“Maybe,” said Greyson grimly. “If you think for a moment they might—”
“I’ll stop,” I lied. I knew I wouldn’t, and they knew I wouldn’t, either. But as willing as I was to die for this cause, I couldn’t stomach the thought of dying today—of never seeing the light at the end of the dark tunnel that had become our lives—and I told myself again and again that it wouldn’t happen. I would hide the gun in my coat. They wouldn’t be able to tell it was me until Greyson was in charge, and he would pardon me. It would work out.
It had to.
When we arrived at Somerset only a few minutes later, there was a crowd of onlookers waiting for us at the gates, held back by armed guards. Daxton’s car slowed, and he cracked the window to stick a hand out and wave.
A few members of the crowd clapped, but it didn’t look terribly enthusiastic. Maybe public sentiment was turning against him more swiftly than we’d thought. Or maybe it was too cold out for anyone to feel particularly enthusiastic about anything. With that in mind, I rolled down our window.
“What are you doing?” said Greyson, trying to snatch my hand from the button. I gave him a look.
“Seeing how much fallout we’re going to have to face.”
Sticking my head out the window, I beamed at the crowd and waved, and a roar of applause and whistles began. Nearly everyone in the crowd lit up, and they began to shout and wave back. My smile grew genuine. Daxton was the only one feeling the cold, it seemed.
“Get back in here before someone shoots you,” hissed Benjy, but I only slid back into my seat once the crowd was out of sight. Greyson hastily rolled the window up.
“No one’s going to shoot me,” I said. I was the one with the gun, after all. “Did you see that?”
“Yes,” said Greyson, frowning. “It was unnecessary.”
“No, it was exactly what they wanted,” I said. “Daxton waved, and no one cared. I smile and wave, and they’re practically crawling over themselves to get closer.”
“It was still dangerous,” said Greyson, and I shrugged.
“I’ve been shot at before. Besides, this was worth it.”
“I don’t see how,” he said, but Benjy spoke up before I could.
“In the court of public opinion, Lila will win every time against Daxton. We can use that. We will.”
When the white manor of Somerset came into view, my stomach knotted, and I had to force myself to breathe steadily. This was it. This was the moment we’d been waiting for. I touched the inside of my jacket, the metal cool and reassuring to the touch. I could do this. I would do this, and by noon, everything would be exactly the way it should be. I just had to pull the trigger.
In a stroke of inspiration, I secured my right sleeve in the pocket on that side, making sure it wouldn’t accidentally fall out. This way, it looked like I had both of my hands in my pockets, but my right arm was inside my coat instead, within reach of the gun hidden in the lining. It wasn’t the most graceful of plans, but it would give me a way to shoot Daxton without giving the appearance of pointing a gun directly at him. It might buy me the fewprecious seconds I would need to keep myself alive.
As we piled out of the car, Daxton watched me coldly from the other side of the drive, and it took me a panicked moment to realize it wasn’t because he had noticed my empty sleeve. He must have witnessed my impromptu rally. I couldn’t decide whether to feel smug about it or worry about his potential retaliation. But what could he do? As long as I did my job, he would be dead in a matter of minutes, and the country would be ours. If I survived that long.
I swallowed that thought and steeled my spine against the fear washing over me. Too many people were counting on that bullet for me to change my mind, but it was far more difficult to find my courage now than it had been in a room far from Daxton and his guards and the consequences of my actions. I bit the inside of my cheek. This was exactly the version of me Knox would have been thrilled to see—someone thinking her actions through before taking them. Only now, that hesitation could blow things all to pieces.
As we had hoped, a camera crew had gathered to record our observation of what remained of Somerset. They likely planned to show this clip on the six o’clock news as a fluff piece about how the Hart family was rebuilding after the war; they had no idea this would become a shot that, with any luck, would go down in history. My palms began to sweat. I could do this. I had to do this.
Construction crews had cleaned up the worst of the wreckage in Somerset, and they had already built scaffolding around the parts that had to be reconstructed, including the residential wing. Seeing the destruction from the outside made me wonder how anyone had survived at all. As we all gathered on the brown front lawn, a foreman in a construction hat joined us, and he and Daxton shook hands.