Take the Key and Lock Her Up (Embassy Row #3)(41)

I’m pretty sure Noah curses in Portuguese, but then he eyes me. “Don’t worry about Alexei. He’s worried about you. He doesn’t care what happens to him.”

I look at Noah, cock an eyebrow, and he knows I’m not buying it. “Would you care if your mother didn’t recognize you? If she acted like you never existed?”

Noah stares into the distance. “I’m not Russian.”

I don’t argue with Noah’s logic. It makes as much sense as anything.

“At least now he knows she didn’t leave him—that she was sick and had to go away,” I say, almost hopefully.

Noah is spinning on me, though, a disbelieving look upon his face. “Is that really what you think?”

“What?”

Noah turns back to the woman who’s holding her arms out wide, turning in circles in the rain. “Maybe she went to that place because she was crazy. Or maybe ten years in that place made her insane. What do you think?”

He’s not asking my opinion about Karina. He’s asking about me. What would have happened if my dad and Jamie hadn’t decided to stop fighting with me—if they hadn’t gotten tired of reminding me day after day that I was the one who pulled the trigger? Would I have gotten better there? Or would my last sliver of sanity have slipped further and further away with every passing day? It’s something I’ve never really considered. And, frankly, it’s an answer I don’t really want to know.

Noah can tell. So he just nods again in Karina’s direction and asks, “Is she okay?” When I don’t answer, he turns back to me. “Are you okay?”

But no one really wants the honest answer to that question, so we just turn back to the rain and the woman dancing in it.

“What comes next?” Noah isn’t asking about tonight. He’s asking about tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that. It’s the question, and everyone but Karina gathers around, listens.

“Tomorrow, I’ll drive you guys to the train station, and you’ll go back to Embassy Row.”

“What are you going to do?” Rosie sounds almost hurt—like I’m throwing a party and she hasn’t been invited.

“On the bridge that day, Princess Ann kept asking me if I’d found it—if my mom had told me where it was.”

“What did she mean by it?” Noah asks, and I shake my head.

“I’m not sure. I thought that maybe it was something Mom found on that last trip. I thought maybe …” I trail off but can’t stop myself from looking at Karina. She might have had answers. Once. But they’re locked away in some dark recess of her mind now. I know better than anyone how easy it is for a memory to stay buried.

“I have to find it,” I say. “Whatever it is.”

“Which means you have to come with us,” Megan says. “You’ve got to go back to Valancia.”

“No.” I shake my head. My hands tremble and my blood pounds. “No. I can’t. It’s not safe there. No.”

“On your mom’s last trip, she saw Karina and she saw your grandfather,” Noah says. I hate him for his calm, cool logic. “If there are answers, they’re in Valancia.”

“No. I have to keep moving.” Because as long as they’re chasing me, then Jamie’s safe. Jamie’s resting. Jamie is somewhere under Dominic’s watchful eye, getting stronger every day.

They all want to argue. They want to fight. I want to climb into the SUV and start driving.

“Let’s get some sleep now. Perhaps an answer will present itself in the morning,” Alexei says, and we’re all too tired to argue. As the others drift away, he pulls me into his arms. “You’re not going anywhere without me,” he whispers too low for the others to hear.

“Your name’s been cleared,” I say, but I don’t pull away. “You can go home.”

He squeezes me tighter. “I am home.”

Alexei’s mother is twenty feet away from us, but he never even glances her direction. He just pulls my head to his shoulder and holds me. I could cry now. I could break down—allow myself a little weakness. No one here would judge me. But I would judge myself. So I don’t shed a single tear.

Alexei holds me until the fire dies and the barn seems to go to sleep around us. Even the storm seems to be drifting away, but then I hear a sound like thunder coming closer. The low rumbling is followed by the flash of headlights through the open doors, and I’m already pulling away from Alexei. I’m turning. I’m getting ready to yell for my friends to run when a car door slams and a single word slices through the storm.

“Grace?”

I know the voice, but I can’t believe what I’m seeing when a woman steps from the shadows. Her suit is dark. Her heels are high. And the brown eyes behind her glasses are rapidly filling with tears.

“Ms. Chancellor?”

Then I realize that she’s not alone. At the first sign of movement, I pull back. In a flash, Megan is running past me, rushing into the other woman’s arms.

“Mom!” Megan cries, and her mother swallows her up. Megan and her mom look alike. They both have the same sleek black hair and huge brown eyes. But Megan’s mom wears her hair in a sleek bob. When she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear just like I’ve seen Megan do a thousand times, something about it makes me want to cry.