for money at first,” Henry said. “Then information.”

  Information. I thought of all the times Henry had asked me what Ivy was up to. I thought of the two of us, sitting in the dark on the front porch. I thought of Henry asking me about Ivy’s files.

  He’d used me.

  The door to the room opened. Headmaster Raleigh, bound and beaten, was shoved in. Henry tore his gaze away from me, turned, and went to secure the headmaster.

  “You don’t have to do this, Mr. Marquette,” Headmaster Raleigh told him.

  “If I want to stay in a position to keep the people in this school safe,” Henry told him—told me, “yes, I do.”

  I turned my head down and to the side. I refused to look at him. I refused to even acknowledge that I’d heard the words.

  I didn’t look back when I heard Henry walking toward the door.

  I didn’t lift my head until it closed behind him.

  I blinked away the tears that blurred my vision. The headmaster came into focus, bound opposite me in this tiny office.

  “Whatever they tell you to do,” the headmaster told me, blood crusted to his lip, his face swollen, “you do it, Ms. Kendrick.”

  I was surprised by the fierceness in his tone.

  “This is my fault,” Raleigh said, as much to himself as to me. “I brought them here. It’s my fault.”

  I thought of Dr. Clark, watching, infiltrating, influencing, recruiting. I thought of the headmaster’s secretary, with her finger on the pulse of the school. “They were already here.”

  When Henry’s grandfather died, Dr. Clark had tasked the class with choosing a replacement. Because she wanted to challenge us to think critically about the process? Or because she wanted to know what our parents thought? What they knew?

  We see everything. We know all of your secrets. And we wait.

  I forced my mind away from the memory of Daniela Nicolae’s words and back to the man across from me. “Why did you take the picture down?” That question surprised me almost as much as it surprised the headmaster. “The photo of you with the president at Camp David,” I continued. The photo of you with Vivvie
’s father and one of the other men who conspired to kill Justice Marquette. “Why did you take it down?”

  I’d thought the headmaster was in bed with the terrorists. When he’d read out the words they had written, I’d believed they were his. If it hadn’t been for that photograph, for a lingering sense of suspicion cast upon all the men there, would I have questioned that? Would I have realized that the person in the best position to influence the headmaster, to silently observe everything that went on in these halls, was someone non-threatening?

  Someone who goes largely unnoticed.

  “What interest could you possibly have in that photograph?” the headmaster asked, sounding more like the aggrieved man who’d sat opposite me in his office more times than I could count. “Really, Ms. Kendrick—”

  “Please,” I said. “I just want to know.”

  The headmaster sniffed but deigned to oblige. “I was told displaying that photograph so prominently was a bit gauche.”

  I heard the doorknob turn a second before the door opened. My wrists tensed against the ties that bound them to no avail. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t fight back. I was helpless.

  Henry had left me helpless.

  Dr. Clark shut the door gingerly behind her. She knelt down in front of me. “Look at you, Tess.” Her voice was gentle. She murmured the words, like it grieved her to see me like this.

  Like she hadn’t shot a Secret Service agent dead while I watched.

  “This isn’t how I wanted this meeting to happen,” Dr. Clark told me.

  “Moira, get away from that young lady or I will—” The headmaster’s threat cut off abruptly as he realized there was nothing he could do. Nothing he could say.

  Dr. Clark gave no sign that she had heard him. Her warm brown eyes were solely focused on me. “I know how this must look to you, Tess. I know that you cannot begin to fathom what I’ve done here today, or why. I know that you cannot understand why a boy like Henry would listen to what I have to say—”

  “What did you tell him?” I asked, my body tensing against the ties again, causing the chair to jar slightly.

  She didn’t jump. She didn’t blink. “I told him what I am trying to tell you. What’s happening here today isn’t who we are. This”—she gestured at me, at the headmaster—“is not what we do.”