Chapter Twenty

Keira didn’t take the news of her reported resurrection very well, nor the fact that I was being accused of her fake murder. After a lifelong dream of being in the tabloids, she’d finally made it—for this.

“You really think it was Antonio’s parents who planted the story?” Keira asked as we wandered through Julian’s English gardens, alit with twinkling white Christmas lights put up by the caretakers. We hadn’t even realized it was the holiday season. We’d missed Thanksgiving without noticing, and now the world was ice-skating toward Christmas while we were stuck in a Halloween horror show.

I pulled my new wool scarf tighter around my neck, purchased with proceeds from the sale of our brownstone. So far, that was what all that “estate money” got me—underwear, mittens, a scarf, and socks. But hey, who wouldn’t kidnap their sister for that?

“The Reys were in that surveillance photo with me,” I said, still strolling beside her in the frozen grass. “They work there, so they obviously have access to the footage. And Cross thinks it’s them—Tyson, the message to Regina, everything. He thinks they want Mom and Dad to take the fall, and they’re using us to get to them.” That was our most viable theory, that I was dating the son of the people who murdered my best friend and who were trying to frame me and my family. And people wondered why I had trust issues?

“You know Marcus and Antonio don’t believe this.” Keira stared at her boots, hiding her eyes, likely because she felt the same way and didn’t want me to see it. I wasn’t the bad guy.

“No one wants to believe it, and I don’t blame you.” I shrugged, glaring at the cement gray sky. Maybe Marcus was right; maybe it did match my eyes, perpetually full of storm clouds. “I didn’t want to believe our parents were spies until you were held hostage and declared dead.”

Keira stopped in her tracks. “Anastasia, you said this to me once, and now I’m saying it to you.” She grabbed my hand, her thick wool mitten clutching mine. “It’s time. We need to go to the CIA. We need to sit down with Martin Bittman and give him everything we have, all the evidence, all the Dresden Kids. Then we do whatever they say. If they want us to go into hiding under fake passports again, we do it. This time we stay there. If they want us to draw out Mom and Dad, we do it. It’s time to let the professionals take over. This needs to stop.”

I stared at the Christmas lights glowing in twilight, hovering between barely noticeable and starting to shine. My nose was running from the cold, but still I insisted we have this conversation outside, away from all of the kids who hated us, all the ears that could listen. This was about Keira and me. Our family. Our decision.

“I hear you. But right now, all the evidence points to Mom and Dad. If we walk away, the Reys and Urban get off scot-free. Can you live with that? They’re setting us up.”

“So we tell the CIA that. We have them look into it.” Keira shook her head with the exasperation of a person who was simply done. “It’s either this, or we go public and listen to Julian. Is that what you want?”

“Don’t even say that.” I was not going to become a late-night punch line.

I was seventeen years old, and I wanted a life, my own life, on my terms, not some hand-me-down life left for me by my criminal parents, not some fake life that witness protection could offer, and not some freakshow of a spectacle that Julian would create. I wanted to be me—in college, with Marcus, and my sister back in med school. I wanted us free to make our own choices. And I wanted that for every other kid in that house.

“So what’s left? What do you want to do now?” Keira flung up her hands.

I wanted to fight, all the way to the end. If we gave the CIA our evidence, eventually they might uncover crimes that point to Urban and the Reys, but what if they didn’t? We’d be taking the chance that they might elude justice all together. After everything they’d done. Yes, these people were Marcus’ parents, and yes, Urban and I shared DNA and some baby photos; but Urban also kidnapped Keira, and the Reys were the most likely candidates to have murdered Tyson. There had to be a way to implicate them. Not eventually. But now.

“The last time I spoke with Cross, he promised me he would send us a Dresden Kid who would have hard evidence against Urban.” I looked at my sister through the darkening sky, shadows defining her deep frown and heavy brow. I could already see she didn’t like what I was saying. “Let’s see if Cross pulls through. If we can find one case that points to Urban, then I’ll be ready to go to the CIA. But I need to know Urban will go down for something, if not for what he did to you.”

Keira shook her head, cold puffs of frozen air expelling from her mouth as she stared at the amber lights inside the compound, the silhouettes of the Dresden Kids moving about behind the curtains. “I’m afraid you’re going to get yourself killed, just so you don’t have to face him. You can put him behind bars, Anastasia, but it won’t change anything.”

I was not running from Urban, I was keeping my promise. I told Dani, I told all the Dresden Kids, that we would make these people pay. They deserved that, and so did I.

“It’s not about him.” Though I really wasn’t sure. Maybe it was, but would we ever be able to live normal lives knowing they were still out there? Right now, we had a chance to bring them all down, to end this for good. We had to take it.

I looked toward Julian’s estate, all the shadows moving inside. “Mom and Dad destroyed every family in there, and they’ll pay for that. I just need to make sure that Urban and the Reys pay too. For Tyson, for you, and for me. I need that.”

Keira shrugged, head tossed back, knit cap nearly slipping off her head. She knew she had no choice. “Fine. If Cross finds a kid who can point to Urban, we’ll do it. But that’s it. One more try.”

I nodded in agreement.

An hour later, Cross called.

…

Rio de Janeiro and Barcelona.

That was where Cross wanted us to go.

Charlotte and Julian gave us the news as we gathered in the study. Meanwhile, the Dresden Kids were playing pool, swimming, and getting drunk utterly uninterested in our sudden strategy session. I, however, had become an expert on how many steps it took to get from one antique bookcase to the other—fifteen. One side of the room held leather-bound classics, like Charles Dickens and the Bronte sisters, while the other held nonfiction tomes, from scientific journals to World War II accounts. I couldn’t stop pacing.

“Tell me everything,” I insisted as Charlotte’s fingers flew over her keys.

“Cross has two names that he swears will provide evidence against the Urbans, plural.” She smiled coyly.

I stopped dead. Urbans?

“Julian and I need to verify the intel, but it appears the Rio case will connect to Randolph Urban, and the Barcelona case will connect to…wait for it…Sophia Urban.” Charlotte pumped her brow like she knew this was the only thing on Earth that might lift my spirits from a basement of misery.

“Sophia? Are you kidding me?” I gasped, remembering the girl who mocked me at my parents’ funeral, and throughout my childhood. She practically cooed with delight when she showed up in Rome with an evil terrorist manual, handwritten by my father, that was used to bring down Julian. We were going after her. Maybe there was a God.

“Yup, turns out she’s a prolific flunky for Department D.”

“I wonder how that strawberry blond hair will look in a bright orange jumpsuit? Just the clashing colors alone will probably torture her.” I pictured Sophia’s pale face, the shock of disbelief when we turned her in to the authorities, and for a brief moment I felt like we might be nearing the end of this. If we could point the authorities at Randolph and Sophia Urban, I could strut away with all the vindication I’d ever need. Closure achieved.

Charlotte looked at Antonio, who was leaning against the doorjamb watching us like a spectator sport, not saying a word. He wasn’t inserting himself or cracking jokes or hitting on my sister. Maybe he finally realized the seriousness of the situation. Or maybe I was wrong about him all along. “Cross says you spent time in Rio last year. You and Marcus want to go there?”

His eyes met Keira’s, and already I didn’t like the nonverbal exchange that shifted between them.

“We were talking…” Antonio looked at me. “We think we should split up the teams.” Instantly, he held up a hand like he knew my rebuttal was coming. But he cut me off. “Escúchame. If everything you suspect is true, and my parents really are setting up your family, do you not think you will be safer with one of us? My parents aren’t going to hurt Marcus or me.” He gestured to his brother for support, and Marcus nodded. Clearly, they’d discussed this without me, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Marcus stepped toward me. “The article changes things. Someone is coming after you, directly, publicly. And who knows where they’ll stop, what that message to Regina really means? I do not think you girls are safe on your own.”

“I have a double black belt in karate,” I said. I fought Craig Bernard and won.

“Yes, you can fight. But a karate chop is not going to stop a gun.” Marcus reached for my hand, his face urging me to listen. “Por favor, I do not have a good feeling about this. We don’t have to go.”

Keira joined in, side by side with Marcus. “I want to get Urban as much as you do. I was the one taken from our apartment, but I’m not chained to a sink right now, and neither are you. We have other options. You can still change your mind.”

They wanted me to trust the CIA, but that organization hadn’t done anything for us except hand us a couple of passports and hope we led them to our parents. They didn’t find Keira. I did. They didn’t tell me my parents were alive. I found that out on my own. They had decades to arrest Urban, the Reys, and my parents. And they didn’t.

“I can’t stop when we’re this close.” I squeezed my fingers together. “I promise this is the last one, but we have to try.”

They both closed their eyes, grimacing, reluctantly knowing I wasn’t built to sit home and hope someone else solved my problems.

Antonio stepped forward. “I agree with you. I do not run from a fight either, but we must break up the groups. You are positive that your parents will not harm you, verdad? Well, we are positive our parents will not harm us.”

Charlotte squeezed my shoulder. “Having you and your sister out there together, unprotected, would be a gift for someone who wanted to hurt your parents.”

It had come to this—Antonio was the one person agreeing with my plan, and he was the one person in our group I didn’t trust with my sister. Sure, I could pretend to like him for Marcus’s sake, I could even grind my teeth and act like it wasn’t at all suspicious that he used to work for the enemy, but I couldn’t fake my way into putting Keira’s life in his hands.

“I know what you’re thinking.” Keira peered at me, reading my thoughts. “And for a moment, I want you to imagine that Mom and Dad were never in a car crash, that I graduated from college, and that Dresden offered me a job in biomed at Mass General. Do you think I would have been able to turn down an offer like that? And would that have made me a criminal? Antonio was pressured by his parents, and I remember exactly what that felt like.”

Keira potentially working in a medical research lab was quite different from Antonio running clean up for spies, but I knew what she meant. I watched my parents pressure Keira into medicine, and I watched them criticize her choice of specialty—pediatrics. If they had lived, if they had more time to influence her choices, she likely would have gone down the path they chose. Maybe I would have too. But I was betting we both would have drawn the line at covering up criminal conspiracies.

“It’s either this or the CIA,” Charlotte offered. “Both for your safety and our sanity.”

Given that I was practically forcing everyone into this plan, and this was what they needed to feel safe, could I really refuse? Their logic made sense. I doubted either of our parents would want to risk hurting us. At least, I hoped not. But imagining Antonio and Keira alone in a foreign country, with no one to help her if she needed it, made my chest clamp tight.

“I’ll make it easier,” Antonio offered, scratching his bearded chin as he assessed my reaction. “Keira and I can take the kid in Barcelona. It’s not as far away, still in Europe, and Marcus has friends there. We’ll promise to meet up with them. You’ll know your sister is safe. She won’t just be with me.”

It was a reasonable compromise, and a part of me worried it was too reasonable. Why wasn’t he yelling at me? Accusing me of hating the world? Stop it. Just say yes. You need this.

“Okay.” I nodded. It was the best offer I was going to get.

“I’ll call my friends right now. Set something up.” Marcus nudged my shoulder, relief thick in his voice.

“All right.” Charlotte clapped once before her fingers moved back to home base on her keyboard. “I’ll set up the travel plans. I think Cross expected the boys to go to Rio, because Antonio lived there, and the girls to go to Barcelona, because it’s Sophia Urban and we all know how we feel about her. But I’ll let him know we changed plans.”

“No, don’t.” I squinted at Charlotte, pinching the headache forming above my nose. “I don’t think Cross will like this whole switching teams thing. And if he tries to talk us out of it, what are we gonna do? It’s what you guys need, right?”

Everyone nodded. The last thing we wanted was to fight with the one adult, the one insider, who was actually helping us.

“We’ll call him when we get back,” I promised. “Him and Martin Bittman. This is it. Whatever happens here, on these missions, it’s over.”

Charlotte printed out our boarding passes. We’d be departing on the red-eye.