The gauze bandages were too small—nothing more than glorified Band-Aids—so I stuck them to the entry and exit wounds and unwound my scarf from around my neck, wrapping her body over and over.
“Don’t die, Bex,” Liz was chanting. “Don’t die. Don’t die.”
“She’s not going to die,” I said. “Bex won’t die,” I snapped, knowing that Bex herself would never allow it.
“Bex, wake up!” Zach yelled one more time.
“We’ve got to get her on the ground,” Liz said.
“We’ve got to get her to a hospital,” Preston countered.
Then Bex’s eyes fluttered open. She grabbed my hand, held it tighter than I thought possible.
“No,” she gasped. “No hospitals.”
“But—”
“They’ll find me. Find us,” Bex said, and I nodded, knowing she was right. I pressed against Bex’s wounds.
“I won’t let them find you,” I promised, and then my best friend drifted away again, her blood still wet and warm on my hands.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Grant and Jonas didn’t ask how I knew where the lake was. No one debated how much longer we should fly. We stayed in the air as long as we possibly could, and when the sun began to creep over the horizon I pointed to the waters below and told them, “There.”
So we landed. Once we were on the ground, Grant insisted on carrying Bex inside, and my friends and I walked toward the cabin, knee-deep in snow in the predawn light.
“What is this place?” Zach asked.
“It’s safe,” I told him.
“Cam…” Zach said, his voice a warning.
“It’s a ranch. Grandpa buys his bulls here. The owners only use this cabin for hunting, though. And nothing is in season now. No one is looking for us here. It’s safe,” I said again, this time the words only for myself.
Liz and Macey and I stood together in a big crude kitchen with canned goods and a propane-powered cookstove. There was a fireplace and a small bathroom with a shower but no tub, and two bedrooms. One had a set of bunk beds. The other looked like it belonged in an old motel. In every room there were cheap curtains on the windows and no locks on the doors.
Liz was already unpacking computers and unwinding cords. She looked at me. “Power?”
“There’s a generator out back,” I said but I didn’t move.
“Good,” Liz said with a nod. “I still have a backdoor into the NSA satellite system, so I can get that up and running. I need to check on the model, see if there are any headlines. And—”
“Liz.” I tried to stop her, but she just turned on me, a raw kind of desperation in her eyes.
It was neither panic nor grief but rather a very grown-up sense of urgency as she told me, “I’m going to find the next domino, Cammie. This thing, I know it’s not my fault. Not really. I know I didn’t sink that tanker or blow up that bridge, but if someone is doing this based on an idea I had—based on my ideas”—she said again, and I knew that that was the hardest part. For someone like Liz, ideas were sacred—“then I’ve got to stop it.” She stood up a little taller. “Then I will stop it.”
And I knew right then she would.
When Zach emerged from one of the bedrooms, Macey said, “How is she?”
Zach looked down at the ground. “She’s still out. I thought she might wake when we moved her, but…”
“That’s okay,” I said. “There’s no sign of fever and her pulse is strong. She is strong. She’ll be fine.”
“She’ll be fine,” Zach repeated. Then he shook his head and leaned against the cold stove.
Outside, the sun was rising higher, and, gradually, the cabin filled with an almost iridescent glow, like it was coming back to life. But then a voice cut through the haze, asking, “Is he here?”
Preston.
I know it sounds crazy, but I’d almost forgotten about Preston until he looked around the cold cabin, then back at me. “Is my father here, or are we meeting him somewhere else?”
I didn’t rush to answer. The truth was just a series of lies I couldn’t bring myself to tell: That he shouldn’t worry. That things would be okay. That his father didn’t suffer. But I didn’t want to say any of those things because, for years, I hadn’t wanted to hear them.
“He’s not coming, is he?” Preston said at last.
“No,” Macey admitted.
“Is he…” Preston started but trailed off. I couldn’t blame him. We were all trained spies, and even we didn’t have the strength to finish that particular sentence. “Why isn’t he coming? Macey?” He looked at her, but she couldn’t face him. “Someone tell me something! Cammie?”
“I’m so sorry, Preston,” I said, coming toward him. I took his hands. “I’m so sorry.”
I was maybe the only person in the room who knew what he was feeling, but the emotions were too raw for me. When he pushed away, I didn’t protest—didn’t follow. My own wounds were too sore. But I also knew that I was the only one who’d been there. I was the only one who had found my way out.
“My father is dead,” Preston said slowly, almost like he was admitting something he was ashamed of. “Of course he’s dead. Wasn’t that what you were trying to tell me in Rome—that people like my dad were dying?”