The Long Game (The Fixer #2)(78)

She wouldn’t be going to college now.

“Give them what they want,” I told the agent, “and we can end this.”

She had to avert her gaze—from me and from my phone.

“Homeland’s cleared it,” one of her colleagues told her. It, in this case, was surrendering Daniela to the terrorists’ hands, not me. “Word is that the order on this one came down from the top.”

The clock was ticking on that order, just like the clock was counting down to the terrorists’ next kill. Once the president resumes his office, once he figures out what the vice president has done . . .

We had a window, and we were wasting it.

“This is my choice,” I told the hostage negotiator. “If nothing else, it will buy you time, and they won’t hurt me, not right away.”

We can’t stand around debating this. We need to move.

“We’ve got the girl’s guardian on the line.” Someone held out a phone to the FBI woman. At the mere mention of Ivy, I snapped into motion. The FBI hadn’t patted me down for weapons this time.

That was a mistake.

Priya had refused to give me a gun, but she hadn’t left me defenseless. We’d had time to talk about how this would go down on the drive here. Before we’d left the car, she’d given me a knife.

“Put the phone down,” I said. It took a single beat for the agents to process the fact that I was holding a blade. That was all the time it took for me to angle it at my own throat.

“Put the phone down,” I repeated.

“Tess.” Hostage negotiators specialized in sounding reasonable.

I dug the tip of the blade into my own neck. I felt a sharp pain. Blood tricked down and over my collarbone.

They put the phone down.

“You have two choices,” I said, stepping back. “You either send me in with Priya and Daniela and you risk that something might happen to me in there, or I swear to all that is holy that something will happen to me, right here.”

They might be able to take the knife from me, but not before I did some serious damage to myself.

“Am I bluffing?” I asked the female agent.

She took in my posture, the expression on my face. “No.”

My gut said that they wanted to send me in. They wanted to buy themselves time.

I just had to give them an excuse.

When Priya, Daniela Nicolae, and I walked through the gates of Hardwicke, I could just barely make out the silhouettes of the snipers on the roof. Behind us, the SWAT team and the FBI stood in a formidable line.

One wrong move, and it was all over.

Step after step after step, we walked away from the safety of the outside world and toward the main campus—toward the armed men and Mrs. Perkins and the bodies already littering the Hardwicke halls.

We’d made it two-thirds of the way there when Daniela spoke. “You can lower the knife.”

My arm had held the blade in position long enough that for a second, it didn’t want to move.

Closer to the front doors of Hardwicke. Closer.

My hand shaking, I managed to lower the blade to my side.

“Drop it,” Priya told me, her voice guttural and low, as we approached the main building. I followed her gaze and saw the red dot on my chest.

The snipers.

I dropped the knife. It clattered to the pavement. For an elongated moment, the sound echoed all around us. The world was still. Calm.

And then Daniela Nicolae bent to pick up the knife.

Dove. Madrid—

Within a heartbeat, Daniela was holding Priya from behind, the knife at her throat. Daniela turned to face the SWAT team, to face the world.

“My name is Daniela Nicolae,” she shouted, her voice high and clear. “And the time for waiting is over.”

The blade slid over Priya’s throat. One second, Vivvie’s aunt was standing beside me, and the next, Daniela pushed her body aside and made a grab for me. She held the blade to my throat.

“Breathe,” Daniela murmured into the back of my head, using my body as a shield as she backed away from the SWAT team’s raised weapons, away from Priya, sprawled out on the ground.

The dove has always wanted to fly to Madrid.

I did as Daniela Nicolae instructed. I forced air into my lungs and I forced it out. But all I could see, in the world in front of me and in my mind, was blood.





CHAPTER 62

I’d known the plan. That was what I told myself as Daniela jerked me through the front doors of Hardwicke. I’d known that for us to do what needed to be done, the terrorists had to watch Daniela do as she’d been told.

They had to watch her kill Vivvie’s aunt.

“Ms. Kendrick,” Mrs. Perkins greeted me as we stepped inside the building. “So nice to see you again.”

An armed man slammed me against the wall. My face pressed flat, my heart thudding in my chest, I tried to ignore the hands on my body, checking me for weapons, lingering a second too long.

“She’s clear,” the man said, stepping back. I turned slowly to face them. Opposite me, Mrs. Perkins plucked the knife from Daniela’s hand. “I’ll take this,” she said.

The blade was still smeared with red, still dripping.

Mrs. Perkins let the knife dangle from her fingertips as she led us down the hallway and up the stairs. One of the guards pressed the tip of his automatic weapon against the small of my back.