The Long Game (The Fixer #2)(71)

I nodded, the edges of my lips pulling up. Nodding hurt. Smiling hurt. Thinking about Emilia hurt.

“Henry is probably lecturing someone,” Asher continued. “And Vivvie is winning them all over with her best sad-puppy-dog eyes.”

Vivvie is facedown on a floor somewhere. Henry might be the one holding the gun.

“I’m sorry,” Asher blurted out. “I know it wasn’t . . . I know you’re not . . .” I’d never heard Asher at a loss for words. “I should have been there,” he said finally.

If he hadn’t been suspended . . .

If he’d been in school today . . .

If, if, if . . . It was a thought pattern I knew all too well.

If I’d told Henry the truth about his grandfather’s death, if he’d heard it from me, instead of from Dr. Clark . . .

If I hadn’t upset Vivvie, if she hadn’t run, if I’d had her with me . . .

If I’d been the one to turn myself in, instead of Emilia . . .

“I have to go back,” I told Asher, my voice as lifeless as I felt inside. “Either I go back in with everything they asked for, or they start shooting students.”

His face pale, Asher turned his back on me. He bowed his head. I waited for him to say something, but instead, when he did turn around, it was to launch himself at me. He hugged me, as fiercely as Ivy had.

“If you get yourself killed,” he whispered, “you’ll never get to see the interpretive dance I plan to create based on this experience.”

Asher was crying. He was crying and joking and dying inside—and I knew, in that moment, that I couldn’t tell him the full truth of what had happened back at the school.

I couldn’t tell him about Henry.

I hadn’t told the FBI. I hadn’t told Ivy. I wouldn’t tell Asher. If I spoke the words out loud, that would make them true. If I said Henry was with the terrorists, there was no going back.

His hands on mine. His lips on mine. That subtle half smile.

I knew, deep down, that there was already no going back. Not ever. Not for me.

“What can I do?” Asher asked. I recognized the helpless tone in his voice. Telling him that I had to hand myself back over to the terrorists hadn’t been fair of me. Expecting him to sit here and do nothing—that wasn’t fair either.

“Actually,” I said, “there is one thing.”

“Anything.” Asher spoke without emphasis, without frills.

I glanced down at my watch.

Two hours and fourteen minutes.

“I need you to deliver a message for me,” I said, “to Vivvie’s aunt.”





CHAPTER 57

“I take it Ivy doesn’t know what you’re playing at here.” That was how Priya Bharani greeted me an hour later when I picked up her call. She’d placed it from a blocked number, most likely a burner phone.

“You got my message,” I replied, lowering my voice and shutting the door to my room. If Bodie knew what I was planning—if he told Adam or Ivy what I was planning—they’d never let me go through with it.

And if they didn’t let me go through with it, someone would die, and then another and another, until the terrorists got what they wanted or the FBI decided to risk a high rate of casualties and take Hardwicke back by force.

“I also received another message.”

That statement brought me back to the present. I didn’t know what the terrorists had asked Vivvie’s aunt to do, or how they had passed along their instructions. All I knew was that I’d been told to wait until Ivy had been gone for two hours to get in touch.

“It seems I am to help you make contact with Daniela Nicolae prior to her release,” Priya continued. “That is assuming, of course, that her release is somehow secured.”

“Ivy’s working on it,” I said.

One hour and twenty-one minutes.

“Is that all they asked you to do?” I asked Priya, trying to focus on Vivvie’s aunt and not the ticking clock. “Getting me in to see Daniela?”

“No,” Priya said shortly. “I am to ensure that both you and Daniela are delivered to them.” She paused. “And I am, of course, to hand myself over as well.”

I paused. “What do they want with you?”

“I made many enemies before I came here.”

She’d come here for Vivvie, left her old life—whatever that entailed—behind for Vivvie. I didn’t have to ask whether she would hand herself over to these people for Vivvie, too.

“What will they do to you?” I asked Priya, leaning my back against the door to my room, my heart battering my rib cage as I remembered Dr. Clark killing Anna’s Secret Service agent and the offhanded way Mrs. Perkins had put a bullet between Headmaster Raleigh’s eyes.

On the other end of the phone line, Priya answered my question with silence.

I slid slowly down the door until I was sitting on the floor, my legs pulled to my chest. “What will they do to me?”

I’d tried not to ask myself that question. I’d tried not thinking about Ivy’s relief that I was home safe, or Adam’s request that nothing bad happen to me ever again.

“If they get what they want?” Priya said, taking her time replying to my question. “They will do nothing to you. They will let you go.”