CHAPTER 26
Only Two Leave
“Only two are allowed to leave.”
The words followed me long after the gunfire stopped.
Twenty-three children were removed from Carter House before sunrise.
Not by Circle members.
Not by Harris’s federal team.
By state police, child-protection workers, and agents whose names did not appear in the archive.
I watched every child enter a separate vehicle.
I checked identification.
Photographed license plates.
Recorded names.
Asked each driver where they were going.
Nobody moved Jayce or Amaya until I approved it.
Nobody touched Laila without Rome beside her.
I had learned what happened when I accepted the word safe without proof.
Eli was the last child to leave.
He stood near the ambulance with his hands inside his pockets.
“Where are they taking us?” he asked.
“A temporary facility in Bowling Green.”
“Is it another house?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’ll have phones. You’ll have doors that don’t lock from the outside. And if you don’t like where they take you, you call me.”
“I don’t have your number.”
I wrote it on the back of Harris’s silver coin.
Eli studied it.
“Are you going to shut down the other houses?”
“Yes.”
“You promise?”
I thought about every promise I had made my children.
Some I kept.
Some nearly got them killed.
“I’m going to try.”
He nodded.
“That’s what honest people say when they aren’t sure.”
“Who taught you that?”
“Nobody.”
For the first time, he smiled.
“I figured it out.”
He entered the ambulance.
I watched until it disappeared beyond the gate.
Tasha approached with Jayce and Amaya.
Both children wore clean clothes someone found inside Carter House.
Jayce held my phone.
Amaya carried one of the facility’s expensive stuffed bears.
“Can we go home?” she asked.
I looked at the burned vehicles.
The shattered windows.
The bodies being covered near the entrance.
“I don’t know where home is right now.”
“Our house,” Jayce said.
“Police are still there.”
“The store?”
“Also police.”
“Auntie Tasha’s?”
“Not safe.”
Jayce frowned.
“So we don’t have a home?”
The question hurt more than the bullet.
I knelt despite the pain.
“We have each other.”
“That’s not a house.”
“No.”
I pulled him close.
“But it’s where we start.”
Rome walked toward us with Laila.
She stayed attached to his side.
“You need to decide,” he said.
“About what?”
“The children.”
“They’re staying with me.”
“You’re going to Washington.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He looked toward Serena.
She stood near the medical van with Karen and Meech.
The original key rested in her hand.
“You can’t take Jayce and Amaya anywhere near Circle House One.”
“I know.”
“Then let them come with me.”
“To where?”
“A property outside Atlanta.”
“You have another secret house?”
“It isn’t secret.”
“Do police know about it?”
“No.”
“Then it’s secret.”
“It belongs to Laila’s mother.”
I looked at the girl.
Her face hardened.
“My mother died,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Rome didn’t kill her.”
“I didn’t think he did.”
“Most people do.”
Rome looked away.
There was another story inside that sentence.
I didn’t have time to open it.
“Who else knows about the property?” I asked.
“Two people,” Rome answered. “Neither connected to the Circle.”
“Armed security?”
“Yes.”
“Medical?”
“Yes.”
“School records?”
“Nothing electronic.”
I hated the idea of sending my children away.
I hated the idea of waking up without hearing Amaya call my name.
I hated knowing Jayce might believe I was choosing another dangerous mission over him.
But loving them wasn’t keeping them beside me.
Loving them was keeping danger away from them.
Even when the danger was me.
I looked at Jayce.
“Would you and Amaya go with Rome and Laila for a few days?”
“Are you coming?”
“Not yet.”
“You always say that.”
“I know.”
“You’re going somewhere dangerous.”
“Yes.”
He stared at the original key.
“Because of the empire?”
“Because there are children in other houses like this one.”
“Why do you have to save everybody’s kids?”
I didn’t have a good answer.
Maybe because nobody had saved us before the lies became our lives.
Maybe because twenty-three children had stood behind me and believed I could give them a choice.
Maybe because once you learned a child was trapped, walking away made you part of the lock.
“I can’t save everybody,” I said. “But I can’t pretend I don’t know where they are.”
Jayce looked toward Amaya.
She hugged the stuffed bear tighter.
“Will you come back this time?” he asked.
I held his face.
“Yes.”
“You promise?”
“Yes.”
“Even if the empire says you can’t leave?”
My eyes moved toward Serena.
Jayce had heard us.
“Especially then.”
He wrapped his arms around me.
Amaya joined us.
I held them until Rome said we needed to move.
When I finally released them, it felt like tearing off part of my body.
Rome placed one hand on my shoulder.
“I’ll die before anybody touches them.”
“I don’t want you to die.”
“That’s the promise.”
“No.”
I looked directly at him.
“The promise is that all of you live.”
He nodded.
“Fair.”
Laila took Amaya’s hand.
Jayce stopped beside me.
“If you see the lady who put the vest on me…”
“What?”
“Don’t let her do it to another kid.”
“I won’t.”
He followed Rome.
I watched my children leave Carter House again.
This time, they weren’t being stolen.
That didn’t make it easier.
???
Monica survived the bullet Nesha put through her leg.
State police transported her beneath armed guard.
Before the ambulance doors closed, she asked to speak to Nesha.
Nesha stood ten feet away in a wheelchair.
She looked exhausted.
The doctors from Carter House had stabilized her wound, but she still needed surgery.
“You don’t have to talk to her,” I said.
“I know.”
Monica watched us from the stretcher.
“Nesha.”
She didn’t answer.
“I can help with Circle House One.”
Serena stepped closer.
“You don’t know the final command.”
“I know what the sacrifice means.”
Everyone became quiet.
Nesha looked toward her mother.
“What does it mean?”
Monica’s eyes moved between Keyshia, Serena, and Karen.
“Three Carter women enter. Two leave.”
“We know that part,” Karen said.
“You assume the third woman dies.”
“What else would sacrifice mean?” I asked.
“She remains connected to the master system.”
“For how long?”
“Until death.”
Serena’s face tightened.
“Circle House One requires a living guardian.”
“A prisoner,” Nesha said.
“A founder.”
“Locked inside?”
“Yes.”
“Can she communicate with the outside world?”
“Only through Circle channels.”
“Can the system be shut down after the other houses are erased?”
Monica hesitated.
Serena noticed.
“You don’t know.”
“I know it has never been done.”
“Then why should we believe you?”
“Because Simone tried.”
Karen stepped toward the ambulance.
“My sister entered Circle House One?”
“With Victor and your father.”
“When?”
“The night before your father died.”
Serena stared at her.
“You were there?”
“I was outside.”
“What happened?”
“Your father became guardian. Victor and Simone left.”
“That’s impossible,” Karen said. “Daddy died at the bank.”
“His body died at the bank.”
Monica’s voice dropped.
“His mind had been connected to Circle House One for six months.”
Nobody spoke.
The system used living people as its center.
Not computers.
Not money.
Blood.
“The person inside becomes the key,” Monica continued. “Every order passes through their biological patterns. Heartbeat. Voice. Brain activity.”
Serena looked down at the gold device.
“That’s why the original key was useless after Daddy died.”
“Yes.”
“Who became guardian after him?”
“Simone.”
Serena stumbled backward.
“I killed her.”
“You killed her body.”
Monica’s eyes moved toward the original key.
“Her biological pattern remained inside the master system.”
Karen covered her mouth.
“My sister is still controlling the Circle?”
“Not consciously.”
“Then how?”
“The system learned from her. Her decisions. Her memories. Her fears.”
A dead woman had been ruling the Circle for decades.
Not alive.
Not exactly dead.
Another Carter trapped between both.
“Can the system speak as her?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Can it choose who becomes the next guardian?”
“It already has.”
Cold moved through me.
“Who?”
Monica looked at me.
“The woman whose blood opened the empire after forty years.”
Me.
Keyshia Carter.
The system had been waiting for me before Dre sent me to the storage unit.
Before my father activated the remote gun.
Before my mother returned.
Every road led toward the same locked room.
“I’m the sacrifice,” I said.
Monica nodded.
Nesha wheeled herself closer.
“No.”
“I didn’t choose it.”
“Then don’t go.”
“If we don’t shut down Circle House One, eleven facilities remain active.”
“Find another way.”
“There might not be one.”
“Then we make one.”
Monica looked toward her daughter.
“There is one possibility.”
“What?”
“The guardian can be replaced.”
“By who?”
“Another eligible bloodline.”
Nesha understood before I did.
“No.”
Monica continued.
“Kendrick’s daughter can carry the system.”
“You want Nesha to take my place?”
“I want my daughter to control something nobody can ever take from her.”
Nesha’s face twisted with disgust.
“You still don’t understand me.”
“You would have unlimited access.”
“To a prison.”
“To governments.”
“To police.”
“To other people’s children.”
“To protection.”
Nesha rolled closer until her knees touched Monica’s stretcher.
“I would rather spend the rest of my life afraid than become you.”
The ambulance doors began closing.
Monica grabbed the edge.
“Then Keyshia stays inside.”
“No,” Nesha said. “None of us do.”
The doors shut between them.
Monica was transported away.
Nesha stared after the ambulance.
“What if she’s telling the truth?” I asked.
“She probably is.”
“Then the system already chose me.”
Nesha looked at me.
“A system doesn’t get to choose my sister.”
Sister.
Not best friend.
Not half-sister.
Sister.
She said it without hesitation.
Something warm moved through the cold inside me.
I squeezed her hand.
“You’re going to the hospital.”
“And you’re going to Washington.”
“Yes.”
“I hate this family.”
“You and everybody else.”
She almost smiled.
Then her expression became serious.
“Bring Dymond back.”
“She’s coming with us.”