Chapter Forty-Two Audrey
Chapter Forty-Two
Audrey
In the air
From inside my private suite on Hollis’s plane, I stared at the little dot on my phone as it blinked steadily, tracking Chase and Trevor’s movement. They were en route to Buckley, the military base in Aurora. ETA thirty minutes.
Echo Team had already landed in Colorado and were now on their way to pick up Eden and Rhett as well.
So far, all good. Everyone was safe. I just needed to convince my nervous stomach of that.
As if reading my mind, a text popped up from Trevor.
Trevor: We’re getting closer. Stop watching the tracker. I can feel your anxiety from here, and you’re up in the air.
Trevor: Talked to Hollis yet? You should . . . But I know you’re still pissed at me for not telling you the truth after I learned who she was last year, so you probably won’t take my advice.
Me: I was a chicken and told Ryder not to let her near me yet, which is probably a jerk move since we’re on her plane, and she’s helping us. But am I a magnet for liars?
I palmed my forehead as if he could see me.
Me: Do I have “Gullible” stamped somewhere?
My hand plopped back into my lap.
Trevor: You’re trusting. Not gullible.
Me: Not trusting anymore
Trevor: Don’t blame you after the last few days. Also, I’m sorry for not telling you about her. She said it’d be safer if you didn’t know.
I was in the middle of responding when someone knocked on the door of my closed-off suite, which was three times the size of one of those business pods on a commercial plane.
“I know you don’t want to talk to me, but I’m not above begging.”
At hearing Hollis’s voice, I deleted what I’d planned to say and let Trevor know I was going to confront Hollis.
He wished me luck; then I set aside my phone and gave her the all clear to come in.
Hollis’s look today was nothing like I was used to. Black combat boots, dark skinny jeans tucked into them. A leather jacket open to a white tee. Her dark-brown hair was in one long ponytail-like braid.
Badass vibes, not Barbie on a Beach like she’d tried to get me to believe.
“Hi.” She sat in the seat next to me. “On a scale of one to ten, how much do you hate me?”
I frowned. “I don’t hate anyone. Well, I take that back.” I twirled a finger in the air. “There are a few people on that list.” Like Mitch. “Present company not included,” I added in a small voice. “I’m hurt, not mad.”
“Rather you be mad than sad.”
I lifted one shoulder as my response. “Is Hollis even your real name?”
She shifted her braid around to her back, sitting up taller. “Lady Celeste Hollis Avery Wyndham d’Aragon, daughter of the Duke of Rothvale.”
I only caught half that. Was she kidding?
“D’Aragon is tied to my old Iberian and Vatican bloodlines.
Last time anyone called me by my full name, they were either trying to knight me, arrest me, or marry me.
” She gave a nervous laugh, suggesting she was kidding—but heck, maybe not?
“I picked Hollis Avery to go by on an assignment in DC, and she became what felt like the real me. Maybe that’s because you were the first real friend I felt I had outside my family? ”
“I’m sorry, but what?” Something told me we’d barely scratched the surface, and I was already in over my head.
“This is a lot.” I blinked and pointed up.
“Normal people don’t just own planes like this.
Governments do. Whole-ass countries, sure.
” I pulled the covers up tighter like a shield.
“And they aren’t knighted or have names that sound like they belong in a fantasy movie. ”
“I know.” She nodded. “I’m not remotely normal.” She faked another laugh, this one more nervous sounding than before.
“That’s the only thing I believe right now.” I blinked back tears, the feeling of betrayal hitting as hard as it had with Mitch. “How can you be a real friend when I don’t know the real you?”
One reason I’d gravitated toward Hollis, despite being worlds apart lifestyle-wise, was because she’d seemed so authentically genuine. So real. Painfully blunt sometimes, but I liked that about her. Now to find out everything had been a lie. Ugh, yeah, hurt was an understatement.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she finally said.
“Start with the truth. Always a good place.”
“Whether you believe it or not, you probably know me better than anyone outside my family, at least.” She shrugged. “I’m myself with you. I get to be Hollis, the girl next door, when we hang out and talk. Not Lady Celeste, who has one of the highest kill counts of my siblings.”
“Highest kill . . .” I couldn’t even finish echoing that. “And since when do you have siblings?” I deflected, since I couldn’t handle the whole murder thing.
“I have a twin brother, and he’s a hacker-cyber-guru who’s a little reclusive.
Then there’s my slightly younger sister, who drives me nuts, but I love her.
” She gave me a half smile. “And my other brother is . . . oh gosh, how to describe him?” She shook her head.
“Let’s just say he puts the gray in morally gray. ”
Understood. How was I going to get through more of this?
Hollis leaned toward a cabinet beneath the TV and popped it open.
Ah, not a cabinet. A mini fridge.
“Looks like you need a drink. We have a long flight, don’t worry. You’ll be sober before we arrive.” She unscrewed the mini bottle of champagne. “No glasses in here,” she said while nudging it my way. “Take a sip. Digest what I’ve said; then we’ll continue.”
Yeah, those were orders I could follow. I took a few more fizzy sips than planned, then wiped my hand across the back of my mouth as I waited for her to go on.
“I was only ever trying to protect you. I gave you the version of me that was safe to know. But if I’m being honest, maybe I didn’t want you to know the other me.
Not because it’s risky, but because you’re the only person who didn’t expect anything from me.
And it was nice not to have to wonder if our friendship was genuine or if you were afraid of me. ”
“Right, because you have a higher kill count than your morally gray gray brother,” I said with as much sarcasm as I could pack into that comment.
She opened her own bottle and downed even more than I had of mine before responding. “I said ‘one of.’ Big brother has me beat by two.”
“And do you have a chalkboard with a tally of these numbers at home or something?” More sarcasm, followed by another few sips of champagne.
And maybe I really was mad, not just hurt.
“I trusted you. You babysat my son.” I slammed my free hand against my chest. “What if some guy attacked you while you were rocking him to sleep?”
“I’m sorry, but please know I’d have died protecting your son if need be.”
“There shouldn’t even be a need be,” I shot out, feeling unhinged.
“I failed you. In more ways than one.” She drank more of the champagne. “I have no clue how I missed the whole Mitch thing. I looked into him, and I didn’t find anything. Of course, Chandler himself vouched he was really dead when I asked him last year.”
I waited for her to continue. To rip the Band-Aid off and get through this.
“I’ve memorized this speech a hundred times since we met, just in case.
” She finished her bottle and tossed it in the trash.
“My family . . . we’re legacy operatives with titles across multiple empires going back over six hundred years.
They’ve advised the Medicis. Funded exploratory work for da Vinci.
Even smuggled artifacts out of Constantinople before it fell to the Turks and became Istanbul.
My lineage was granted special diplomatic status by the Vatican in the 1600s, a status that was never revoked. ”
Another pause. Another sip that I took. Another chance for my head to explode over what she was saying.
“We’re part of the first intelligence networks that existed centuries before agencies and their acronyms. We even helped design MI6’s cipher system.
” She took a quick breath. “Heck, you should meet my mom. She helped dismantle three foreign governments without firing a shot.” She smiled.
“But we don’t serve just one country. We serve order.
And we also store secrets. Our vaults make the Smithsonian look like a gift shop.
” Her casual shrug would be my undoing. “I grew up in the US, that wasn’t a lie, but it’s because someone tried to put a bullet through my brother’s skull when he was seven during a cello recital. ”
“A cello recital? You’re kidding.”
“The bullet missed.” The casualness of all this was going to send me over the edge I was already teetering on.
“The hit was linked to an Eastern European intelligence feud,” she explained as if that’d make perfect sense to me.
“So my parents relocated us here when I was three, but they kept all their other estates around the world active.”
My God.
“I didn’t stumble into spycraft; I was raised in it. My family has amassed priceless and sometimes questionable relics, one of which is coming in handy for this auction. The invitations were secured because of it.”
Another casual lift of her shoulder as if this was all just a regular Monday and she wasn’t shattering my perception of reality by the second.
“My family has been accused of hiding everything from the maps of Atlantis to the Ark of the Covenant.”
I gulped back more champagne. “And do you have those?”
A faint smile crossed her lips. “Maybe? I’ve never seen the east wing’s subbasement at our estate in Romania. If it glows and hums, I stay away.”
That had to be a joke that time.
Right?
“So, what you’re saying is you’re a little Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Lara Croft all mixed up into one?” No wonder Reed said it’d be better to have her explain this herself.