There was a new attendant waiting for me when I finally opened the door and stepped outside. He glanced behind me and saw the empty box sitting on the table, then asked in Italian if everything was okay.
“Sì,” I told him. I started to turn and go back the way we’d come, but the man gestured in the opposite direction.
“This way,” he said.
“But…” I pointed to where the main lobby lay.
“The exit is this way,” he said, so I followed.
I don’t know if it was some latent memory or just a sick feeling in my gut, but the comms unit in my ear crackled, and I felt alone with that strange man.
Way too alone.
The corridor slanted upward, and as we walked, I knew we had to be nearing the surface, and yet there was nothing but static in my ear.
Something was wrong, I knew it. And then the man leaned forward to push open a door. His blazer gapped, and that’s when I saw the gun beneath his arm, holster unclasped and gun ready to draw.
A primal, urgent cry was sounding in my head, and before the sunlight even hit me, I was already spinning, kicking him to the ground, knocking his head against the stone wall and starting to run.
“I’m in an alley southwest of the bank,” I said, but no one answered. Even the static was gone. I heard nothing but the revving of engines as two motorcycles started down the alley, coming fast.
I turned and bolted in the other direction. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that the bank had been compromised. My comms unit was silent. And the motorcycles were getting closer.
Soon they’d overtake me. My only hope was the street.
I had to make it to the street.
And then…
“Cammie!” a voice yelled. Ambassador Winters was parked in the mouth of the alley, throwing open the door of a car. “Get in!”
Chapter Twenty-eight
It didn’t feel like a rescue, and it wasn’t an extraction. I studied Preston’s father—the way he gripped the steering wheel too tightly and drove too fast down incredibly narrow cobblestone streets.
“Ambassador Winters, thank you so much. I was lost and—”
“Now’s not the time for lies, Cammie,” he said, glancing frantically at the street behind us. He hunched over the wheel in a totally inappropriate posture for high-speed driving as he examined the rearview mirror. “How many are there?”
“Excuse me?” I asked, dumbfounded.
“I know why you were at that bank, Cammie!” he snapped. “It’s the same reason I helped you access it last summer. Now, how many men did the Circle send?”
“You’re not an agent,” I said. I could tell by the sweat beading at his brow, the death grip he kept on the wheel. He looked more like Grandpa Morgan than Joe Solomon. And yet the words were real: the Circle. “How do you know about—”
“I thought we covered this last summer, Cammie. Now, tell me how many—”
“One in the bank. Two on the street. Probably more along the perimeter.”
He breathed deeply and spun the wheel, sending the black car skidding onto a narrow street that I doubt any tourist ever saw.
“How do you know about the Circle, Ambassador?”
He gave a short, nervous laugh. “I was almost President of the United States, Cammie. There are certain things that, at certain levels, you have to know. Not to mention that for a time, a lot of very smart people thought the Circle of Cavan was after my son.” He glanced at me quickly from the corner of his eye. “I’m surprised you forgot that.”
“I’ve been forgetting a lot lately.”
I turned to the window as I said it. We were passing a bridge, and artists stood along the roadside with their canvases and paint. The skies were clear and blue. It was beautiful there.
But that was before the windshield shattered.
My head snapped, and the car spun.
I was faintly aware of the sensation of being weightless and then rolling, over and over. The crunching metal made a sickening sound. Shards of glass pierced my skin. It felt like I was running face-first through barbed wire. And yet all I could do was hope that I wouldn’t be sick, knowing I would never recover from the shame of puking all over Preston’s father.
When the car finally came to rest, the windshield was gone and the windows were shattered. There was nothing at all between me and the man who was climbing from his motorcycle and walking toward me—boots on cobblestones, broken glass crunching beneath his feet.
I shook my head and felt glass fall from my hair. Either it was luck or adrenaline, but I felt no pain or fear. Something in my training or my broken mind was taking over, and I was grabbing the ambassador’s hand and pulling.
“Ambassador, we have to move. Do you hear me? We can’t stay here.”
The shrill sound of sirens echoed in the distance. A crowd was gathering. People called out in Italian that help was on the way. But from the corner of my eye, I saw two men crawling from the van that had struck us. A motorcycle revved in my ears, and I saw a second rider coming through the crowd.
“Ambassador, can you move?”
“What…Yes.” He sounded groggy and disoriented—confused—so I gripped tighter.
“We have to run. Now.”
A hundred yards away, I saw the entrance to the market we’d visited on our first day, with its stalls and merchants and tourists, and that was where I led, pulling as hard as I could, looking back over my shoulder at the men who followed us through the crowd. I tried to ignore the stares of the tourists, the blood running down the side of my face.
“Ambassador, stay with me,” I said, talking as much about his mind as his body. “Do you have a panic button?”
“What?”