CHAPTER 50
I studied the library camera feed long enough to know its blind spots. Crawling along the floor, slowly enough to avoid being caught by the motion sensors, I made it to the door. Next up was the hallway. I listened for footsteps and told myself it wasn’t any different from listening to a horse come closer, knowing that if you looked up, it might spook.
Now. Go now.
Avoiding the hallway cameras was harder—impossible if I wanted to get more than a few feet.
I made it as far as the closest bathroom and slipped in.
Automatically, I scanned the room for hiding spots, for shelter. Unfortunately, the urinals offered neither. I tested the window to see if I could work it loose.
No such luck.
Watching the cameras and listening for footsteps again, I waited until it was clear, then slipped back out into the hall.
I wasn’t exactly sure where the Hardwicke security offices were, but I knew they were in this building, and I knew they were on the top floor. If there was a way of calling the outside world, I was betting I’d find it there—probably under guard.
Farther down the hall, another bathroom.
Pressing my body back against the tile wall and riding out the rush of adrenaline, I tapped at the screen of the tablet, scrolling through the feed until I got to the staircase. I tried to zoom in, but the maneuver didn’t take.
Instead, a message popped up.
ENACT PROGRAM?
Program? What were you doing, Emilia?
The prompt on the screen gave me two options: YES and NO. Before I could think too hard about what I was doing, I hit YES.
SELECT CAMERA TO CLONE.
There were three stairwells in the main building. If this works, I will worship the ground you walk on, I told Emilia silently. I will owe you favors for all time. I will be your friend, the way you were mine.
I couldn’t let myself remember Emilia standing up and stepping out into the aisle. Instead, I concentrated on the tablet. I hit what I hoped were the right commands, and then I cracked the door to the hallway open and made my last dash to the stairs.
The door closed behind me. Too loud. This wasn’t going to work. It couldn’t. But I thought of John Thomas with a hole in his gut and Dr. Clark training a gun on Anna Hayden and the Secret Service agent lying dead on the library floor—
I made it up two flights of stairs before I’d processed the fact that I was running. When I heard the sound of someone entering the stairwell below me, I made a split-second decision.
No time to listen. No time to check the tablet. I stepped into the hall. I was out in the open. I was exposed. And the hallway was . . .
Empty.
There were snipers on the roof and guards patrolling the first two floors and armed gunmen at every exit, but the third floor was quiet.
Right up to the point when it wasn’t.
“As of this moment, every child in this school is accounted for and alive.”
I recognized the headmaster’s voice the moment it broke the silence.
“That can remain true. We can reach a peaceful solution, but that solution will require your cooperation.”
It took me two seconds to pinpoint where the voice was coming from and another after that to realize that he wasn’t speaking to me.
“Here is what that cooperation will look like. You will release Daniela Nicolae to our custody. As well, you will be provided with a list of others imprisoned by your and other governments without due process or trial. You will use your resources to secure their release worldwide.”
It was one thing to realize abstractly that the headmaster was the person in the position to have brought these men into our school. It was one thing to think that the man who’d chided you on appropriate behavior could do something like this.
It was another thing altogether to hear him issuing demands.
Drawn like a moth to the flame, I crept toward the voice, hugging the wall.
“A sum of twenty million dollars will be transferred into an account we specify. This money is nothing to us but a gesture of goodwill, from Hardwicke parents understandably concerned about the welfare of their children.”
Prisoners. Money. The scope of the demands made my mouth go dry.
“Additionally, private requests will be fulfilled by a small number of Hardwicke parents.” The headmaster began reading a list of names, and all I could think was that once upon a time, the picture that had allowed me to tie together three of the players in another conspiracy had hung in his office.
It never ends. I felt hysteria bubbling up inside of me. Terrorists and politicians and school officials, rogue Secret Service agents, and a White House physician who could be bought.
Every time I thought it was over, thought it could be over, I was wrong.
“Priya Bharani.”
The mention of Vivvie’s aunt brought my attention back to the present. She was on the list of Hardwicke parents who would be required to fulfill a “private request.” So was Ivy.