Page 47 of The Hijack

“What is this?” Lukas asked.

“Mr. Abernathy was in charge of a government project called New Dawn,” I explained. “He was training us to be assassins but not to serve the CIA or the FBI.”

“What was he training us for?” Lukas inquired.

“I don’t know,” I responded heavily. “But it looks like he was planning a quasi-military coup.”

“And now New Dawn is killing Dark Sparrow agents,” Theo elaborated.

“I think Mr. Abernathy killed off a lot of the children he trained,” I reported. Lukas looked at me in horror, and I just shrugged. “That’s what Theo’s grandmother told us.”

We were starting to put the pieces together, but there was still so much that we were missing. If our foster father was thinning the herd, why had Lukas, Z, and I been allowed to live? How was Dark Sparrow connected if not through Lukas? Were they working at cross purposes with New Dawn? And hadn’t New Dawn been shut down by the government? If it was still a going concern, who was in charge?

We were all huddled around one terminal in the control room when Jasmine’s phone rang. She glanced down at the caller ID and then moved out into the hall to take the call. I watched her go, curious about who was calling. We were beyond polite conversation, and if that was someone with new information or an agenda that involved killing one of us, we needed to know.

She returned a moment later and didn’t wait for me to ask. “That was the CIA. They need me back at headquarters.”

“Are they aware that I’m alive?” I asked.

“Not that I know of,” Jasmine said.

“Good,” Theo declared. “Keep it that way.”

Jasmine softened, gazing into my eyes with the true soul of a friend. “I know you didn’t kill those agents.”

“That’s right,” I agreed, including Theo in the conversation. “We didn’t.”

Jasmine glanced over at my boyfriend, and I thought I saw a spark of something like suspicion from him. I chalked it up to a spy’s enhanced sense of caution. Theo didn’t know Jasmine like I did.

I gave her a hug, hoping that this wouldn’t be the last time we would see each other. “Stay safe,” I warned.

“You too,” she replied.

I watched her disappear down the hall before turning back to the monitor. As I did, I felt Theo’s eyes on me. He was worried, and that made me worried. We needed all the friends we could get, and now wasn’t the time to break up the band.

Chapter 24

Clark

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WE SPENT THE BETTER part of the morning in the computer lab, poring over all the information Mr. Abernathy had stockpiled. The more I learned, the less I liked the man. I remembered him being harsh and demanding, but also, in quiet times, somewhat human.

“Remember he used to roll his own cigarettes?” I asked Lukas.

“Yeah,” Lukas said. “I used to have to drive into town to buy the tobacco for him before I was old enough.”

“That must have been tough,” Z surmised.

“It was an adventure every time,” Lukas said with a smile.

“So it wasn’t all bad?” Theo guessed.

We all turned to him, thrown out of our reverie by the voice of someone who hadn’t been there.

“It was bad,” I confirmed.

“But there were moments of...less bad,” Lukas allowed.