102

San Francisco

Salem’s chair was pulled tight to the hospital bed, her hand clasped round Bel’s, her head resting on the blanket. She’d been in this position, more or less, for two weeks, stealing sleep, choking down hospital food when the nurses insisted, showering in Bel’s bathroom when her own stink became too much.

In this moment, she wasn’t so much sleeping as mourning with her eyes closed.

She felt it before she saw it.

Movement.

Her head shot up. “Bellie?”

Bel blinked. She tipped her head to the left, facing a wall of flowers and balloons. She creaked it to the right. More balloons, flowers, and stuffed animals stacked to the ceiling.

“Hey.” Bel’s voice was hoarse. “Where am I?”

Hot, salty tears coursed down Salem’s face. She pushed back Bel’s short hair, her hands trembling. “San Francisco General. You, my friend, have just woken up from a coma.”

Bel lifted an arm, studied it as if it were a log, dropped it. She did the same with the other, both of them stuck with needles and tubes. She paused. The room was still. She finally spoke. “My legs don’t work.”

Salem had prepared for this conversation every waking moment for the last two weeks. Now that the time was finally here, all she could do was wrap her arms around Bel and cry with her.

A nurse entered the room, clipboard in hand. Her mouth was open to speak when she saw Bel awake. “Oh my god.” She rushed out.

Bel released Salem and let her eyes fall closed. “Tell me what I’ve missed. What happened to the Hermitage?”

Salem kept a firm grip on Bel’s hand. “Carl Barnaby, the CEO, was arrested two weeks ago. You sure you want to hear all this?”

Bel opened her eyes long enough to glare.

It was the most beautiful thing Salem had ever seen. “The FBI went to Mom’s hospital room in Virginia before we got to Alcatraz. She told them that she’d been kept in the Hermitage headquarters. It was enough to obtain a search warrant. The agents who went in located the cell she’d been kept in. It had been scoured clean with bleach, but the agent in charge found a single hair clinging to a wall. DNA testing verified it was Mom’s. And thanks to some code-breaking help from Lu’s staff, they also discovered a hidden room containing $74 million worth of gold and jewels.”

Salem swiped at her hair. “Agent Stone got the treaty to Hayes, who was elected in a landslide the day after Alcatraz. Hayes had the treaty carbon-dated and verified, and fed the story to the media. My favorite headline came from the New York Times: ‘Hermitage Foundation Built on Trail of Tears.’

“Between the bad press from the treaty, the evidence of kidnapping, and the stolen treasure, people couldn’t distance themselves fast enough from the Hermitage Foundation. Politicians, religious leaders, Fortune 500 CEOs, investors.”

Bel’s lip quirked. Her color was coming back. “How is your mom?”

Salem swallowed. Vida still wore bandages and bruises, but most of her wounds had healed, at least the visible ones. Salem had hugged her mom tight when she arrived at the San Francisco hospital via a side trip to Minneapolis a week after Bel had been admitted. Salem was happy her mom was alive, but she was also aware that the distance between them had settled into something permanent.

At the end of the day, it wasn’t even due to the sense of betrayal Salem felt because Vida, Daniel, and Gracie had secretly trained her and Bel for this world.

It was because her mother had let her believe that her father had killed himself.

After they’d ended the hug at the San Francisco hospital, Vida had handed Salem a book of Emily Dickinson’s poems. “I got it from home.”

Home. Salem wondered what that even meant anymore. She had stared at the book. An envelope was sticking out of it, marking the poem “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” Inside the envelope was a handwritten note from Daniel Wiley.

Dearest Salem,

I’m writing this note because I fear the Hermitage has discovered my betrayal and will not let me live much longer. Grace and Vida won’t stop your training or their work—they can’t, there’s too much at stake—but our hope is that they can protect you and Isabel from knowing about and subsequently being called into the web. If
you’re reading this, that means that they couldn’t. I love you more than the moon and earth, Bits. Everything I did, I did for you. You’re stronger than you know.

—Dad

Reading the note knocked the wind out of Salem. Everything had been a lie—when her parents had met, how her father had died, what kind of people they were. She cried, mourning the loss of her father all over again, except this time it was his real death. She had to do it at Bel’s bedside, not sure if her best friend would ever wake up again.

You’ll understand one day was all her mother had said before leaving to help Lu.

“She’ll be okay, I think.” Salem wiped away the fresh tears on her cheeks.

Bel tried to get herself on her elbows. “What happened to you on the island?”

Salem drew a ragged breath. She’d played the scene out in her mind every day since. “Connor was there. The Hermitage had sent him to give me a sedative, I guess, and then toss me over the side. I got away from him and made my way into the back of the catering tent, where I saw that creep putting poison into teacups.”

Salem blinked a few times to clear her vision. “I also saw you get shot.”

“Whose bullet did I take?”

“The fat-fingered man who dislocated your shoulder outside the mission. The same man who forced my dad to take sleeping pills and walk into a lake. His ID was a dead-end. Secret Service has knocked a lot of heads but no one will tell how he got on the island or where he got his gun. His first bullet missed its mark. You took the second one.”

Bel’s cheek twitched.

“You were in surgery for seven hours.” Salem’s voice was husky. “The doctors say you’re lucky to be alive.”

“What happened to him after he got off the second bullet?”

“Agent Clancy Johnson—the Ed Harris guy—shot him. The headlines called him a hero, second only to you in his fast-acting courage. He didn’t do any interviews, though. Agent Stone said he took an early retirement.”

“You still haven’t told me what happened to you,” Bel said.

Salem sighed. “I woke up here, under guard. Thanks to Agent Stone, I was reclassified from attempted assassin to victim, which meant I could talk the agents into checking the teacups. They found traces of Polonium 201 in three of them. They didn’t catch the man who put it in there.”

Bel pulled Salem down into her arms and held her tight.

For the first time in two weeks, Salem felt safe.

The doctor walked in minutes later, a huge smile on his face. “Isabel Odegaard, you’re something of a miracle.”

A rumble like a train sounded outside. “What is that?” Bel asked, not releasing Salem.

“Your people.” The doctor walked to the wall-mounted television set and powered it on, tuning the channel to CNN. The lead story was a crowd of people outside of a hospital. This hospital. “The world has been praying for the woman who saved the first female president of the United States of America. They’ve just been informed that you’re awake.”

The ticker-tape banner across the bottom of the screen confirmed his words. The chanting outside turned to a roar that echoed back against itself. Bel let go of Salem’s arms but kept a hold of her hand.

The doctor strode over to feel the lymph nodes at Bel’s neck. “You two ladies have become a media sensation with all of your skullduggery. You make quite the team.”

Salem stroked Bel’s beautiful cheek.

Connor’s body floated ashore later that evening, nibbles of flesh removed by the sea. Salem still couldn’t muster any feeling one way or another about that. She was sure that’d catch up with her.

And she knew she could handle it when it did.

With Bel at her side, she could handle anything the world served up.