Chapter 18
18
Elise looked around the room and took a sip from the champagne glass in her hand. She’d never been to London’s Natural History Museum, and nothing could have prepared her for its majesty.
In America, museums tended to be modern, sterile places, even when they held old artifacts or works of art, but the building housing the Natural History Museum in London looked like it had been standing for centuries. Her eyes were drawn upward to the curved ceiling that soared over the massive suspended dinosaur skeleton.
She could make out the inky night sky through the glass panes, the stained glass lining the mezzanine shimmering like a million jewels as light reflected off the brightly colored panels.
The place was packed, conversation echoing off the museum’s marble floor, but Julia had been right. They’d cruised through the guest list check-in using the invite on Ronan’s phone.
The security guard checking invitations hadn’t looked twice at them. Elise could only assume uninvited guests weren’t exactly beating down the doors of the Boxgrove Historical Society’s annual fundraiser.
“Wow,” Julia said, standing next to her. “I actually feel… human.”
Elise laughed. “Was it that bad?”
“Not bad exactly, just like I was in a black hole of Cheerios, kid’s music, and potty training.”
Elise looked around. “Well, now you’re in the fairytale land of champagne, designer gowns, and rich people oblivious to the world’s ills.”
“I don’t like the last part,” Julia said, “but I have to raise a glass to the first two.”
Elise touched her glass to Julia’s. “Here here.”
Julia scanned the crowd.
“See them?” Elise asked.
Ronan and Finn had spent the first half hour at the gala wandering the crowd, looking for anything out of the ordinary. It was low tech for MIS, who had deployed everything from hidden cameras to drones to complete jobs in the past, but this was a low-tech job.
Clay was already digging into the formal guest list, but they didn’t know what they were looking for, couldn’t be sure someone wouldn’t be added to the list at the last minute, that something else might be going on. In fact, they couldn’t be sure anything at all was happening at the gala. It was more than possible Eudorus had been delirious when he’d mentioned Boxgrove, that it didn’t mean anything beyond the village that had only become significant because of an archeological discovery decades ago.
“On the mezzanine,” Julia said, her face raised to the landing at the top of the wide staircase at one end of the hall.
Elise looked over the crowd, her gaze stopping on Ronan and Finn, standing with a couple near the staircase. “How does he do that?”
“Who?” Julia asked.
“Ronan.” He was deep in conversation with someone he probably didn’t know, looking as comfortable as if he were at the beach playing frisbee. There’s no way Finn was as comfortable. Elise had been able to sense the tension in his shoulders during the limo ride from the hotel, had been able to tell from the set of his jaw that the gala was the last place he wanted to be.
Julia shrugged. “It’s his job.”
“Still,” Elise said. “I feel nervous just standing here.”
“It’s fine,” Julia said. “Just enjoy it.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d realized how perfect Ronan was for her sister. Julia had always moved through the world in her own way, not necessarily part of it, but able to look like she was.
Elise had been shocked by some of the things Julia and Ronan had done to rescue her from Manifest — sneaking into the private party at a Tuscan mansion and a nightclub in Dubai, where Julia had come heartbreakingly close to finding Elise, the dive in the middle of the night to reach the yacht in Greece where Elise was kept prisoner — but seeing Julia in Ronan’s environment, it all made sense.
Julia might think of herself as “just” a mom, but that wasn’t the half of it.
Movement caught Elise’s eye to one side of the mezzanine. At first, she didn’t know what had gotten her attention, but a few seconds later she realized it was the coordination: several men in tuxedos moving together toward the same spot.
There was something rhythmic about their footsteps, almost as if they were soldiers marching in time.
But that didn’t make sense. They were just men, dressed like all the other men at the gala.
“What the…?” They’d caught Julia’s eyes too.
They stopped at the railing over the great hall. Elise counted eight of them.
And now a few of the people on the mezzanine had noticed them too, their gazes locked on the men even as they pretended to listen politely to their companions.
Elise glanced at Finn and Ronan. Both of them had their attention focused on the men.
Two of the men stepped forward, each holding one end of a long object. The volume in the crowd seemed to lower a decibel as little by little the crowd noticed the men standing over them.
Something was wrong.
A guttural shout rose from one of the men on the mezzanine.
Elise strained to hear as he spoke, but his words were distorted by the great hall and the marble and glass in the museum.
He finished shouting with his fists raised in the air, and the men at his sides fumbled with whatever it was in their hands. For a split second, Elise thought they would start shooting.
Then they released what they’d been holding: a banner.
DEATH TO IMPERIALIST SCUM — YOU DON’T OWN OUR HISTORY
Elise’s gaze was glued to the words, written on the black banner, red paint dripping from the letters like blood.
The hall became a tomb of silence.
Then the shooting started.