Chapter Twenty-Five

We flew to Prague the next day. All of us, including Antonio but excluding Craig Bernard. Charlotte called Martin Bittman at the CIA to tell him we had Bernard in our basement; he didn’t seem surprised. Maybe the Reys told them during their confessions, or maybe they had Julian’s compound bugged? Either way, it was starting to feel like the CIA knew every move we were making and was giving us a leash that stretched around the world. It was working given we were now leading them to Prague, to Regina, and possibly to my parents. I was making my peace with that. I couldn’t let Regina die, especially not at the hands of my mom and dad. If they really were capable of something that demented, because of an interview, then they needed to be stopped.

So my choice was made. If it came down to my parents’ lives or my former best friend’s, I knew what I could live with. But the reality of that decision left us so silent on the flight over that it felt like the opening scene to a war movie—where the solemn soldiers stare at their boots as the boat prepares to land and begin the invasion. Only we weren’t soldiers, and our enemy was my family.

We stepped into the private hangar of Prague’s international airport, sun glare bouncing tangerine rays off the metallic surface of the plane. Julian was barking into his phone. Reportedly, Sophia’s contact at the BBC was a reporter named Felicity Schmidt, and she was stationed in Prague covering the elections. Julian had never met her, but he knew Felicity’s reputation as a journalist—she was tough. And apparently she worked for Department D.

The latest rumor was that Regina didn’t simply have an audio recording of my parents’ death threat against her family or leaked information about the murders of Cross and his wife, she also had a video that was sent to her by a Norwegian hacker, showing my parents alive, well, and accepting an envelope of cash from a notorious communist leader. We didn’t yet know which country they were caught blackmailing, but the BBC was calling the interview “Phoenix on Fire, Will Your Government Be Burned?”

It was airing live.

If Regina succeeded in broadcasting this evidence on a global news outlet, I didn’t want to contemplate what my parents might do. So we asked Detective Dawkins to sit outside of the Villanuevas’ home in Brookline, just in case a band of ninjas descended, while we attempted to stop the assassins (aka my parents) from harming her here.

“Okay, everyone has a burner phone,” Charlotte said as we huddled in the windy open-air hangar. She nodded to the black flip phones she’d placed in our hands. “If you find Regina, Sophia, anyone—call. Immediately.”

“Did we hear from the cops yet?” Keira asked.

Julian clicked his phone closed, sighing in aggravation. “The local police department is unable to intervene much. The law prohibits them from interfering with the freedom of the press, and right now, Regina is simply conducting a news interview in their country. That is her right. No overt threats have been made, so they cannot stop it. But they said they would send officers to the station as a precaution. We’re going to meet them there.” He gestured to Charlotte, who nodded. The two of them, holding hands on the plane while their other hands scrolled over smart phones, was the only thing that made me smile in all this madness. The worse things got, the more they pulled together. I should take notes.

The plan was for Charlotte and Julian to head to the news station and talk to producers with the goal of coercing them into postponing (or canceling) the interview. Julian didn’t think he’d have much luck; it was an international exclusive so big the promos were going viral. He said he wouldn’t kill the story if he were in their place (actually, he sounded jealous that it wasn’t on one of his networks). At the very least, they hoped to intercept Regina at the station and talk her out of the interview—if she made it that far.

The rest of us were tasked with cutting off Regina en route. Antonio and Marcus were going to the hotel identified by Julian’s contacts. Sophia reportedly reserved the room under the alias, “Angelina Berry,” like she was a Hollywood mash-up of Angelina Jolie and Halle Berry. She wished. Keira and I were going to the reporter’s home. Maybe Felicity was personally holding Regina’s hand leading up to the interview. Julian said he wouldn’t let a source like her out of his sight. Now, we had to pray one of our teams got to my old BFF before my parents.

I was certain they were here. I could practically smell my mother’s Chanel perfume in the wind.

“Be safe.” Julian looked at us with intensity. “May this end tonight.”

He didn’t have a champagne flute in his hand, but he looked like he wanted one, a final toast before what might be the end we’d all been working toward. The objective was to make sure Regina didn’t end up dead and to make sure any super-spy parent that showed up along the way was stopped. Even if that meant federal prison. Even if that meant something worse.

I closed my eyes. Regina is innocent. My parents are not. I repeated the words endlessly, trying to make sure it was the only thing I could hear in the chaos. I am not responsible for my parents’ choices. What happens to them is not my fault…

Footsteps approached, and I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. I opened my eyes to spy Marcus staring down with a sad smile. He tugged me away from the group, guiding me to a quiet corner. The air whistled in the open warehouse housing the jet, and I wrapped my arms around my chest.

“I haven’t been fair to you,” he began, running his hand through his messy hair. I caught a whiff of his leather jacket as he moved. I loved the smell of him. I missed it. “When I saw my parents taken away…” His voice drifted off like he was still seeing it now. I knew that feeling, and it was sickening. “I think I got my first real taste of what you went through, when Keira was missing, when you found that bathtub. Now I can’t stop picturing it, them holding hands as the agents pulled them apart. I saw them look at each other at the end, you know? It was like they knew it was the last time they’d see each other ever.”

I saw that moment too, but I didn’t respond. I wasn’t sure it would help.

“You usually can’t picture the exact end of something,” he continued. “The exact moment when a relationship ends, or the exact last second you’ll ever see someone, but they knew it then. And so did I.” Pain filled his eyes, and I wanted to hug him and tell him everything would be all right. But it wouldn’t. We knew that.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated, reaching for his hands. He let me take them, both of them, and it felt so good, like his anger was melting. I rubbed his palms, warming his cold skin.

“I took everything out on you, and it wasn’t fair.” He stared at our palms melded together, and my heart beat faster. I so wanted this fight to end. I wanted him back. “Lo siento, mi amor. We’re not our parents. We promised we’d never be our parents. You must hate me—”

“No!” I interrupted, taking a breath so large my chest heaved.

“I should’ve told you Antonio was coming.”

“I should have made you feel like you could. You need him.”

“I need you, too.” He gazed at me, and finally I could see what I saw before. I could see us. “You were right last night. You beat yourself up. You blame yourself for everything. I knew that, and I used it against you.”

“No. It’s okay.” I leaned my face until my forehead touched his, his lips a tickle away. I shut my eyes, letting the buzz between us return. Maybe it never left.

“I love you so much,” he said against my lips.

“I love you, too,” I whispered.

Then he kissed me.

…

The sky was pink behind a medieval castle. With churches, synagogues, and residences dating back to the days of Bohemia, Praha is a European anomaly that has survived two world wars. Kind of. While British and American forces attacked Dresden, Germany, simultaneous U.S. warplanes dropped bombs in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, but they somehow missed most of Prague. The result is a medieval city left relatively intact with a castle dating back to the ninth century hovering over a bridge that was built in the 1300s.

It could make you believe time travel was possible, especially when viewed in the pastel hues of a setting sun on the Vltava River. Even more unbelievable—it was warm. After long johns and wool hats in Krakow, we were now strolling the Charles Bridge without jackets, and it was almost evening.

“Gotta admit, this is pretty cool,” Keira said as she nudged my shoulder. Lavender clouds streaked behind the pointy silhouette of Prague Castle, its many Gothic spires uplit, as were all of the bronze statues lining the cobblestone bridge before us.

This was a pedestrian passage, no cars could pass, lit by ornate wrought iron gas lamps. It was a historical postcard, making everything in America new money.

“Wow, the Freedom Trail feels sort of cheesy now, doesn’t it?” I said, as a man brushed past dressed in a full olive green World War II soldier’s uniform, equipped with a tiny wedge hat and a tattered leather suitcase. (I hoped it was a costume, otherwise I was seeing ghosts.)

“Hey, don’t knock Paul Revere,” Keira teased, as we remembered the red brick line in Boston that led past the homes of our Founding Fathers. Keira and I once walked it while our parents were away on “business,” if we only knew then what that business actually was.

Around us, tourists snapped cell phone pictures while artists sold handmade jewelry, large-headed caricatures, and watercolor paintings of the ancient skyline. In the distance, “Let It Be” played on a street performer’s violin. The whole scene made me want to hold someone’s hand, but Marcus was off with Antonio at a hotel somewhere. Keira and I were the ones tasked with going to Felicity Schmidt’s apartment.

A gust of wind blew past, quite unlike the icy temperatures of Easter but enough to make me shiver. Keira, too.

“What are you gonna say to them?” she asked, not needing to clarify her question more. As much as we were worried about Regina, it was also very likely that our parents were in this city. And Keira had yet to see them alive.

But I had, and still, I was choosing Regina, and that truth made an illogical wave of guilt pulse through me.

“I’m not sure,” I shook my head as I stared at the boats in the river, the sun setting as they carried tourists to shore, much like the ferries in Venice.

“I fantasize so much about screaming at them, yelling, saying everything I’ve ever wanted to say, shoving every horrible thing that’s ever happened to me in their faces,” Keira admitted. “Then I worry I might start crying, and not be able to get out a single word.”

“It’ll probably be both,” I reasoned, as we passed a crucifix surrounded by gold Hebrew lettering. I’d spent a lot of time at European churches and monuments, and I couldn’t remember ever seeing Jesus surrounded by Hebrew before; but I guess it made sense, he was Jewish. But this didn’t feel like a nod to his heritage, not in Eastern Europe. This continent had a vile history with its Jewish population, so much so that despite all of the Easter markets and celebrations we had seen recently, we hadn’t caught one sign of Passover. It was likely because there weren’t many Jews left in Europe to celebrate, and that ominous reminder made it harder to smile at sunsets dipping behind statues like this.

“They’re here. I know it,” Keira said, her hazel eyes anxiously scanning the crowded bridge, as if our parents’ faces might suddenly emerge. I knew they wouldn’t. We’d see them when they wanted to be seen. That was how they worked. They were the professionals. “I can feel them in my gut, like I could throw up at any second.”

“I feel the same way.” I rubbed my stomach. It was quickly getting darker, and we needed to move if we were going to catch Sophia and Regina on the street, but there was something I needed to say before all the crazy began. “You were right.” I grabbed her arm. “You tried to tell me I didn’t hate Mom and Dad. I mean, I do, but I don’t…”

“I know.” Keira nodded like I made sense.

“It’s just… I didn’t think we were protecting them when we kept their fake deaths out of your video or when I didn’t call the CIA when I saw them in Rio or Urban in Poland, but after Marcus… I don’t know, maybe I was?”

“Maybe we were.” Keira corrected. “We did this.”

“What if they get the death penalty?” I asked, out loud, to the one person I knew felt exactly the way I did.

“Then we’ll visit them in prison, we’ll get them lawyers, we’ll say everything we need to say, and we’ll find the best therapists in the world to remind us that it isn’t our fault.” Keira adjusted her posture, standing tall as she looked at me like the sister who raised me, the one who could always face more truth than I could, the one who doubted our parents were dead and did something about it. A lot of people thought I was the strong one, but they didn’t know her, not the real her. “What you said last night,” she went on, “about Urban wanting you. I get it. I was even jealous for a while. All these parents fighting over you…” I opened my mouth to object, but she cut me off with a flick of her hand. “I knew you felt that way about him, probably before you did. You always had a bond with him that I didn’t. And I get why you’d want to get to know him. He’s your dad—”

“No, he isn’t,” I said.

“Yes, he is. Maybe not in the same way, but he is. And that’s okay. That’s not your fault.”

“And what happened to you isn’t your fault,” I said, knowing she still blamed herself for the DNA test that started it all.

“When all this is done,” she looked at me with a sad smile, “we’ve got some issues to work out, little sister.”

Wasn’t that the truth.

“I can’t shake this feeling…” Keira shuddered.

“That someone’s watching us.” The hairs on my neck rose.

I wasn’t psychic, I didn’t have prophetic dreams of the future or believe in crystal balls, but that feeling people get when the phone rings and they know who’s on the other line without looking and they know it’s bad news. I believed in that. I’d felt it before—when my sister stood outside my bedroom door the night we thought our parents had died.

I felt that way now.

I glanced about the bridge. Packs of tourists yammered in every language imaginable, some discussing the beautiful weather, others the watercolor sky, and others their plans to head to Budapest tomorrow. Tour guides shoved through spouting facts about King Wenceslas, while a crowd hovered near an ornate iron carving, fitted with tiny colorful padlocks (like the one on Marcus’s chain). Its plaque in the center was rubbed to a shiny gold from people placing their hands to make a wish. I knew this because our concierge suggested we make a wish, and Keira and I joked that we needed the luck.

Then my eyes caught on familiar faces.

They were staring directly at us.

I swatted my sister’s arm, gesturing with my head. “It’s Regina,” I whispered. “She’s here.”