The Long Game

I told them everything I knew about the terrorists’ numbers, the brief dissension I’d sensed in their ranks, the game of good terrorist/bad terrorist Dr. Clark and Mrs. Perkins had played with me. I told them about the tunnel and the security feed and the men I’d seen shot dead.

I told them they had eight hours. I told them what would happen if they didn’t give Mrs. Perkins what she’d asked for.

I told them everything except the truth about Henry—and a subset of the demands that Mrs. Perkins had made of me.

“Can I get you anything?” Ivy asked as she opened the door to our house. I stepped into the foyer, and for the first time, it felt like home. This was where I belonged. I would have given anything to stay here.

With Ivy.

“Could you make me some hot chocolate?” I asked, my voice hoarse.

The request took Ivy by surprise. I wasn’t good at letting her take care of me. I’d never asked her, even in a little way, even silently, to be my mom.

“I’ll make us each a cup.”

I did us both the favor of ignoring the raw emotion in Ivy’s voice. She went to make the hot chocolate.

“Don’t do that again,” Adam said quietly. He’d joined us on the ride home, but like Bodie, he’d remained mostly silent, fading into the background under the roar of the connection between Ivy and me.

“Don’t do what?” I said. “Ask for hot chocolate?”

“Don’t let bad things happen,” Adam said, pulling me suddenly into a hug, his words sounding more like a prayer than an order directed to me. “Not ever. Not to you.”

“I’ll get right on that,” I replied into his chest.

He held on to me for a few seconds longer, and then the front door opened. William Keyes hovered in the doorway, his gaze frozen on Adam and me.

“Make yourself at home,” Bodie told the old man dryly. “No need to knock.”

Bodie’s words snapped all three of us out of our reveries. The kingmaker stepped over the threshold and shut the door behind him, and Adam turned, one arm still wrapped protectively around me, to face his father.

“I was told my presence was required,” Keyes informed Adam. There was a note of challenge in his voice, but he was the one who broke eye contact first, transferring his gaze from Adam to me.

“You are unharmed?”

Keyes had been updated on my condition, but this was the first chance he’d gotten to ask me for himself. I could only imagine how frustrating he’d found waiting—and the fact that the FBI had let Ivy in to see me but not him.

“I’m uninjured,” I said. “But I’m not okay.”

Ivy picked that moment to return. She handed me a mug of hot chocolate and kept the other for herself, positioning herself directly to my left. With Adam on one side and Ivy on the other, I should have felt safe.

I should have felt protected.

Three hours and fifty-four minutes.

I didn’t have time for dread or guilt or fear.

“I’m not going to be okay until this is over,” I said, looking from one face to the next. “And this isn’t going to be over until we give them what they want.”

“I didn’t tell the FBI everything.”

The five of us were settled around Ivy’s conference table now—Ivy, Adam, Bodie, the kingmaker, and me.

“Why not?” Adam was the one who issued the question.

I answered it. “Because I was told not to.”

Until I was sure that there was no chance of word getting back to Senza Nome, I couldn’t take the risk. If the terrorists had two operatives planted at Hardwicke, I couldn’t rule out the possibility that they had someone in the FBI, too.

“Besides,” I said out loud, looking around the table at each of them, one by one, “this part of the message was for you.”

You’re a resourceful girl related to some very powerful people. I could still see the exact glint in Mrs. Perkins’s eyes. I have every confidence that you’ll work this out.

“The United States government does not negotiate with terrorists,” I said. “That’s a problem. We need the vice president to agree to release Daniela Nicolae. The authorities are going to have to send her into the school to get anyone else out.”

That statement was met with momentary silence.

“That is a problem,” Ivy admitted. “The situation at Hardwicke has already gained national attention. The vice president can’t be seen negotiating with terrorists. Unless we want to encourage future threats, his hands are tied.”