Chapter Ten

Allen Cross was the professor who gave me answers in Rome, who told me about Department D, and who helped me find my sister. He had been friends with my parents, he was a fellow spy, and now he was here.

“Thank God.” I shook Rosario’s hand from my back and put distance between us.

“What are you doing here, Allen?” Carlos asked, as if they had run into each other at the country club.

“What do you think?” Cross sounded like the question was dumb.

“We were just about to take Aanastaaasthia to lunch,” Carlos explained.

“Sure you were.”

“She’s been through quite an ordeal,” Rosario added.

“Yes, her friend’s funeral.” Cross looked at me. “That’s why I’m here.”

“I don’t care why you’re here, I’m just glad you are.” I moved away from the Reys, prepared to march to Cross’s car, but their hulking security guard reached out a thick fist.

“Let her go,” Cross demanded, his voice menacing for a man with a bald head and liver spots.

“Of course.” Rosario smiled cheerily. “Aanastaaasthia’s free to go wherever she likes. We were merely hoping to hear more about how our boys are doing.”

Cross pursed his thin lips like he expected a better lie. I didn’t. The Reys might be engineers, or they might be evil spy overlords, but one thing was certain—they did love their sons, or Marcus at least, and they did care what they thought of them. Their questions about their kids were the only part of our interaction I didn’t doubt, which meant if they did kill Tyson, if they did inflict this pain on me, on Regina, I was in possession of a surefire way to hurt them. Marcus would never forgive them.

I turned to his parents, my voice steady. “I saw Marcus’s face, when Antonio told him that you know about Department D, when his brother admitted he worked for the spies who kidnapped my sister, when he said you recruited him, made him work here. Marcus was broken. So how do you think he’s gonna look when I tell him you work for the people who killed my best friend?” Neither parent said anything, but their jaws stiffened, reality sinking in. “You see, I know how he’s going to look, how he’s going to feel. It’s the exact same way I felt when I learned the truth about my parents. And you know what I feel toward my parents now? Hate. Nothing but pure hate.” I ground my teeth, and Carlos and Rosario could see that I meant it. Their perky poker faces folded as they considered being loathed, beyond redemption, by their children.

Then I summoned my inner Phoenix, every lesson I learned from watching my parents control their tempers yet be dangerously threatening at the same time. “If you work for the people who sent me that message, if you are the people who sent that message, trust me, you will get a response. From me. And I will make sure it hurts you just as much. In every way I can.”

With that, I marched to Cross’s car, opened the passenger door, and sat down. No one stopped me. No one said anything.

Until Cross began to drive.

…

For someone who spent the last three years with a crippling fear of vehicular transportation, I tended to spend a lot of time in speeding cars. I sat rigid, one hand gripping the car-door handle, the other gripping my seat, while my mind spun faster than the tires. Usually, when a girl met the parents of a boy she liked, she worried about making a good impression—wearing the right dress or trying to look intelligent and well mannered. I, however, threatened the Reys and accused them of murder while trying not to be kidnapped.

Marcus’s parents killed Tyson, or they knew who killed him, or they worked with whoever killed him. How was I going to tell him that? OMG, your parents are so adorable! And they kill people! We had such a great time!

Or maybe they didn’t kill people. Hopefully, they didn’t. And hopefully neither did the guy sitting next to me.

“How did you know where I was?” I asked as Cross raced into a tunnel of Boston’s infamous Big Dig. Apparently, long before I lived in the city, the traffic was so clogged that they spent billions (and billions and billions) to build highways underground. Now we were left with a series of human-sized rat tunnels lit by rows of fluorescent lights that gave the feeling of a spaceship switching to hyper speed. I’d had numerous nightmares about stumbling in these dark channels unable to escape as flaming cars whizzed at me. I wasn’t a dream expert, but I imagined there was some symbolism in there.

“I heard about the death of Tyson Westbrook, and I had a feeling you’d turn up. I do not believe events transpired the way the police claim,” Cross said.

“No kidding.” I huffed.

I filled him in on my conversation with Regina and the deadly message she received while standing over her boyfriend’s lifeless body.

“Well, that communication was rather overt.” His face was flat, void of sympathy, as if the news were a memo from corporate.

I scrunched my nose at his reaction. “Tyson had nothing to do with anything. He was completely innocent. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“I’ve been in this business a long time. What do you expect me to say?”

I expected him to treat this as more than another bad day at the office. Tyson was a normal teenager. No, actually, he was an extraordinary teenager, one who faced more challenges than any kid his age should and who managed to handle them all, before someone Cross knew, someone he might have had dinner with, ended Tyson’s chance to rise above the circumstance he was born into.

“You’re as bad as the rest of them,” I spat.

“I probably am.” His eyes stayed on the road. “But would you prefer me to fill you with a bunch of I’m sorrys?”

“I don’t need a bunch, but one wouldn’t hurt. ‘Hi, Anastasia, I’m sorry your best friend died because of you…’”

“Fine. Hello, Anastasia, my condolences on the loss of your friend. I believe you were recently speaking with the two people who killed him.”

“What? No!” I yelped, feeling a pang so sharp, I grabbed my gut.

No, no, no! Not Marcus’s parents. Sure, I’d let my mind go there, I even threatened them, but I was really hoping it was some random Bob from Dresden Accounting, who had gone off his psychedelic meds in a rogue murderous rampage unaffiliated with anyone my friends or I had ever met. Not our parents, not any of our parents. My skull thudded against the passenger headrest. “It can’t be them. They couldn’t do that to Tyson, to Marcus. Are you sure?”

Cross glanced my way. “As soon as I heard of your friend’s death, I knew it wasn’t an arbitrary homicide. It never is.” He adjusted the grip of his hunter green bow tie, aggressively tugging it loose as if our conversation were suddenly choking him. Good. It should bother him.

“Department D wants your parents, and they are going to draw them out—for vengeance, for a public shaming, for the fun of watching their loved ones twist in agony.” He was spitting as he spoke, cracks showing in his perfect spy facade, which was oddly concerning and comforting at the same time. “They’re not going to stop. We already know Department D kidnapped your sister, and then led you on a wild chase to find her. Why? To get mummy and daddy’s attention. But what good did it do them? What did they achieve?”

“Nothing. It didn’t work,” I pointed out.

“Exactly. They didn’t get your parents. At least, as far as I know,” he continued. He started removing his black overcoat, while he was driving, at least twenty miles per hour over the speed limit, in a narrow city tunnel. I clenched the door handle tighter and noticed his cornflower blue button-down was blotted with sweat stains. “Every Department D plan has layers. And this one is meant to systematically destroy you, your sister, and everyone you love, bit by bit, until your parents either swoop out of the dark to help, or they accept that their revenge will be taken out on the next generation through a soul-crushing, never-ending cycle of pain.”

“Well, mission accomplished,” I quipped. “My soul is officially crushed.”

“I wouldn’t say that yet. Things can always get worse. Trust me, methods for inflicting pain are pulled from a fathomless abyss…” His voice faded, hazel eyes twitching. This man didn’t flex a micro muscle of emotion in Italy, but now his face was growing openly upset.

“Are you okay?” I asked, unsure I wanted the answer.

“Of course.” He adjusted his posture, shaking off his heavy mood and clearing his throat. “I’m just an old man tired of old games.”

I chose to believe him, mostly because I preferred his stoic disposition and wasn’t sure I wanted to know what had him so rattled.

“This isn’t a game,” I pointed out. “My friend’s dead.”

Somewhere outside of this windshield, in a windy Massachusetts cemetery, Tyson’s body was being lowered into a pile of dirt. Forever. He’d have no college memories, no career, no first apartment, no dog, no piece of crap car, no kids, no life. Because he had the audacity to befriend me.

Cross sighed. “There will be more casualties. You need to prepare yourself, because they won’t stop until they get what they want.”

“Who is they? And why do you think Marcus’s parents are involved?”

While everything Cross had told us to date was accurate, I was not going to return to London and induct Marcus into the Evil Parent Club without proof.

“The Reys are highly intelligent, next-level geniuses. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve all got our gifts. Urban dreamed up all of this.” He said it like a compliment, the way you’d refer to Steve Jobs or Walt Disney. “Your parents, they were the ones in the field. They got their hands dirty, oversaw every mission, every agent, every win. But the Reys, they were behind the scenes, working in labs, sitting at computers, no one knowing what they were doing. Don’t be fooled by their charm. They’re vicious, manipulative snakes.”

“So they’re not nice people. None of you are.” Even I suspected Rosario and Carlos’s cheery personalities were about as authentic as a beauty queen during the interview segment, but that didn’t prove they were murderers. “How do you know they killed Tyson?”

“Because I know the Reys, the real Reys. They’re two of the brightest minds in the field of science worldwide, and they think that makes them invincible, that no one will suspect them. But I see them. And trust me, I know from experience that they are not above killing people to send a message.” His jaw was clenched so tight his lips barely moved as he spoke, beads of sweat forming on his bald head. He hated these people, passionately, but that didn’t prove they killed Tyson.

“The Reys have a teenager. Marcus went to school with Tyson. They were the same year. Why would they kill a kid just to send me a message? Their sons are literally traveling with me in London. They could have texted.”

“Because the message isn’t for you!” he snapped, raising his voice for the first time and glaring at me like I was an irksome child who couldn’t keep up with the conversation. “That’s only the surface layer, and I told you, every Department D plan goes deeper.” Cross suddenly cut in front of a white SUV, the car jerking so much my seatbelt locked. You weren’t supposed to change lanes in a tunnel; even I knew that, and I didn’t drive. I glanced at my rearview mirror. He was driving like we were being followed, but I didn’t see any cars moving erratically behind us. Maybe he always drove like this? Maybe in his mind, he was always being chased? “Whoever killed your friend is making it clear that they’re not above killing children. Don’t you get that? They’re making it clear that they’re not above killing you.”

The word plopped like a stone in my gut. “But…but they didn’t kill me in Italy…me or Keira,” I stuttered. “They didn’t want to hurt us. You said so yourself.” My mouth suddenly grew dry.

“And you said that plan didn’t work. So the game has changed.”

“But my parents worked for the company, all of them, including Urban. I thought that meant they wouldn’t kill me?” Not that I was feeling warm and fuzzy toward my bio-dad, or any of my parents, but I was willing to grasp at that genetic link if it meant I stayed alive.

“It means Randolph Urban won’t kill you. And he won’t. But your genetics mean nothing to the Reys. If anything, it’s added leverage, a weakness they can exploit.”

I strained to see holes in this darkness, some hint that he was wrong. “There are other people who would see me as a weakness. It doesn’t have to be the Reys. What about other enemies? Other spies?”

Was that really my best-case scenario? That yes, people were threatening to kill Keira and me, and already murdered my best friend, but at least it wasn’t my boyfriend’s mom and dad?

“This is personal. This is coming from within the organization, from someone who knows you. And only someone very high in the organization could order a hit like this, could go after you, the child of the kingpins—all of the kingpins. So if you take away your parents and Urban, that only leaves the Reys. They’re the only ones with enough power to make this play.”

“So everything they said was crap? They’re not trying to save the engineering firm from Department D and the FBI?”

“Oh no, they are scientists, and I’m sure they do want to preserve Dresden Chemical. But they also want to save themselves. Your parents being alive changes everything.”

“But we don’t even know if they are alive!” I yelled through my teeth. “They can’t be, they just can’t. Because if they didn’t care about our grief, or Keira’s kidnapping, or me being orphaned again, then they’re not going to care about some kid from my high school or anything else that happens to us ever.”

Cross slowly turned my way, his expression completely open, and for the first time, I could see it in every wrinkle of his face, like a fortuneteller reading a palm. Don’t say it.

“Anastasia, your parents are alive. You must know that by now.”

I shook my head, the car flicking to flame broil and my cheeks filling with heat, black spots swirling with the blinding light at the end of the traffic tunnel. No, no, no. I really wanted my parents to be dead. I wanted them to be in the ground. I wanted to believe they loved us.

I started rocking, my body unsure if I needed to puke, pee, or faint. Then we burst out of the tunnel, the gray sky glaring so brightly it seemed paper white compared to the darkness in the car.

“How long have you known?”

“A long time.”

“How. Long,” I growled.

“I helped them fake their deaths.”

Fire.

Wrath. I’d heard the word before; it was a biblical term, one of the seven deadly sins. But I never knew exactly how wrath differed from anger until that moment. It was when rage turned into something primal, something uncontrollable, something that caused a physical flame to burn in my chest while a waterfall roared in my ears, something that could make a good person kill.

“Let. Me. Out.” I unbuckled my seat belt.

“No.”

“Let me out!” I screamed, my face whipping toward him.

“No.”

I reached for the door handle, yanking so hard I could have ripped it off. “You can’t keep me here! What, are you going to kidnap me, too?” I was prepared to dive into traffic, but the door was locked, and the controls were on the driver’s side. I was trapped. He’d planned this.

“I’m not holding you hostage. I only ask that you listen.” All the stoicism of his earlier demeanor had returned, and now he sounded like a CEO explaining an earnings report. “There’s no need to panic. We have a plan to turn things around. Just hear me out…”

“You asshole. Why would I listen to you? You’ve been lying to me since the day we met!”

“I have. But not for the reasons that you think.”

“I don’t give a sh—”

He abruptly held up his hand in protest, and I quieted. Partly because he displayed a lot of power in that one gesture, and partly because I was violently angry yet also desperate to hear his answers. Even if they were coming from a pathological liar.

He pulled over to the curb and parked in front of a rack of city rental bikes. I found myself oddly wondering how many places I’d walked by in my lifetime where others had suffered their most agonizing moments. Because I was about to have one of mine beside a row of sky blue bicycles that hipsters rode to work in an effort to be environmentally friendly.

“Things were getting tense in the organization. There was a difference of opinion on the types of clients we were taking, how jobs were being handled. Your parents were planning a takeover, of the hostile variety. They had a lot of people on their side. Like I said, their work was on the ground, so the staff was with them. And their plan would have worked. Only Urban found out, and he ordered a hit. Without going into detail, I’ll say that I helped your parents get out, and I helped make Urban think his hit was successful.”

“No, you don’t get to do that. More,” I hissed. “I want to know everything.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t tell your friend Regina everything, did you? After she delivered that message.” He eyed me like he knew my answer, like he was throwing it in my face. “She must have had a lot of questions. Did you answer them? Or did you keep things to yourself to protect her?”

“This isn’t the same thing. I’m already in this,” I insisted, my nails digging into the passenger cushion, threatening to break off.

“And your friend isn’t? She watched her boyfriend die.” He raised a hairy gray eyebrow. “Sometimes things are safer left unsaid.”

“How could you keep this from me? How?” My voice cracked, and without warning, tears slid down my cheeks. I had no idea which emotion was causing them. I’d hated my parents, I’d grieved them, I’d loved them, and now I was betrayed by them. How could I resent two people so much for abandoning me, yet still want to see them? Just that thought added another heavy bucket of guilt onto my already tired shoulders; I slumped forward, my head in my lap.

“Because Department D wants you to lead them to your parents. You know that. That’s why they led you to me in the first place. Once they found out your parents were alive, they suspected I was the one who helped them fake their deaths. So they showed you that picture of Aldo Moro knowing it would lead you on a path to me and hoping that I’d tell you where your parents were hiding. Then all they’d need to do was follow you to your parents’ front door.”

“Do you know where they’re hiding?” I looked up.

“I did,” he admitted. “I don’t anymore.”

“Did you know where they were when I was searching for Keira?”

“I lost track of them not long before she was taken.”

“And you didn’t tell me any of this?” I screamed, arms hugging my chest. I had been close. Cross knew where they were, and I could have found them, and that knowledge cut something deep inside that I didn’t want to admit existed.

“I couldn’t,” he explained. “Everything Department D has done lately has been in service of either drawing your parents to you or you to them. If you went looking for them, if they came out of hiding, Urban and the Reys would get exactly what they want. They’ll kill them, or torture them, or nail them to a billboard in Vegas. Everything I’ve done has been to protect your parents from that, to protect you from that. But things have changed.”

“How?”

“While you were searching for Keira, I lost contact with your parents. I haven’t heard from them in weeks. I don’t even know if they’re aware that you and your sister are okay. They’ve disappeared.”

“From where?” My voice was small. “Where were they living?”

“Cuba.”

Cuba. A country ninety miles from the coast of Florida. I could have taken a dingy to find them, not that they wanted to be found.

My parents are alive. Really alive… How could they do this to us?

“I checked Havana. They’re not there. They haven’t been in a while.”

Stop it. Stop caring about them. I squeezed my eyes tight and tried to summon every ounce of strength I had to force away the grief and let the anger return to my soul like a lifelong friend. I was not going to let these people control me, hurt me, or break me. Ever. Again. “Why should it matter to me if they took off?” I bit off the words. “They obviously don’t want to see me.”

“Because Department D is after them, and the message from your friend’s murderer suggests they haven’t found them yet.”

“Well, good for them! They obviously excel at disappearing.” My hand flung in the air. “Though I’m not really sure who I’m rooting for. Maybe my parents deserve to be kidnapped. Better them than us, right? But the Reys did just try to shove me into the back of a car. You know, they seriously need some new material.” I almost laughed, maniacally, hysterically, my mind crazed. “I mean, you’re an evil spy. What do you think they should do? Tie me to a stake in Boston Common? Dangle me from the Eiffel Tower? Throw me in a tank of sharks in Bora Bora? Really, please, tell me what I should expect. Because it’s pretty clear my parents aren’t coming to my rescue, or if they did show up to save Keira in Venice, they sucked pretty bad at it. So come on, what’s their next play?”

“You’re right, Venice was a disaster,” he said, as if my outburst were entirely logical and deserved a response. “But don’t think your parents were being noble trying to save your sister. They were trying to save themselves.”

I wasn’t hurt by his words, I wasn’t even shocked. Turned out my capacity to be disappointed in my parents had an infinite capacity. “Of course. That’s all any of you care about, right? Yourselves?”

Cross reached for my arm, his touch surprisingly gentle. “I can imagine what this all sounds like, and I wish I could sugarcoat it, but the truth is, if your parents come out of hiding again, Department D won’t waste the opportunity. They’ll kill them. Or worse, they’ll kill you.”

“God forbid you sugarcoat,” I quipped, yanking my arm from his. I had a double black belt in karate and spoke four languages, yet somehow, I’d become the helpless damsel tied to the train tracks by a villain in a top hat. And those villains were my parents. “So let me get this straight: if my parents stay in hiding, Department D will likely kidnap Keira and me, torture us, kill our friends, then us, in order to draw them out. But if my parents emerge, then Department D will kill them, and likely us, just to make them watch. Do I have this right?”

I squeezed my hands into fists, wanting to punch him, the car, the world, the pope. I couldn’t stay in this vehicle anymore; it was too hot. I reached for the handle, tugging, again and again, harder and harder. I slammed my fist on the window, pounding a staccato rhythm. It wouldn’t open. Nothing would open. I had to get out.

“Breathe.” He put his hand on my back. I shrugged him off. “Breathe,” he said again.

Reluctantly, I did as I was told. I didn’t have much choice. He held the keys, literally. I breathed down to my belly, and slowly my mind began to calm.

“You’re angry, and you want out. I get that. I’ve been there. Believe me.” He looked at me with gold hazel eyes that had long ago accepted that life wasn’t fair, and I briefly wondered how long it would be before my own eyes took on that melancholy glint. I imagined it would be much sooner than I’d like.

“I don’t have any children,” he confessed. “Back when you were younger, I bought you and your sister gifts because I knew you were the closest I’d ever get to having my own. My life, this life, it’s not good for kids. It’s why my ex-wife and I split up. I wanted her to have a chance at a normal life and a normal family…” He quieted as a cloak of sadness covered his eyes, then abruptly, he cleared his throat and shrugged it off. “When your parents left, when they faked their deaths, they too thought they were giving you a chance at normal lives.”

“Well, we didn’t end up normal now, did we?” I cocked my head.

“No, you didn’t.” He placed his wrinkled hand on mine. “But back in Italy, when your sister was missing, I thought there was a chance you could return to normalcy. It’s why I didn’t tell you that your parents are alive. It would have only put you in more danger, and I should know, I’ve been carrying this secret for years. But, despite all my efforts, I wasn’t able to stop it, stop anything really.” He sighed heavily, his mouth turning down in a way that suddenly made me want to comfort him. I was used to this man delivering dire news like it was a weather pattern, but watching his neck muscles strain, his jaw fight to maintain his crusty composure was like seeing a surgeon sobbing in the break room. I hadn’t known he was capable of feeling emotion. “All that work and we all still ended up here. This isn’t going to end. You’re not simply going to walk away. Your parents are out there, and Department D wants them found. As long as that’s the case, they’re going to come at you again, and again, and again in every way conceivable, using everyone possible.”

“So what do I do?” I asked.

“What do you want?”

I stared at him, the question illogical.

“What do you want, Anastasia?” He said it like he expected an answer, like it somehow mattered.

A few months ago, I was flirting with Marcus in a grocery store in Boston, I was going to movies with Tyson and Regina, I was winning karate tournaments, and I was taking T trains full of giggly college students snapping selfies on their phones. That was what I wanted, to turn back the clock. But what good would those dreams do me now?

“Do you have a magic wand? Are you granting wishes? I’m seventeen years old! What do you think I want? I want to go to college. I want to hang out with Marcus and Keira and not get shot. I want my sister to become a doctor. I want to live wherever I want and never have to look over my shoulder. I want to forget any of this ever happened. And I don’t want anyone else I know to get hurt. Can you make that happen, oh magic genie?”

“Maybe.” He nodded. “But there’s only one way to do it.”

He paused, dramatically, as if hoping I’d fill in the blank. When I didn’t, when I couldn’t, he finally dropped the uranium-filled reason he had tracked me down, why he really intercepted me in front of Randolph Urban’s office:

“Anastasia, you need to bring down Department D. Forever.”