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I LET CLARK GO BUT followed after her. It was wonderful to see her alive and have confirmation that I had done the right thing. This whole time I had been worried that I’d left her alone with New Dawn, but she’d resurfaced, just like I knew she would.
We held hands for a moment, but that became problematic. There was gunfire in the hallway up ahead, forcing us to take cover against the wall. The three Dark Sparrow soldiers with us fired first, and we heard a shout and then a thud, indicating that someone’s bullet had met its mark.
“Mr. Ashcroft is gone,” Clark said, breathing heavily. “He has a detonator with him.”
“I thought he couldn’t blow the nukes without the key,” I replied, hoping that I was right.
“He has a backup,” she answered. “It turns out he didn’t trust us.”
“Then why make the keys in the first place?”
“I guess he thought it would bring us all together. Like we would be one big happy family after Armageddon.”
“Funny how it didn’t work out that way,” I observed.
She gave me a quick smile, and I loved her for it. I had a sudden sinking feeling that one of us wasn’t going to make it out alive. I hoped that was just my fear talking, and that it wasn’t a premonition.
“I think he’s gone to the roof,” Clark said, pointing up.
“How do you know?” I countered.
“I don’t,” she said. “But he left just a few minutes ago, and I can’t think of anywhere else he might have gone.”
She started forward, but I grabbed her elbow and pulled her back. “What about Ryan?” I asked.
Her face grew tight, and she shook her head. “He’s dead.”
“I’m sorry,” I responded. I knew how much she’d cared about him at one point, despite all the mischief he’d been up to recently. It was never easy to watch someone you once loved die. I knew that as well as any other field agent.
“How do we get to the roof?” one of the other fighters asked.
“I don’t know,” Clark answered. “I’m looking for a stairwell.”
“We should split up,” I suggested.
“I’ll radio it in,” the operative said, pulling out his communication device.
Clark motioned me forward, firing down the hall as she went. I kept close to her heels, watching our back as she hunted for the stairs. We took one turn after another, always on the lookout for something familiar. I expected stairs to be identified by some marker, the way they always were in corporate buildings. But it quickly became apparent that this was no normal building.
Clark grew frustrated, spinning around to look at me. I had to laugh. Of all the goofy things right in the middle of a firefight, the fact that we couldn’t even find the stairs seemed ridiculous.
“I’ll take that room, you take this one,” she suggested, pointing out two doors on opposite sides of the hall.
I heard gunshots somewhere in the distance, but there wasn’t anyone directly within our scope. I agreed with a nod, throwing my shoulder against the door. It buckled after two tries, revealing what looked like a science classroom. There were standing lab stations and beakers on every desk. A bank of windows faced out toward the cliffs, but there was no stairwell.
I turned away, jogging across the hall to see what Clark had found. It was a closet full of cleaning supplies. I wondered if Ashcroft was continuing his school. Was he still rescuing orphans and delinquents, training them to work for him at New Dawn? The layout of the compound seemed to support that theory. If it was true, then I suspected that Ashcroft was even crazier than we’d first imagined. What he was doing in terms of destroying the world was bad enough, but to be raising the future generation within his walls, that was something extra.
I didn’t have time to share my conclusions with Clark, nor did it matter. As long as we put a stop to Ashcroft’s plan, we could worry about future New Dawn soldiers at a later point. There might be kids who would need deprogramming, but that wasn’t our first priority.
Clark joined me back in the hallway, chewing her bottom lip in frustration. “There has to be a way to the roof,” she said.
“What if he didn’t go to the roof?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “He might have a way out down below. Maybe there’s a door that opens onto the beach.”
“We would still need an elevator or a staircase,” I replied.
“Hang on,” she said. “There was something in that first room they took me to.”
“What room?” I wondered.
“The one where I...” She trailed off, and though I couldn’t confirm it, I thought that there might have been some reason she didn’t want to return.
She didn’t bother to elaborate but hurried away toward the sounds of gunfire. I held my weapon at the ready, following her lead. We hustled past one intersection after another, working our way deeper into the building. I kept my eyes out for anything that looked like a staircase or an elevator but didn’t see one. Of course, there had to be something, since I knew for a fact that the building had more than one floor. But without any intel on the layout of the fortress, we were scrambling around in the dark trying to find them.
Clark burst into a room with an open door. I didn’t know what to expect, but I could see why she was reluctant as soon as I entered. There on the floor, in front of a wall of windows, was the body of her ex-fiancé.
I had to suppress a cheer that raced through my mind, seeing the man dead. I didn’t like or trust him. Knowing he could never hurt Clark again was worth the agony in her eyes. I only wished I could have been the one to shoot him, rather than her. And judging from the amount of blood surrounding the corpse, the fight had been worse than a simple shooting incident.
On the right wall, a set of folding doors led to an elevator. Clark kicked a chair, cursing herself for missing it.
“It was here all along,” she said. “I was just so focused on Ryan...”
“Take it easy,” I instructed. “You can’t expect yourself to be perfect.”
“This is just a lack of situational awareness,” she snapped, pushing the button to summon it.
“Hey.” I grabbed her. Since we were alone in the room with the dead body, I thought it was safe to let my guard down for a minute. I pulled her close, wrapping her up in my arms to quiet her thundering heart. “You’re human. We all make mistakes.”
The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. There was no one inside, but that didn’t mean it was safe. Clark took a step, scouring the ceiling before waving me in. We rode up together, waiting for the top floor to be announced.
I wasn’t sure that we would find Ashcroft there, but Clark seemed so certain. At least we were on our way somewhere. If we couldn’t find him above, we could try down below. Clark was our best shot at recovering Ashcroft before he escaped, and I knew that better than anyone.
I texted Lukas to let him know our situation. He didn’t respond, but I knew he had his hands full coordinating the attack. Hopefully he wasn’t pinned down and could respond when we did manage to find his foster father. I prayed that it wouldn’t be too late. If what Clark said about a duplicate trigger was true, then the future of the world hung in the balance.
The elevator doors opened onto the roof, and there in the hazy sunshine was Ashcroft. He stood at the edge of the building, looking out over the sea. I had a crazy thought that he was about to jump. Maybe it was the way he was standing or the ponderous look on his face. Wouldn’t that be a simple way to end this whole charade? If Ashcroft jumped to his death and saved us the trouble, I might rethink some of the harsh feelings I had for him. But of course, he didn’t jump.
“Clark,” he said, turning to face us.
“Don’t move,” she instructed, pointing her weapon at him.
I took a step back, giving her a silent indication that I was going to stay out of the fight. He was her foster father, and I wasn’t going to interfere. If she asked for my help, I would gladly give it, but I had a feeling she wanted to handle things herself.
She didn’t react but moved forward, holding Ashcroft at bay. “I can’t let you leave.”
He looked to the sky, indicating that there might have been a helicopter enroute. But I knew that Dark Sparrow had the place surrounded. The odds were in our favor, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if Ashcroft’s escape vehicle was delayed.
“I always considered you my daughter,” Ashcroft said, a creepy smile on his face.
“Fathers don’t raise their children to be assassins,” Clark countered. “They don’t make kids dig pits in the backyard or force us to infiltrate other people’s houses.”
I remembered learning that her childhood involved all of those things and more. I had been appalled. But now seeing the mastermind, I could understand. He was crazy. He hadn’t bothered to think about the kids in his care as people; to him they were weapons of mass destruction.
I wished that Clark could have had a normal childhood, but I knew she wouldn’t have become the woman I loved that way. She might be a lawyer or a nurse, living an ordinary life in the suburbs. I didn’t want that for her either.
Clark stepped forward, chasing Ashcroft toward the edge. He glanced over, making me worried that he might choose suicide rather than face the music. That wouldn’t do, especially since Clark said he had a detonator that could cause massive destruction. I didn’t want to chance that thing smashing against the rocks down below.
“Step back from the edge!” I instructed.
Ashcroft heard me and did the opposite, moving closer to oblivion. “All I wanted was a fresh start. For us and for humanity,” he cried.
“You ruined my life!” Clark shouted. “You set me up with someone who didn’t love me and watched me grieve for years! How could you do that?!”
“I didn’t want to approach you until it was time,” Ashcroft explained. “I kept hoping that you would come back to me.”
“You were dead!” she shouted. “How could I come back to you?!”
“And when you found out that I wasn’t?” Ashcroft charged, pointing a skeletal finger at me. “You chose him over New Dawn.”
“New Dawn is a terrorist group!” Clark snapped, her emotions getting the better of her. “I did the best I could with what I was given, and I came out on the side of justice.”
“Is it justice to let people suffer when I hold the key to their salvation?” he demanded, holding the detonator up.
“Don’t push it!” Clark warned.
“You leave me no choice,” Ashcroft said, moving to end the discussion in the worst way possible.
I watched his finger head toward the button, a lunatic light in his eyes. He was going to do it. He was going to set off multiple nuclear weapons at the same time. I couldn’t imagine how one man could be that callous, that he could live with himself after killing so many people. As a spy, I’d done my fair share of hits. I’d left Regg dead on the bathroom floor just a day ago. But this was much worse.
I thought of the map that Lukas had shown me, with all the lights scattered across the globe. If Ashcroft managed to connect his finger to the device, the world would be picking up the pieces for centuries. It would be the worst catastrophe to affect humankind since the great plague.
Clark saw it happening too and did the only thing she could do. She fired a shot. The muzzle blast gave me hope, and when I saw Ashcroft clutch his chest instead of pushing the button, I released a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
He tumbled backward, mere inches from the drop. Both Clark and I converged on him, sliding to a stop before we fell off the building. Clark went down on her knees, putting a hand against his heart.
He was still moving, his eyes glazing over. He muttered something I couldn’t hear and then turned his head to the sea. The hand that held the detonator fell to one side, and the device toppled out onto the roof.
Clark scooped it up, turning it over in her hand. She glanced up to the sky, thanking the heavens for helping us through. I gave her a quick hug, assuring her that I was there and I wasn’t planning to leave.
“What should we do with it?” she asked, uncomfortable even holding the thing.
“Keep it,” I said.
“Should we destroy it?”
“We need to find all the bombs,” I decided. “We can deactivate it or give it to Z and have her deactivate it. But as long as the other key is out there and the bombs are still armed, the world isn’t safe.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Clark agreed, shoving the doomsday device into her pocket.
We hustled back to the elevator and pushed the button to take us to the basement. I agreed with Clark’s assessment that there was probably an exit at the bottom of the cliff. If we could reach it, then we could get the boats and return to the Dark Sparrow safe house in peace.
I put a call into Lukas to let him know we’d found Ashcroft.
“What happened?” Lukas asked. I could hear gunfire in the background.
“Ashcroft is dead,” I reported. “He had a secondary key, but we recovered it. We’re on our way out to the beach.”
“Roger that,” Lukas replied. “We’ll meet you there.”
The elevator opened into a hallway that was an exact duplicate of the other hallways we’d been in. The only difference was that the ceiling was lower, placing it well below the surface. Clark turned right automatically, using her innate sense of direction to search out the exit.
It didn’t take us long to find a set of double doors. They were bolted, and there was a biometric keypad to the left. I almost shot it, but Clark put a hand on my shoulder. I moved aside to let her work, watching with chagrin as she pulled a thumb out of her pocket. Pressing it to the keypad, she opened the door.
“Ryan?” I asked.
She didn’t answer, but that was all the confirmation I needed. I didn’t want to imagine her cutting a finger off the man she had once been in love with. I suppose it helped that he’d turned out to be such a colossal jerk.
“Would you cut my thumb off if I died?” I asked, unable to resist the temptation to tease her even though we were in the worst possible situation.
“In a heartbeat,” she answered, blowing me a kiss.
I caught it and held it to my chest. But a moment later, we heard gunfire from the beach. We put on our game faces and hustled out to join the fight. There were only a few feet between us and the sand. Getting out from under the cliff, we could see two companies of soldiers taking cover, exchanging fire across the breach.
I spotted the Dark Sparrow insignias to our right, tugging Clark in that direction. We had a direct line of sight to the New Dawn troops and took a few out as we ran past. Ducking behind a moored rowboat, we popped up to exchange fire.
