Chapter Six
Evan
Don’t hurt him
I have no intention, so long as you follow my instructions.
Evan
Which are?
Make your way to the west entrance of your building and wait. Bring nothing and no one with you.
Evan
I’m not where you think I am
I know exactly where you are.
Evan
I have guards
You’re a smart girl. You have five minutes.
—Text message exchange between Evangeline Bright and a prepaid mobile number, 1 February 2024, 5:11 p.m.
My pulse is racing, and I shove my phone in my pocket as I search the flat for an escape route.
The usual pair of bodyguards are outside my door.
Likely more throughout the floors we’ve taken over, and at least one lookout in the lobby.
It takes two minutes to get from the flat to the west entrance of our building, which leaves me less than three to figure this out.
I spot the pink mug that Singh left on the counter, and suddenly I know what to do.
I step into a pair of sneakers, pull on one of Kit’s cardigans, and scurry into the kitchen. While I leave the mug untouched, I hurl the dishes on the drying rack into the open living and dining area. A few bounce, but most shatter against the floor, scattering tiny slivers of glass everywhere.
“Miss Bright?” calls one of the PPOs from the hallway, and he knocks frantically. “Miss Bright, is everything—”
Before he can finish, I tuck myself into the small triangle of space behind the door, which can’t fully swing open in the tiny foyer, and I let out a bloodcurdling scream.
My PPOs don’t bother with their keys. Instead, as one calls for backup, the other kicks down the door in a single go, and it swings on its hinges, missing my face by half an inch.
I flinch, squeezing my eyes shut as the PPOs rush past me and into the mess that is the living area, glass crunching beneath their shoes.
“Miss Bright?” one calls again. “Miss Bright!”
“Bedroom,” grunts the other, and their footsteps grow muted. I have no way to tell whether they’re still watching the entrance, but I take that risk and duck out from behind the door, darting into the hallway beyond.
It’s empty, though it won’t be for long. I sprint to the emergency stairwell and burst through the door, flying down the concrete steps so quickly that I’m vaguely surprised I don’t actually take flight.
A few men in suits are rushing into the lift when I poke my head into the lobby, but thankfully no one’s thought to check the stairwell yet.
It’s only a momentary oversight, and the clock is ticking as I slip across the hall, toward the rarely used west exit.
They’ll have this covered in a matter of minutes, too, if they don’t already, but for now, my security seems convinced I’m still in the flat, and I seize advantage.
As I step out into the freezing evening air, my breath crystalizes, and I spot a black van idling near the curb. I inwardly curse myself, sure I’ve been caught by MI5, but then—
Then the door slides open, and a man wearing a black ski mask appears.
“Get in,” he orders. Dylan. My throat tightens, and I know if I get in that van, there’s a very good chance I’ll never see Kit again. But if I don’t, I know I never will, and that’s the only reason I move forward.
Dylan grabs my elbow to haul me up, and the door shuts behind me as the van starts to move. Warm, pine-scented air blasts through the vents, and there must be some kind of partition between the front and the back of the van, because I can’t see the driver or the windshield.
But I can feel Dylan’s hands on me, searching my pockets and even my shoes.
There’s something detached and authoritative about it, like getting a thorough pat-down at an airport, but it still sends shivers through me.
And in the darkness, I see the face of a dead boy named Jasper and hear his whispered crooning that everything’s all right, and why don’t I just relax?
When Dylan finds my phone in the pocket of my sweatpants, he pops open a tiny tray and removes my SIM card. With a muttered curse, he snaps it in half and shuts off my phone completely, then opens the side door only wide enough to toss both onto the dark street below.
“I told you not to bring anything,” he growls, and I know I should be terrified. But now that I’m in this van with him, a strange sense of calm washes over me, and I refuse to let him see me fall apart.
“How else was I supposed to contact you if you didn’t show?” I say with a shrug I hope is maddening.
He huffs and produces several zip ties from his pocket. “Hands.”
I place my wrists together for him to secure, and he does so efficiently. Clearly this isn’t his first time tying someone up. “Is that it?” I say, testing the plastic. It’s tight, but not so tight that it’ll cut off circulation.
Without replying, Dylan removes a black cloth bag from his pocket and pulls it over my head, effectively blindfolding me. A surge of adrenaline floods my veins, insisting I do something to save my own damn life, but I force myself to stay still. At least until I know Kit is safe.
“You’re really going all out, aren’t you?” I say as Dylan guides me onto the cold floor. “It’s not like I can tell where we’re headed anyway, you know.”
“Shut up,” he says in that same growly tone, and once again, his hands are on me. “Where’s your panic button?” he adds as his fingers slip into the elastic band of my bra.
I jerk away, nauseated by his touch. “If you don’t take your hands off me right now, I will shove my foot straight into your face, I swear to—”
He tugs off my shoe without warning, but at least he isn’t touching me anymore. I hear him tear through the fabric, clearly looking for any hidden compartments that might hold a panic button, and I scowl.
“I just took a shower. I don’t have anything except my phone, which is clearly not a problem anymore.”
Still, Dylan doesn’t say a word as he checks my other shoe, too, and then the waistband of my sweatpants, albeit with much more care than before. He finds nothing, like I knew he would, and at last he gives it a rest. “Secure,” he calls to the driver, who grunts in return.
“Where’s Kit?” I say. “You have to let him go—”
“Kit’s safe,” he says, which isn’t at all reassuring. “Now shut your mouth before I shut it for you.”
I snort. “What, did you read a list of kidnapper clichés before doing this? I’m not afraid of—”
His knuckles hit me square in the jaw despite the black bag covering my head, and pain explodes in the lower half of my face. My lip splits on something metal—a ring, I think—and I feel warm blood trickling down my chin, soaking into the fabric of the bag.
“I said,” says Dylan in a deadly quiet voice, “shut your mouth.”
I lick the blood from my lip, wishing I could spit it in his face. But even though there’s a snarling animal inside me desperate to fight back, what few survival instincts I still have kick in, and I keep quiet for the rest of the ride, my mouth throbbing and my heart racing.
It isn’t long before the van slows to a stop and the driver cuts the engine.
The door opens, letting in the cold night air once more, and Dylan takes me by the elbow and roughly guides me down a stone path.
I can see light through the bag, but only the vaguest of impressions as he tells me to climb a few steps, and we enter a building with a creaky hardwood floor.
The smell of Italian food hits me, and it feels almost homey as Dylan leads me through the depths of the building—house?
—until we finally step inside a muffled room.
The floor is carpeted, and it smells distinctly like—
Books.
Without warning, Dylan cuts through the zip tie on my wrists and yanks the bag off my head.
He’s not wearing his mask anymore, and he doesn’t seem ruffled by the fact that I know exactly who he is, even though we’ve only met once.
He does one more pat-down before finally stepping back toward the door, never turning away from me.
“None of this is personal,” he says, and it sounds more like a threat than anything else he’s said to me tonight. “Wait here.”
And then he’s gone, with the heavy door locked firmly behind him. My eyes slowly adjust to the warm yellow light as I touch my split lip gingerly, dabbing away what’s left of the blood.
I’m in an old-fashioned study, with dark wood furniture and bronze fastenings, and floor-to-ceiling bookcases covering three of the four walls that overflow with books, papers, and dust. In the center of the room is a massive desk with lion head drawer pulls and a leather chair that’s seen better days, and to my bewilderment, a state-of-the-art laptop stands open, the screen unlocked and open to its desktop.
What the hell is going on?
I stand frozen for what has to be a full minute, waiting for something to happen, but nothing does.
There’s no clock in the room ticking away, letting me know how much time has passed since I stepped into that van with Dylan, and no one comes through the door again, either to greet me or otherwise.
Another minute passes as I count the seconds in my head, and I exhale, glancing around again.
This is a trap. It has to be. Or if not a trap, then what? A test?
As soon as the thought occurs to me, my skin erupts into goose bumps beneath the soft knit of Kit’s cardigan, and I know I’m right.
That’s exactly what this is—a test to see…
what? What I’ll do when I’m left alone with a strange computer?
A computer that’s likely connected to Fox Rex and possibly even the Abr?
I don’t look for the cameras that must be hidden around the room.
Instead, I turn toward the bookshelves and scan the spines, some of which look like they haven’t been handled in years.
On the first wall, hundreds of spy novels are neatly arranged by author, and all have a thin layer of dust on their jackets.
Nonfiction and textbooks take up the entire second wall, and they span decades.
But while the variety of subjects on these shelves are fascinating, the third bookcase behind the desk is the real prize.
The lowest shelf boasts nothing but composition books—dozens of them, all crammed together so tightly that trying to remove one would undoubtedly result in an explosion of paper and dust. I leave those alone and move upward toward the collection of military history books, all about upheaval and revolutions throughout the western world.
The English civil war in the sixteen hundreds, the Glorious Revolution that put Mary II and William III on the throne, the American and French Revolutions, the Scottish wars of independence and later Jacobite risings, the Cornish and Irish rebellions and Welsh revolt—
This isn’t idle interest. This is a study. This is a master class on how to win a revolution against an enemy that seems unbeatable.
My mouth goes dry, and I brush my fingertips against their spines, like I’m reading the titles with breathless interest. In reality, however, I scan the shelf above, which is lined with more of the same.
But crammed into the very end of the bookcase, almost indistinguishable from the texts of blood-soaked history, is a single leather-bound book.
Unlike most of the others, it doesn’t have a speck of dust on it, and there’s no lettering on the spine.
I shouldn’t peek, not when I’m being watched, but—
“Ice?”
Cursing, I whirl around and face the man standing in the open doorway.
He can’t be older than twenty-five, with a face so painfully ordinary that I could have passed him on the street a million times and never thought twice about it.
It’s the kind of face that’s invisible. Anonymous.
The perfect mask for someone who wants to disappear into a crowd.
But his eyes are dark and rimmed with gold as they focus on me, piercing and unwavering, and I know exactly who he is.
The man who calls himself Guy Fawkes.