The Long Game (The Fixer #2)(57)

The guard looked away before she did. The other guard stepped forward, shoving the man who held Anna toward the door.

“Reinforcements are in place,” he reported to Dr. Clark. “We have thirty men. The snipers are on the roof. Campus is secured.”

“I want a head count of all students. We need to know who we’re missing, and we need to find them. Now.”

I closed my eyes, unable to keep watching. Every breath I took was deafening in my ears. My heartbeat, the barest shift of position—any second, they’d hear us. Any second, they’d find us.

Blood.

Blood on my hands.

I couldn’t let myself get caught up in a flashback, but the present was no better. There was blood seeping into the library carpet.

The Secret Service agent. Two gunmen.

Bodies on the floor, and bodies strewn through the halls—and I was here, trying not to breathe, not to think, not to move. My fingernails dug into the wood of the bookshelf.

Still. So still. Have to stay—

There was a sound. I wasn’t sure if it was me or Emilia or the settling of the floor, but Dr. Clark’s head whipped toward us. I pressed myself back, willing the dark on our side of the room to swallow me whole.

Don’t let her see us.

Don’t see us.

Don’t—

Dr. Clark strode across the room. Toward us. Beside me, Emilia shuddered. Then she shoved her tablet into my hands, threw her head back, and stood up.

There was a two-second delay before the lights switched on. Emilia used those two seconds to stride into the aisle.

“Don’t shoot,” she said, holding her hands up. “Please, don’t shoot.”

Asher’s twin didn’t glance back at me. She didn’t give any indication that I was here.

“Emilia.” I could hear Dr. Clark’s greeting but couldn’t see her as I pushed myself back against the bookshelf, quelling the urge to go after Emilia.

I can’t help her. And a moment after that: She did this for me.

“You’re a sensible girl,” Dr. Clark was telling Emilia. “Smart. Tougher than you look.”

Why? I asked Emilia silently. Why give yourself up to save me?

“You killed John Thomas, didn’t you?” Emilia said, walking toward Dr. Clark—and away from the motion sensor that controlled the light in my aisle.

Sixty seconds. Sixty seconds until it’s dark again. Sixty seconds to hope no one looks through the gaps in the shelves.

“I’m not sure what John Thomas knew, why you wanted him dead.” Emilia kept talking, kept Dr. Clark’s eyes on her. “Quite frankly, Dr. Clark, I don’t care. I don’t care why you killed him. I don’t care that you killed him. But you were also framing my brother to take the fall.”

“I assure you,” Dr. Clark replied evenly, “killing Mr. Wilcox was not my idea, nor was I the one who pulled the trigger. We infiltrate, we observe, we influence, we recruit.” Those words had the ring of a mantra, a prayer. “We kill only when we must—to make a point. Some of us take that vow more seriously than others.”

I thought of the hospital bombing, the assassination attempt. What was the point of that?

“Why?” Emilia asked the same question of Dr. Clark that Anna had. She was still walking toward the woman—taking her away from me.

“Ours is a grander purpose,” Dr. Clark said. “Everything we do is for the greater good.”

“How long have you—”

“Since the year I spent studying abroad,” Dr. Clark said. “I wasn’t much older than you.”

I remembered Dr. Clark describing her own flashbulb moment, getting off a plane right after 9/11.

Everything we do is for the greater good.

Was that what they’d told her? Was that what she believed?

“How many people have died today?” Emilia countered. Her voice didn’t waver. It was like the moment she’d come out of hiding, the terror had started draining away. “How is killing people ever for the greater good?”

Dr. Clark didn’t answer. Instead, I heard her raise the gun. “Be smart,” she told Emilia. “Be sensible. Do what you’re told, and you’ll walk out of this.” She paused. “And so will your brother.”

“Asher isn’t here.”

Dr. Clark’s silence spoke volumes. We can get to him. Anytime, anywhere—we can get to anyone.

“I’ll be smart.” Emilia’s voice was strong and steady. “What do you want me to do?”

The light above me clicked off with a pop. For a moment, I could feel Dr. Clark looking in this direction.

“Secure her.”

It took me a moment to realize that Dr. Clark was talking about Emilia, not me.

“High value or low value?” the guard she’d addressed asked.

“Low.”

Low value, because Emilia’s parents are dentists, I thought, the realization somehow managing to pierce its way through the constant and overwhelming terror that had claimed my entire body. Low value, because her family doesn’t have anything the terrorists want.

Anna Hayden’s father was the acting president of the United States. High value. It wasn’t much of a stretch, given my relation to Ivy and William Keyes, to think that they’d consider me high value, too.