Guilt? Sorrow? Rage?
“Why you?” Daniela asked me, her voice still even, still controlled as she paced to the far corner of the room. “Why let you go? Why send you these videos? Why send you here?”
I gave her the only answer I had, the only one I’d been given. “I’m a resourceful girl, related to some very powerful people.”
Daniela looked at me and into me, like I was a clock, and she was a clock maker preparing to take it apart. “You care.”
I do. For some reason, I couldn’t admit that out loud.
“Walker cares.” Daniela turned her head to one side, allowing her matted hair to fall into her face. “He’s always cared too much.”
About you, I thought. You mean that he cared too much about you.
This was the moment—the one I’d been waiting for, the only one I was going to get.
“I’ll die to protect the people I love,” I said. I let my gaze fall down to her stomach and let a question form on my lips. “Will you?”
Daniela walked slowly toward me.
“Congressman Wilcox was killed in federal custody,” I told her. “He was a liability.” The terrorist drew herself to a stop directly in front of me. “Are you?” I asked her. “A liability to Senza Nome?”
When the government hands you over, what are the terrorists going to do? To you? To your child?
Do they have your loyalty?
Do you have theirs?
Those questions never made their way from my mind to my lips.
“A liability?” Daniela repeated after an elongated moment. “To the people you have been dealing with, let us say that I am a concern.”
She knows she’s a threat, I thought. And she knows what they do to threats.
Once upon a time, Daniela Nicolae might have been a true believer in Senza Nome’s cause. But right now, in this cell, looking at the possibility of confronting her own people, she was also a mother.
I knew from firsthand experience—from Ivy—what a powerful motivation that could be.
“The message you brought me—‘The dove has always wanted to fly to Madrid.’ It was an order to kill the woman who brought you here.” Daniela Nicolae stood over me. “Priya Bharani. She’s the dove.”
I stood up, trying to process that statement. “And Madrid?” I asked, my tongue like sandpaper in my mouth.
“I know people,” Daniela replied, “who have been to Madrid. I know what it is they refer to.”
“Murder,” I said.
“Execution,” came the correction. “They don’t just want the dove dead. They want it sudden and public, and they want the blood on my hands.”
Priya had been ordered to give herself up, to deliver Daniela, to deliver me. She’d known that, in all likelihood, she would be surrendering her life.
“When we make it back to Hardwicke,” I said, trying to process the reality of the situation. “When we go in . . .”
“I’m to make an example of her.”
“With the FBI and SWAT team watching?”
Daniela gave a slight nod.
“Won’t they shoot you?” I asked.
Daniela looked at me with an expression somewhere between detachment and pity.
That was when I realized: “They won’t shoot you if you have me.”
I could see how this would have played out, if Daniela hadn’t told me the meaning behind the message. I’d have been prepared for an attack, but I wouldn’t have expected it to come from her.
Neither would Priya, I thought.
The dove has always wanted to fly to Madrid.
“Why tell me this?” I asked the woman Walker Nolan had loved, the terrorist operative he’d never really known.
“You told me your truth,” Daniela Nicolae replied. “You wanted my trust. You claim that we are family, of sorts.” She let that sentiment hang in the air a moment longer than the ones that had come before. “My people, the organization I work for—they have been my family. I was taught, from the cradle, to protect that family.” She laid a hand on her stomach. “I would have died for our cause. But I will not allow my daughter to do the same.”
There was a noise in the hallway—footsteps, then a shout.
“Do you have a plan?” I asked Daniela.
She smiled again, that same subtle, chilling smile. “Do you?”
CHAPTER 60
Two minutes later, the door to the cell opened.
Priya stepped in and shut the door behind her. “We’ve got company,” she said. “Tess, you and I need to get out of here. Now.”
“What kind of company?” I asked.
Priya grabbed my arm, and as she pulled me out of the cell, she met Daniela’s eyes. “You stay here.”
I’d known that it wasn’t my job, or Priya’s, to get Daniela out. But after the past fifteen minutes—and especially the last two—my gut rebelled against the idea of leaving Daniela behind and hoping things went according to plan.
We need Daniela. Without her, we don’t stand a chance.