Mister Impossible (Dreamer Trilogy #2)(83)

Declan’s mouth worked. He was slick enough to know she was also being slick, but he didn’t disagree with her.

“My brother isn’t to be harmed,” he said. “I want to see you say it.”

The promise wouldn’t have meant anything if she were with the Moderators, but she wasn’t with the Moderators. “You have my word,” Farooq-Lane said.



Seven Three Park Drive, Boston, MA. That was all that was written on the card Declan slid across the table as he stood up. “That’s where they’re meeting Matthew. Bryde mentioned last night he doesn’t have another of the dreams he uses to confuse people and he can’t get any more until they’re out of the city. Is it true you killed your own brother?”

She was taken completely by surprise.

“You’re not the only one who has access to information,” he said in that bland way.

“My brother was a serial killer,” she said. “He was also a Zed. I didn’t pull the trigger, but yes, I helped find him. Your brother’s not a serial killer. He’s just a Zed.”

Declan Lynch narrowed his eyes. For just the barest second, he did not look at all like he belonged in this nice, civilized café.

“Don’t forget your promise,” he said. “And don’t call my brother that.”



Six. That was the number of scenarios Farooq-Lane ran through as she looked at the Park Drive address on various satellite maps. It belonged to a rose garden in the Emerald Necklace, a series of green parks chained through the Boston area. It was a bad location for an attack. Right in the middle of the city. Right up against the swampy fens that gave Fenway its name. Surrounded by the trees that gave Bryde his information.

But Liliana said Farooq-Lane only needed enough time to draw Jordan Hennessy’s sword.

“I’m trusting you,” Farooq-Lane told Liliana.

One sword draw, one second, one death. When it came to it, she could kill someone, she thought. To save the world. She had stood by and helped the Moderators kill many others, after all. She couldn’t erase that, just try to make it matter. One person, one Zed. One sword. She could do it.

It wasn’t twenty-three people. It was one.

“It will turn out all right,” Liliana said gently.

“What happened in the vision?” Farooq-Lane said. “What did I do? Where was it?”

“It will turn out all right,” Liliana repeated.



Five minutes after Farooq-Lane got to the James P. Kelleher Rose Garden, the Moderators found her.

“Did you think we weren’t having you followed, Carmen?” Lock rumbled with disappointment. It was hard to tell if he was disappointed in her working without them or not covering her tracks. He held a take-out coffee from the café she’d met Declan at, and Farooq-Lane couldn’t stop staring at it. She’d been careful. She was sure she’d been careful. “You’re a lot easier to track than a Zed in an invisible car. You know why? You obey the law.”

“I have a plan here,” Farooq-Lane said. “We want the same thing.”

Lock cast a heavy glance at Hennessy’s sword. It was hooded safely away in its shoulder scabbard but its identity was clear, the hilt shouting from chaos. “And it’s a plan you think you could execute better cowboy style? I respect what you did here, Carmen, but we can’t risk you taking point on this. We’ll take it from here. The team’s all here. Thanks for the good work.”

“I made a promise that I’d only take down Bryde,” Farooq-Lane said desperately. “I intend to keep that promise.”

“You’d risk the world on that?”

Farooq-Lane repeated, “I intend to keep that promise. Let me do this. Please.”

“How about this,” Lock offered. “How about you let us help you keep that promise? Like you said. We want the same thing, and you need our eyes anyway.”

It wasn’t as if she had a choice. There was no time. She was outnumbered.

We want the same thing. But it was only past Farooq-Lane who truly believed this now. Present Farooq-Lane wasn’t sure. And future Farooq-Lane—unclear.

“Okay,” Farooq-Lane said.

She explained the plan. It was a hasty thing, constructed with very few data points. Declan’s address and time. Liliana’s description of her vision. Farooq-Lane’s understanding of what Hennessy’s sword could do if wielded without hesitation.

The plan was skeletal in its simplicity. At the center of the rose garden was a small fountain, a little over a foot deep. It was as far from large trees as one could hope for in the city; there was no evidence that Bryde could receive information from roses. Carmen Farooq-Lane was going to climb into the fountain, lie down in the nearly frozen water, and breathe sips of air through a straw that reached to the surface. She would wait there in the inhuman temperature until the Moderators texted her that the Zeds had arrived in the garden. And then she would leap from the water with Hennessy’s sword like an avenging angel, killing Bryde with a single moonlit stroke.

Her phone was only rated for an hour of underwater use, but the cold would kill her before that anyway.

“Is this how you saw it?” she asked Liliana again.

“It will be all right, Carmen.”

It will be all right.

It did not feel all right as she lay in the bottom of the fountain. She tried to keep her hand from shaking as she held the breathing tube steady in her frigid lips. She focused on a black feather that floated on the surface of the water above her.