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“Greenland. A bunker.” As Griffin and Dallas led the way, Griffin added, “We have more good news,” he said as we stepped around dead bodies while traversing narrow tunnel-like hallways. “Bahar, William, and Bonnie,” he added without slowing down, “they’re not dead.”
70
DIANA
DUBLIN, IRELAND
Wrapped up in Carter’s jacket, his cross heavy around my neck tucked under it, I shoved my hands into the warm pockets, sitting on the steps out back alongside Mya and Oliver at the sprawling estate.
We weren’t at Sebastian and his wife’s home, but one of his wife’s family properties. They’d been kind and gracious hosts, helping distract me the best they could so I didn’t succumb to my nerves.
Up until this morning, when I’d learned how the mission unfolded, I hadn’t previously been clued in on one key part of their operation: Carter being taken as a hostage.
Yesterday, in Zurich, he’d allowed himself to be a Trojan horse, and the Novaks hadn’t figured out we’d been onto them until it was too late.
I wasn’t sure if the team was ready to call this mission success yet, regardless of what went down seven hours earlier in Greenland. Not with an unknown number of enemies in The Collective still out there, and no leads on their identities.
Mya and Oliver had reported that Carter and everyone on the right side of the fight had escaped without any major wounds. Then Mya dropped the news about Sierra on me, sending me spiraling.
After breaking into a sweat and throwing up, I’d curled up by the fire with Carter’s jacket over my shoulders, pretending it was him hugging me. Half listening to her and Oliver go over the details of the mission as they knew them, I’d simultaneously run every encounter with Sierra through my mind, wondering how I’d let her deceive me for half my life.
When the room had gone quiet, Mya sat next to me on the floor.
“We met at one of the Barclays’ parties back when I was still in high school,” I’d recalled. “We became fast friends. Chose to go to the same college and be roommates. That was all orchestrated from the beginning, wasn’t it? My mom was an ambassador back then and close to Rebecca. Dad was Speaker of the House at the time with connections in Intelligence. That’s why I was chosen.”
Peering back, I located where Sebastian stood with his wife, all of us waiting for Carter’s arrival via helicopter.
Sebastian caught my eyes and offered a reassuring nod before I returned my attention on Mya at my side. She patted my jeaned thigh twice, probably her way of reminding me she was there if I needed her.
I was pretty sure I did, so I asked for the tenth time that day, “How could I let someone fool me like that? Has any choice I’ve ever made been my own?”
“Carter,” Mya whispered. “That choice has always been yours. Him being in your life.”
I closed my eyes, thinking back to all the times and people who’d tried to change my mind about him. Mya was right, and that gave me some small comfort.
At the sounds of blades chopping the air, I opened my eyes, searching out the helicopter like an actual beacon of hope. It wasn’t in view yet, but he had to be getting closer.
“Too bad Alyona couldn’t have left Sierra alive so we could question her,” Oliver said as the bird finally came into view.
“Carter couldn’t pull the trigger,” Mya said, her tone soft, as if almost surprised at that fact.
Not me, he’d never take a woman’s life, let alone someone who’d supposedly been my best friend. I knew he was really a softy beneath those complex layers of toughness.
“Someone had to do it,” she continued, “but yeah, we have no leads about who these other members are now. Or how many of them there are.”
Not only were Karl and Sierra, and everyone at the bunker, now dead, so were Karl’s parents. Black ice sent their vehicle off a bridge, plunging into a river that morning. The “accident” claimed their lives.
Loose end after loose end wrapped up.
Craig Paulsen was still in custody, but surely he’d mysteriously die, too, before we could ever get anything from him. Jared was definitely not missing but dead, probably at the bottom of the Atlantic.
Samantha Byrne, Sierra’s grandmother—assuming she’d been a member of The Collective, given Sierra’s comments—had already died of old age. Surely, she’d have gone down with Sierra as well if not.
But the question still hung over all of us: would The Collective go forward with their attack? And, if so, would our countermeasures stop it?
Would they wait for election day? Move up the timetable? Move it back? They still had their fall guys, the terrorists in Syria financially backed by Iran, to blame for everything.
Did this Collective want me dead now? Was I a loose end? My parents? Carter?
