“Or maybe you just think you deserve it,” Zane said quietly into the void.
I blinked at the unexpected tears that welled in my eyes.
“You are more than someone’s experiment, more than Dr. Jacobs’s brain child,” he whispered fiercely. “You have a right to want things for yourself, Ariane, to see yourself as a person. How do I get you to believe that?”
I turned away from him, unable to hide how closely his words had come to striking the vulnerable center I tried so hard to hide. “What do you want me to do?” I asked again.
“I want you to fight,” he said.
“But I—”
“And not by giving yourself up,” he added.
I turned to face him. “Again, I’m very open to suggestions,” I said through gritted teeth. “But I don’t see another option when they have all the information, all the power. You can’t just tip the balance in our favor by wishing it, no matter how noble your motives.” I couldn’t keep the sneer out of my voice, even though he didn’t really deserve it. I was as frustrated with myself as with him. “We’re the underdogs here, remember?”
He scowled at me. “I’m not suggesting that we—” He paused, a strange look crossing his face. “Maybe, maybe not.” A faint smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked with wariness.
He sat in his chair again, his entire posture changed now, confidence pouring through the cracks. “You could do exactly what they’re expecting you to.” He gestured to the phone still clutched in my hand. “You have Adam’s sister. You can track her.”
“I am not going to kill on their orders again,” I said. I’d done it once because it was a necessity; that was not the case this time.
He made an exasperated noise. “No, I’m not saying that. But they’ll be watching you. Seeing you track her and find her will keep them off your back temporarily. If you’re dead, you can’t save anyone,” he said rather pointedly.
“And then?” I prompted. Part B of this had to be damn near spectacular to make any kind of difference.
“You do what they’re expecting you to do, and then you turn it around on them,” Zane said with a grin.
Which was exactly what we’d done to Rachel in what felt like another lifetime, but I failed to see what that had to do with our current dilemma.
But Zane wasn’t done. “Adam had family pictures of that girl at the lab. I think the odds are pretty good that he’d answer a call from her.” He raised his eyebrows in a triumphant smirk.
I went still. “You have the number for the phone they gave you?” I asked breathlessly, the words tumbling over one another in my hurry to get them out. “Why didn’t you say so?” We could just call Adam and…
“No, but I know Adam has his own phone. One he used to stay in touch with his family. He had it at the facility.”
“Dr. St. John let him keep his phone?” I asked in disbelief.
Zane shrugged. “Adam is a volunteer. It’s not like he was going to try to plan an escape. As long as he didn’t talk about the ‘mission’ in specifics, I don’t think Emerson cared.”
“But that doesn’t mean he has it on him now,” I pointed out. “He’s got yours instead.”
“He didn’t when he left the hotel this morning, and I’m sure Emerson was checking in with him before we met up,” Zane said. “Therefore, odds are, he’s got his own phone on him.”
“So, you have his number?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “But I know someone who does, and so do you.” He grinned.
Now I could see what Zane had. I felt the first glow of excitement, of possibility.
“The odds are against us,” I warned him. “We’re running short on time.”
Zane just smiled. “So, what’s the plan?”
THE BAD NEWS WAS THAT Adam’s sister was in a city of three million people and thousands of tourists. The good news was that my girlfriend—was it okay to call Ariane that? We’d never officially discussed it, but I thought there might be some kind of automatic boyfriend/girlfriend status conferred once you’ve almost died for one another—had scary skills.
After pulling her phone from her pocket, she tapped the screen, flipping through various applications as I watched upside down. Then she landed on one very familiar icon and tapped it with complete confidence.
“Wait…you follow her on Twitter?” I stared at her. “How? When?” As far as I knew, the packets containing target information had been handed out only last night.
“The documentation they provided gave me her first name—Elise. After that, it was just a matter of interpreting contextual clues from the provided pictures. I tracked her through her university, Michigan State, and her sorority to get her last name, and then I used social media to create a false profile to follow her.” She shrugged. “I’m ‘Brittany Pearson’ as far as Elise knows.”