The change in Truly’s biological father is so dramatic, I’m glad I heard his voice before I saw him or I might have mistaken him for a stranger.
The long hair’s gone. He’s thinner, something sharper about his eyes, which are still Truly’s though there’s a fresh scar across his nose he didn’t have before.
He’s here with four men in camouflage—and not the salvage store wannabe variety, either—whom Chase immediately shook hands with like they were old friends even as he learned their names.
I’m so confused.
Ashley pulls me into a tight hug and then steps back and tugs his mask off as he looks around.
“Where is she?” he asks, and there’s only one person he can mean.
I glance at the others at the mention of Truly. Suddenly protective of my niece, even if she is his biological daughter. Wondering why he’s come with these men. Why would he, if not to take her away?
“She’s not here,” I say. Not sure if I should muster a lie, or if Truly will be safer in these men’s hands.
“Oh.” He glances down, his brows working. He looks crestfallen.
“But she’s fine,” I say quickly, realizing how that might have sounded. “She’s with friends.”
His head snaps up. “Where? Why aren’t you with her?”
“We were on our way to her. Maybe you can help us.”
“ ‘We’?”
“Ashley, this is Chase,” I say.
Chase comes to shake his hand.
“The Chase?” he says, glancing at me, and then taking Chase’s hand. “You survived!” The last time Ashley saw me, I was mourning Chase, thinking I’d lost him.
“That’s the rumor,” Chase says with a slight smile.
“How can you be the only ones here? The silo just opened a few hours ago,” Ashley says, looking as confused as I feel.
“There was a mechanical failure. It’s been open for three days.” I glance around at the Marines clearly deferring to one of their own, that man—whichever one he is—seeming to wait for Ashley to say something, Ashley obviously wanting answers about Truly first.
“Ashley, what are you doing here?” I say. “Is Truly in danger? Does someone know who she is?” After all I’ve done and Noah’s done to keep it quiet?
“No,” he says. “Only these men and another team prepared to get her somewhere safe.”
“Why does she need two teams of Marines?” I say.
“She doesn’t,” he says quietly. “These men are here for you.”
A chill crab-walks down my spine.
I stare at him.
I’ve expected betrayal from many sides. But I did not expect it from him.
“What do you mean?” Chase says, coming at him. One of the Marines grabs him by the shoulder and he jerks away, his expression as betrayed as mine must have been in the mechanical room, and twice as desperate. “You know she didn’t do the things she’s accused of! She didn’t put the nation at risk—she put her life on the line to save it!”
Panic washes over me. If they take me away now, I may never see Truly again.
But Truly’s safe. Which is all that matters.
As long as that’s true, I won’t even resist. Because there’s no chance I’ll fight my way out of this one, even with Chase.
“I know,” Ashley says, shaking his head slightly as he turns to me. And I wait for him to say that it doesn’t matter—for whatever reason.
“Which is why I’m sorry,” he says, “to ask you to do it again.”
I pause. “What?”
“You wouldn’t have heard yet, but right now there is no vaccine.”
“I’m aware,” I say, and glance at the other men, wondering what they’re here for if not to take me to prison.
“There will be a widespread vaccine very soon. Just not here in the United States.”
“I don’t understand. I saw you fly right over me with the National Guard as I was driving your Camaro down I-80 to go get Truly.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Ashley—” I snap.
“That was me,” he says slowly. “I flew over you—saw you, even—but that wasn’t the National Guard. The last thing I actually remember is waving at you from the sky. Two days later, I woke up in a prison cell.”
“What? Where?”
“For the first two months, I had no idea. They were very careful not to talk in front of me. The third month, I learned I was in Russia. As far as we can tell, the message I sent to the CDC about the samples was intercepted. It had just been attacked, remember?”
Of course I remember.
“The Russians have the samples,” Chase says slowly.
I turn away with a bitter laugh. “Which was always the plan, at least as far as Magnus was concerned.” He’d been in the process of trying to exchange the samples for some three-million-year-old life-extending bacteria a Russian scientist had found frozen in Siberia. An exchange that involved my sister, Jackie, who brought them to me, instead.
Which got her killed.
“And now they’re manufacturing a vaccine,” Ashley says. “With which they can hold the rest of the world hostage.”
“They just let you go?”
“No,” he says. “I befriended one of my guards. He helped me escape. I made my way to Ukraine, where I spent days finding someone who would listen to me, more days proving I wasn’t crazy, and even more trying to contact someone in the American government.”
He sounds worn, tired, and not a little bitter.
“I got back two weeks ago. Spent ten days in Alaska trying to find remnants of the animal the samples were taken from. Doing everything—and anything—I could to keep from having to come here and force the silo open or in any way publicly acknowledge my ties to you. Not for your sake, but for Truly’s. Because I know we want the same thing: for her to be safe. And that means no one can ever know who she is to me, what makes her special.”
He looks intently at me. I understand his meaning.
“What do you need me to do?” I ask.
“We can’t sequence the virus from someone who’s sick,” he says. “The antigens, which are like puzzle pieces, aren’t all there. It’s why the original samples were so valuable. Without the samples or the original carcasses, there’s only one . . .” he says, his eyes begging me not to correct him, “other source.”
“Me,” I say.
He nods. “I gave them all to you before you left Colorado so you could keep Truly safe. The best and only way I could take care of her.”
“Where do we go so I can give them back?”
“The only place in the U.S. with power other than Hawaii,” he says. “Puerto Rico.”