The Long Game

I tried not to wonder what had happened to the teachers.

By now the Secret Service would have realized there was a problem. People would come for us.

And do what? a voice whispered in the back of my head. There were too many terrorists and too many lives at stake. Too many high-value targets.

Anna Hayden’s father is the acting president of one of the most powerful countries on Earth. The moment it had become clear that President Nolan was incapacitated, Anna’s father had taken those reins.

They shot the president. They killed John Thomas.

What if taking over Hardwicke had been the goal all along? What if Senza Nome had attacked the president so that the vice president would be sworn into office, so that the person in power had a child at this school?

They killed John Thomas. The same day the president was shot, they killed John Thomas. After that, Hardwicke had reason to bring in extra security, and justification for the additional security officers to be heavily armed.

Not just Hardwicke, I thought. Hardwicke didn’t do this. I swallowed. The headmaster did. The headmaster was the one who would have made the call. The headmaster was the one who would have chosen the men to bring in.

A Hardwicke student is killed. I went through it, step by step. The headmaster has an excuse to hire additional security, to see them heavily armed.

The president is shot. I forced myself to go further, to take this line of thought to completion. Once the president is shot, the vice president is imbued with the power of the presidency.

And the vice president’s daughter went to Hardwicke.

They want something. Anna is the leverage. Then again, they’d said high-value targets, plural. There are other students here who they can use for leverage, too.

Hardwicke was Washington.

I had to do something. Find a way to short out the cameras? Cut the power and the lights?

I forced myself to pull up one of the classroom feeds, forced myself to look at my classmates, lying facedown on the floor.

If I cut the power, one of them is going to try something stupid.

If I cut the power, those guards are going to shoot.

I couldn’t risk that happening. I was an unarmed teenager trapped in a building with dozens of armed terrorists. There were snipers on the roof. Soon the terrorists would realize I was missing. Soon they’d be looking for me. The only thing I could do, the only thing I could even try to do, was establish a line of communication with the outside world and tell them what I knew about the terrorists’ operation—where they were keeping the other students, how heavily the terrorists were armed, how many men they had, the fact that Dr. Clark was involved.

Information is power. My paternal grandfather’s words stuck in my mind. You can never know ahead of time which pieces will be worth the most.

The more information the police—the FBI—whoever was in charge of this operation had, the better our chances of making it out of this alive. I had to find a way of getting a message out. How?

My cell phone still wasn’t working. They must be scrambling the signal somehow. But they have a way of calling out. They must.

The terrorists would want to present their demands. They would want to open up a line of communication with the outside world. I just had to find it—and find a way to co-opt it.

If I were a working phone line, where would I be? I stared down at the security footage in my lap. I thought about the rooms that weren’t on there. The security station. If I were committing a hostile takeover of Hardwicke, that would be my base of operations. If I could make it up there, if I could distract the person manning it—

This is a bad idea. I knew that, the way you know that people in horror movies shouldn’t go traipsing off into the woods.

But it was the only idea I had.

They’re going to catch me anyway. Even if I stay here, even if I find somewhere else to hide—they will find me. The question is whether or not I can get a message out before they do.

I might not be Anna Hayden, but I was still a card they’d want in their hands. I’d already been kidnapped so someone could use me as leverage against Ivy once.

If you have to make an example of someone, Dr. Clark had told one of the guards, do try to make it someone disposable.

I’d have to take the risk that so long as they had me in their possession, they would want to keep me alive.

For better or worse, I had to try.

CHAPTER 50

I studied the library camera feed long enough to know its blind spots. Crawling along the floor, slowly enough to avoid being caught by the motion sensors, I made it to the door. Next up was the hallway. I listened for footsteps and told myself it wasn’t any different from listening to a horse come closer, knowing that if you looked up, it might spook.