My World Issues teacher just shot a Secret Service agent. She just shot Anna’s Secret Service agent.
“Time to come out now, Anna,” Dr. Clark said, sounding exactly like the woman who’d stood at the front of our World Issues class and lectured about everything from elections to acts of international aggression. “I don’t want to have to hurt you. None of us do.” Dr. Clark walked until she was standing directly over Anna. She softened her voice as she looked down at the girl. “None of us want to hurt you,” she repeated, “but we will.”
“W—why?” Anna choked out the word.
“Believe me,” Dr. Clark said, “this was not my first-choice way to spend this morning, but unfortunately, I am not the one calling the shots.”
“You . . .” Anna’s gaze was locked on the dead Secret Service agent. “You killed Dave.”
“He called you Starlight. I take it that was your Secret Service code name?” Dr. Clark’s voice was straightforward, no-nonsense. In other circumstances, it might have been calming. “His job was to protect you. He died protecting you. He would want you to do whatever you have to do to protect yourself now.” Dr. Clark waved the gun at her. “Stand up.”
Anna was crying. She scrambled backward until she hit a wall.
Dr. Clark simply repeated herself. “Stand up, Anna.” She trained her gun on the girl. Anna stood. A moment later, a pair of armed guards came into the room.
“Secure her,” Dr. Clark ordered. “Get her in the room with the other high-value targets. If you have to make an example of someone, do try to make it someone disposable.”
One of the guards grabbed Anna. She screamed, and before I could blink, the guard had hit her over the head with his gun. The vice president’s daughter crumpled to the ground.
“Get her some ice,” Dr. Clark ordered. “We want these kids intact.”
The guard scooped Anna up and gave a brisk nod. “You’re the boss,” he said. His tone seemed to tack a disclaimer onto those words: for now.
Dr. Clark stared the guard down, her gaze unflinching, her finger steady on the trigger of her gun. “We’ll have company any minute. If you’re going to mutiny, I suggest you do it now.”
The guard looked away before she did. The other guard stepped forward, shoving the man who held Anna toward the door.
“Reinforcements are in place,” he reported to Dr. Clark. “We have thirty men. The snipers are on the roof. Campus is secured.”
“I want a head count of all students. We need to know who we’re missing, and we need to find them. Now.”
I closed my eyes, unable to keep watching. Every breath I took was deafening in my ears. My heartbeat, the barest shift of position—any second, they’d hear us. Any second, they’d find us.
Blood.
Blood on my hands.
I couldn’t let myself get caught up in a flashback, but the present was no better. There was blood seeping into the library carpet.
The Secret Service agent. Two gunmen.
Bodies on the floor, and bodies strewn through the halls—and I was here, trying not to breathe, not to think, not to move. My fingernails dug into the wood of the bookshelf.
Still. So still. Have to stay—
There was a sound. I wasn’t sure if it was me or Emilia or the settling of the floor, but Dr. Clark’s head whipped toward us. I pressed myself back, willing the dark on our side of the room to swallow me whole.
Don’t let her see us.
Don’t see us.
Don’t—
Dr. Clark strode across the room. Toward us. Beside me, Emilia shuddered. Then she shoved her tablet into my hands, threw her head back, and stood up.
There was a two-second delay before the lights switched on. Emilia used those two seconds to stride into the aisle.
“Don’t shoot,” she said, holding her hands up. “Please, don’t shoot.”
Asher’s twin didn’t glance back at me. She didn’t give any indication that I was here.
“Emilia.” I could hear Dr. Clark’s greeting but couldn’t see her as I pushed myself back against the bookshelf, quelling the urge to go after Emilia.
I can’t help her. And a moment after that: She did this for me.
“You’re a sensible girl,” Dr. Clark was telling Emilia. “Smart. Tougher than you look.”
Why? I asked Emilia silently. Why give yourself up to save me?
“You killed John Thomas, didn’t you?” Emilia said, walking toward Dr. Clark—and away from the motion sensor that controlled the light in my aisle.
Sixty seconds. Sixty seconds until it’s dark again. Sixty seconds to hope no one looks through the gaps in the shelves.
“I’m not sure what John Thomas knew, why you wanted him dead.” Emilia kept talking, kept Dr. Clark’s eyes on her. “Quite frankly, Dr. Clark, I don’t care. I don’t care why you killed him. I don’t care that you killed him. But you were also framing my brother to take the fall.”
“I assure you,” Dr. Clark replied evenly, “killing Mr. Wilcox was not my idea, nor was I the one who pulled the trigger. We infiltrate, we observe, we influence, we recruit.” Those words had the ring of a mantra, a prayer. “We kill only when we must—to make a point. Some of us take that vow more seriously than others.”
I thought of the hospital bombing, the assassination attempt. What was the point of that?
“Why?” Emilia asked the same question of Dr. Clark that Anna had. She was still walking toward the woman—taking her away from me.
“Ours is a grander purpose,” Dr. Clark said. “Everything we do is for the greater good.”
“Since the year I spent studying abroad,” Dr. Clark said. “I wasn’t much older than you.”
I remembered Dr. Clark describing her own flashbulb moment, getting off a plane right after 9/11.
Everything we do is for the greater good.
Was that what they’d told her? Was that what she believed?
“How many people have died today?” Emilia countered. Her voice didn’t waver. It was like the moment she’d come out of hiding, the terror had started draining away. “How is killing people ever for the greater good?”
Dr. Clark didn’t answer. Instead, I heard her raise the gun. “Be smart,” she told Emilia. “Be sensible. Do what you’re told, and you’ll walk out of this.” She paused. “And so will your brother.”
“Asher isn’t here.”
Dr. Clark’s silence spoke volumes. We can get to him. Anytime, anywhere—we can get to anyone.
“I’ll be smart.” Emilia’s voice was strong and steady. “What do you want me to do?”
The light above me clicked off with a pop. For a moment, I could feel Dr. Clark looking in this direction.
“Secure her.”
It took me a moment to realize that Dr. Clark was talking about Emilia, not me.
“High value or low value?” the guard she’d addressed asked.
“Low.”
Low value, because Emilia’s parents are dentists, I thought, the realization somehow managing to pierce its way through the constant and overwhelming terror that had claimed my entire body. Low value, because her family doesn’t have anything the terrorists want.
Anna Hayden’s father was the acting president of the United States. High value. It wasn’t much of a stretch, given my relation to Ivy and William Keyes, to think that they’d consider me high value, too.
I heard the door to the library open.
“Boss wants to talk to you,” a new voice informed Dr. Clark. “A couple of kids are missing.”
Boss? I thought. What boss? Dr. Clark had said that killing John Thomas wasn’t her idea. Then whose idea was it? Who pulled the trigger?
It had to be someone at Hardwicke. Someone with access to the security cameras. Someone with the authority to bring new people in.
I didn’t finish that thought. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t do anything until I heard Dr. Clark and the others leave.
I heard the door shut behind them. But it wasn’t until I looked down at the tablet Emilia had thrust into my hands and saw two guards pass, one escorting Emilia and the other striding next to Dr. Clark, that I let myself suck in a breath of air.
Alone.