I didn’t know how Priya had located the facility where Daniela Nicolae was being kept. I didn’t know what kind of favors she’d had to call in or who she’d had to kill—possibly literally—to get us in. All I knew was that we’d somehow successfully navigated both fingerprint and retinal scans, and the armed guards outside the door stepped aside when we arrived.
Inside the cell, a small woman sat with a hand resting protectively on her protruding stomach. Her dark hair was limp and lifeless, framing her face like a shadow.
Without moving her head, she shifted her eyes up toward Priya. “You, I expected,” she said, her voice rough from lack of use. “But I will admit to being surprised about the girl.”
Daniela Nicolae, the woman who’d infiltrated Walker Nolan’s life in the most intimate ways imaginable, didn’t move to get up from the bench on which she sat. She didn’t flinch when Priya took a step toward her.
“Your people have seized control of the Hardwicke School.”
Daniela’s head snapped back, as if Priya’s words had hit her with physical force.
“They’ve given us an ultimatum,” Priya continued. “Either we hand you over to them, or they start shooting students.”
They’ve already started, I thought, unable to stop myself from remembering Matt’s face in those last seconds.
Daniela’s left hand joined her right on her stomach. There was meaning woven into that gesture: she had a child to think about, too.
Whether that helps us or hurts us . . .
I needed to find out. “Could you give us a minute?” I asked Priya.
Vivvie’s aunt and the terrorist both turned the full force of their powerful stares on me.
“I was told I had to talk to Daniela alone,” I said.
With each second of silence that followed, I became more aware of the fact that I wasn’t supposed to be here. No matter what strings Priya had pulled, all it took was the wrong person discovering our presence, and I might find myself in a facility exactly like this one.
Twenty-seven minutes. We didn’t have time for complications, and we didn’t have the luxury of getting caught.
“You can’t get me out of here, can you?” Daniela pulled her gaze from my face and resumed studying Priya. “If you could, we’d already be on the move.”
Vivvie’s aunt returned the stare. “You aren’t leaving here without an executive order.” Priya’s tone gave no hint to the pressure we were under, but my mind went to what would happen if that executive order didn’t come through.
“I need to talk to Daniela alone,” I repeated. I had to trust that Ivy would come through. She would secure Daniela’s release. She had to. And before that happened, before Daniela walked out of this room, I had to deliver the terrorists’ message.
And one of my own.
“Let the girl deliver her message,” Daniela told Priya. “She won’t come to any harm by my hand.”
Priya showed no signs whatsoever of moving.
I gave her a look. “She’s really pregnant,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I can take her.”
Priya snorted. “I am fairly certain you cannot.”
Nonetheless, after tossing another assessing gaze in Daniela’s direction, Priya turned to leave, telling us she’d be right outside. Clearly, Daniela was meant to take those words as a threat.
I waited until the door closed behind Priya before I considered what I was getting ready to say—and whether or not it was worth saying it at all. “Walker Nolan is not the president’s son.”
In all likelihood, that statement—and all the ones that followed—would mean nothing to Daniela. In all likelihood, what I had to say would have no effect on her at all.
“Georgia Nolan had an affair,” I continued, “with a man named William Keyes.”
It didn’t matter that this probably wouldn’t work. I had to take the chance that the interrogators were right, that Walker Nolan meant something to the woman in front of me.
“This is the message you were asked to deliver?” Daniela raised an eyebrow to aristocratic heights.
“No,” I said. “That’s not the message. I’m not telling you this for them. I’m telling you for me. Walker doesn’t know. The president doesn’t know.”
“But you know?” There was a clear note of challenge in Daniela’s voice.
“My father died before I was born. His name was Tommy Keyes.” I took another step forward. “He was Walker’s brother.”
Daniela said nothing. I took one step forward, then another. After a long moment, I turned and lowered myself onto the bench next to her. She tracked my movements, hyperaware. On the bench beside her, I stared straight ahead at the wall that Daniela had probably been staring at for days.
“Why tell me this?” Daniela asked finally, breaking the heavy silence that had fallen between us. “What could you possibly expect to gain?”
I didn’t turn to look at her. “My name is Tess.”
She hadn’t asked. She probably didn’t want to know.
“My mother’s name is Ivy. She doesn’t have any siblings. And Adam, Walker’s other brother, he doesn’t have any kids.”
I didn’t stumble over referring to Ivy as my mother. There was too much at stake.
“Your daughter,” I said, bringing my hand slowly to Daniela’s stomach. “We share the same blood.”
We’re family.
I willed her to see it that way, to see me that way, if only for the most fleeting of moments.
“And if you are telling the truth, if you and my daughter share blood, what does that make me?” Daniela asked.
A terrorist. A criminal.
“Someone who wants to protect her daughter,” I said, my quiet voice cutting through the air like a knife. “And hopefully, someone capable of believing that I might want that, too.”
Daniela stared at my hand on her stomach. She kept staring until I removed it.
I wanted her to trust me. I wanted her to at least try to convince me that I could trust her, too.
Nineteen minutes.
I knew in the pit of my stomach that we weren’t going to make it back to Hardwicke before the hour was up. I knew what would happen when we didn’t.
Stop, I told myself. I had to believe that Ivy would come through, that Daniela would be released. And if I believed that, if I could make myself believe that, then I needed to know what we would be walking into once Ivy had secured Daniela’s release.
For that, I needed someone who knew how Senza Nome operated. I needed Daniela on my side, not theirs.
“You said that you had a message for me.” Daniela’s voice was even, without emphasis. I had no idea if she believed what I’d told her about Walker’s parentage, or if she cared. I had no idea if she saw even a hint of him when she looked at me. “It would be in your best interest,” Daniela continued in that same deadly, even tone, “to deliver that message.”
What if the interrogators were wrong? I thought, unable to block out the hint of fear slithering its way up my spine. What if Daniela hasn’t been emotionally compromised? What if she’s one of them in every sense of the word?
What if they have no intention of silencing her at all?
For the first time, I truly processed the fact that the woman sitting beside me was Senza Nome. Like Mrs. Perkins. Like Dr. Clark.
“You want the message?” I said. “‘The dove has always wanted to fly to Madrid.’”
I saw the moment the words landed for the woman.
The dove has always wanted to fly to Madrid. What did that mean? What could that possibly mean?
Beside me, Daniela climbed to her feet. I stayed sitting, tracking her movement. She turned back to face me, and I returned her stare.
“You are quiet,” Daniela said finally, after a full minute had stretched by with us in silence.
I shrugged, my leg muscles tense, ready to propel me to my feet the second it became necessary. “I told you everything I came here to say.”
The woman opposite me smiled slightly. I didn’t know whether to be warmed by the expression—or chilled.
“If I asked you to,” Daniela said, a slight, lilting accent creeping into her voice, “would you tell me what else my people asked you to do? Their other demands—the things that were not a part of their message for me.”
I wasn’t sure if this was a test or a trick or even just a request—but I was here, and she was asking. If things went as planned, Priya would be delivering both of us through the gates of Hardwicke. Honesty was a chance I had to take.
“They want you, and they want Priya, and they want me.” That was just the start of their demands. In as few words as possible, I communicated the rest. Daniela listened in utter silence, one hand creeping to the small of her back, her eyes sharp as she digested my words.
“May I ask who issued your orders?” Daniela inquired once I’d finished.
I told her about Mrs. Perkins.
I told her about the armed men in the halls.
I showed her the video Mrs. Perkins had sent me. I didn’t watch it. I couldn’t. But even when I turned my head away, I wasn’t able to block out the sounds. I closed my eyes. I pressed back against the strobe-like images that battered against the halls of my memory.
Help me!
I bowed my head, my arms curving around my torso.
Daniela let the video play to the end. When she looked up, her eyes were dry, but I could see a glint of emotion lurking in their depths.
Guilt? Sorrow? Rage?
“Why you?” Daniela asked me, her voice still even, still controlled as she paced to the far corner of the room. “Why let you go? Why send you these videos? Why send you here?”
I gave her the only answer I had, the only one I’d been given. “I’m a resourceful girl, related to some very powerful people.”
Daniela looked at me and into me, like I was a clock, and she was a clock maker preparing to take it apart. “You care.”
I do. For some reason, I couldn’t admit that out loud.
“Walker cares.” Daniela turned her head to one side, allowing her matted hair to fall into her face. “He’s always cared too much.”
About you, I thought. You mean that he cared too much about you.
This was the moment—the one I’d been waiting for, the only one I was going to get.
“I’ll die to protect the people I love,” I said. I let my gaze fall down to her stomach and let a question form on my lips. “Will you?”
Daniela walked slowly toward me.
“Congressman Wilcox was killed in federal custody,” I told her. “He was a liability.” The terrorist drew herself to a stop directly in front of me. “Are you?” I asked her. “A liability to Senza Nome?”
When the government hands you over, what are the terrorists going to do? To you? To your child?
Do they have your loyalty?
Do you have theirs?
Those questions never made their way from my mind to my lips.
“A liability?” Daniela repeated after an elongated moment. “To the people you have been dealing with, let us say that I am a concern.”
She knows she’s a threat, I thought. And she knows what they do to threats.
Once upon a time, Daniela Nicolae might have been a true believer in Senza Nome’s cause. But right now, in this cell, looking at the possibility of confronting her own people, she was also a mother.
I knew from firsthand experience—from Ivy—what a powerful motivation that could be.
“The message you brought me—‘The dove has always wanted to fly to Madrid.’ It was an order to kill the woman who brought you here.” Daniela Nicolae stood over me. “Priya Bharani. She’s the dove.”
I stood up, trying to process that statement. “And Madrid?” I asked, my tongue like sandpaper in my mouth.
“I know people,” Daniela replied, “who have been to Madrid. I know what it is they refer to.”
“Murder,” I said.
“Execution,” came the correction. “They don’t just want the dove dead. They want it sudden and public, and they want the blood on my hands.”
Priya had been ordered to give herself up, to deliver Daniela, to deliver me. She’d known that, in all likelihood, she would be surrendering her life.
“When we make it back to Hardwicke,” I said, trying to process the reality of the situation. “When we go in . . .”
“I’m to make an example of her.”
“With the FBI and SWAT team watching?”
Daniela gave a slight nod.
“Won’t they shoot you?” I asked.
Daniela looked at me with an expression somewhere between detachment and pity.
That was when I realized: “They won’t shoot you if you have me.”
I could see how this would have played out, if Daniela hadn’t told me the meaning behind the message. I’d have been prepared for an attack, but I wouldn’t have expected it to come from her.
Neither would Priya, I thought.
The dove has always wanted to fly to Madrid.
“Why tell me this?” I asked the woman Walker Nolan had loved, the terrorist operative he’d never really known.
“You told me your truth,” Daniela Nicolae replied. “You wanted my trust. You claim that we are family, of sorts.” She let that sentiment hang in the air a moment longer than the ones that had come before. “My people, the organization I work for—they have been my family. I was taught, from the cradle, to protect that family.” She laid a hand on her stomach. “I would have died for our cause. But I will not allow my daughter to do the same.”
There was a noise in the hallway—footsteps, then a shout.
“Do you have a plan?” I asked Daniela.
She smiled again, that same subtle, chilling smile. “Do you?”