The Long Game (The Fixer #2)(75)

What if the interrogators were wrong? I thought, unable to block out the hint of fear slithering its way up my spine. What if Daniela hasn’t been emotionally compromised? What if she’s one of them in every sense of the word?

What if they have no intention of silencing her at all?

For the first time, I truly processed the fact that the woman sitting beside me was Senza Nome. Like Mrs. Perkins. Like Dr. Clark.

“You want the message?” I said. “‘The dove has always wanted to fly to Madrid.’”

I saw the moment the words landed for the woman.

The dove has always wanted to fly to Madrid. What did that mean? What could that possibly mean?

Beside me, Daniela climbed to her feet. I stayed sitting, tracking her movement. She turned back to face me, and I returned her stare.

“You are quiet,” Daniela said finally, after a full minute had stretched by with us in silence.

I shrugged, my leg muscles tense, ready to propel me to my feet the second it became necessary. “I told you everything I came here to say.”

The woman opposite me smiled slightly. I didn’t know whether to be warmed by the expression—or chilled.

“If I asked you to,” Daniela said, a slight, lilting accent creeping into her voice, “would you tell me what else my people asked you to do? Their other demands—the things that were not a part of their message for me.”

I wasn’t sure if this was a test or a trick or even just a request—but I was here, and she was asking. If things went as planned, Priya would be delivering both of us through the gates of Hardwicke. Honesty was a chance I had to take.

“They want you, and they want Priya, and they want me.” That was just the start of their demands. In as few words as possible, I communicated the rest. Daniela listened in utter silence, one hand creeping to the small of her back, her eyes sharp as she digested my words.

“May I ask who issued your orders?” Daniela inquired once I’d finished.

I told her about Mrs. Perkins.

I told her about the armed men in the halls.

I showed her the video Mrs. Perkins had sent me. I didn’t watch it. I couldn’t. But even when I turned my head away, I wasn’t able to block out the sounds. I closed my eyes. I pressed back against the strobe-like images that battered against the halls of my memory.

Help me!

I bowed my head, my arms curving around my torso.

Daniela let the video play to the end. When she looked up, her eyes were dry, but I could see a glint of emotion lurking in their depths.

Guilt? Sorrow? Rage?

“Why you?” Daniela asked me, her voice still even, still controlled as she paced to the far corner of the room. “Why let you go? Why send you these videos? Why send you here?”

I gave her the only answer I had, the only one I’d been given. “I’m a resourceful girl, related to some very powerful people.”

Daniela looked at me and into me, like I was a clock, and she was a clock maker preparing to take it apart. “You care.”

I do. For some reason, I couldn’t admit that out loud.

“Walker cares.” Daniela turned her head to one side, allowing her matted hair to fall into her face. “He’s always cared too much.”

About you, I thought. You mean that he cared too much about you.

This was the moment—the one I’d been waiting for, the only one I was going to get.

“I’ll die to protect the people I love,” I said. I let my gaze fall down to her stomach and let a question form on my lips. “Will you?”

Daniela walked slowly toward me.

“Congressman Wilcox was killed in federal custody,” I told her. “He was a liability.” The terrorist drew herself to a stop directly in front of me. “Are you?” I asked her. “A liability to Senza Nome?”

When the government hands you over, what are the terrorists going to do? To you? To your child?

Do they have your loyalty?

Do you have theirs?

Those questions never made their way from my mind to my lips.

“A liability?” Daniela repeated after an elongated moment. “To the people you have been dealing with, let us say that I am a concern.”

She knows she’s a threat, I thought. And she knows what they do to threats.

Once upon a time, Daniela Nicolae might have been a true believer in Senza Nome’s cause. But right now, in this cell, looking at the possibility of confronting her own people, she was also a mother.

I knew from firsthand experience—from Ivy—what a powerful motivation that could be.

“The message you brought me—‘The dove has always wanted to fly to Madrid.’ It was an order to kill the woman who brought you here.” Daniela Nicolae stood over me. “Priya Bharani. She’s the dove.”

I stood up, trying to process that statement. “And Madrid?” I asked, my tongue like sandpaper in my mouth.

“I know people,” Daniela replied, “who have been to Madrid. I know what it is they refer to.”

“Murder,” I said.

“Execution,” came the correction. “They don’t just want the dove dead. They want it sudden and public, and they want the blood on my hands.”

Priya had been ordered to give herself up, to deliver Daniela, to deliver me. She’d known that, in all likelihood, she would be surrendering her life.