“Stay behind me,” Priya said softly, as she guided me down the corridor. “And do exactly as I say.”
The two guards who’d been there when we arrived were still just outside the door, but they’d been joined by a third—and all three were slumped on the floor. Unconscious.
What happened? I bit back the words, suddenly sure that I didn’t want to risk making any unnecessary noise.
Priya caught the look on my face as she glanced back over her shoulder at the men. The look on her face clearly said, Don’t ask.
We rounded the corner, walking at a brisk pace. We continue at that pace until a group of men turned the corner at the end of the hall, walking toward us.
Not good.
There were four men. At least three of them were armed.
So not good.
“Head down and keep walking,” Priya murmured. She slowed her pace slightly, and I matched mine to hers.
“You!” I heard a voice say to my left.
Priya tensed, ready to launch herself into action.
“Tess.”
The sound of my name drew Priya up short, and for the first time, I looked past the guns to the men’s faces. Three of them appeared to be guards of some type. The fourth was the vice president of the United States.
Where’s his Secret Service detail?
“It is Tess, isn’t it?” the vice president said. Beside him, one of the men’s hands hovered over his weapon.
“Yes,” I told the vice president, turning to face him full-on. “It is.”
“They say you saw my daughter. They say you saw Anna.” The vice president didn’t say a word about my presence here. He didn’t seem capable of registering surprise or suspicion or anything other than a haunting mixture of sorrow and fear. “She’s okay?”
“She was screaming,” I said, unable to keep the memory from coming to life on my tongue. “I saw them knock her unconscious, but they weren’t trying to hurt her. They needed her intact.”
They need her to get to you.
“They won’t need her much longer,” the vice president said, the words getting caught in his throat.
I realized, then, why he was here.
He turned to Priya. “I never saw you,” he said gruffly.
“Nor we you,” Priya returned. She started walking again at that same brisk pace. After a moment, I followed.
He’s here for Daniela, I thought. The same as us.
The difference was, the vice president—the acting president—had the authority to let her go.
Priya and I made it to the surface. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised to see Ivy waiting outside. Adam stood slightly behind her.
They were very surprised to see me.
“What—” Ivy started to say, but then she changed her mind. Instead of asking me what I was doing here, she turned on Priya, the look on her face promising dire consequences.
“She had a message,” Priya told Ivy. “For the prisoner. I assure you—”
“I assure you,” Adam countered, stepping forward, “that you do not want to finish that sentence.”
Adam and Ivy hadn’t been happy when Priya had used me to send a message to them. And now that she’d brought me to see a known terrorist? Put me in a room with that terrorist?
This wasn’t going to be pretty.
“She didn’t have a choice about bringing me,” I said, trying to get Adam and Ivy to focus on me. “Just like I didn’t have a choice about coming.”
They have Vivvie.
I willed Ivy to remember that, willed Adam to ask himself what lengths he and Ivy would have gone to if the terrorists had still held me.
“Get Tess out of here,” Ivy told Adam, clipping the words.
“Is it done?” I asked, stepping back and away from them before Adam could reach for me. “Daniela? The files? The foreign prisoners?”
Everything else Senza Nome asked for—is it done?
Ivy held up a USB drive. “My files,” she said.
Or at least, the version she was giving Senza Nome.
Ivy inclined her head slightly. “It’s done.”
The door opened behind us. All four of us whirled in the direction of the sound. Daniela Nicolae stepped out into the evening air, her hands cuffed in front of her body, an armed guard on either side.
“President Nolan will be sworn back in within the hour,” one of the guards told Ivy. “You need to move.”
Priya was the one who heeded that instruction, stepping forward to take the USB drive from Ivy. “I’ve received an ultimatum of my own,” she said, her voice steady. “I have to be the one to deliver their demands. I go in.”
“You won’t come out,” Ivy told Priya. The resulting silence indicated Priya’s acceptance of Ivy’s words, both as truth and as inevitable.
Stone-faced, Ivy nodded to the guards. They transferred Daniela Nicolae to Priya’s custody. Seconds later, the guards were gone.
They were never here. Vice President Hayden was never here. This exchange never happened.
“Come on, Tess,” Adam said, stepping up beside me.
I swallowed. “I can’t.”