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I widen my eyes, pleading silently. I move my foot in the dirt, hoping I can spell something out fast. M, I try to manage, upside down, so she can read it. ME, I want it to say.
Agent Jones clocks me on the side of the head with the butt of his gun, hard enough to make the world shift out of focus. I feel like my brain is actually rattling around in my skull. I fall onto my stomach, hands still cuffed behind my back. I didn’t even see that he’d drawn a weapon.
I lie there, gasping.
“It’s so unexpectedly nice to see him squirming in the dirt,” Zacharov says, walking over to me and bending down to pat my cheek with one gloved hand. “Governor, did you really think that no one could touch you?”
I shake my head, not sure what that’s supposed to convey. Please, I think. Please ask me something you need answered. Please rip off the tape. Please.
Lila steps forward with the gun held at her side. She looks at me for a long moment.
Please.
Zacharov rises to his feet. His black coat swirls around him like a cape.
“Get him up,” he tells Agent Jones. “A man should be on his feet when he dies—even this man.”
Lila’s blond hair blows gently around her face, a halo of gold. She takes off her sunglasses. I’m glad. I want to look into her eyes one last time. Blue and green. The colors of the sea.
A girl like that, Grandad said, perfumes herself with ozone and metal filings. She wears trouble like a crown. If she ever falls in love, she’ll fall like a comet, burning the sky as she goes.
At least it’s you pulling the trigger. I wish I could say that, if nothing else.
“Are you sure?” Zacharov asks her.
She nods, touching a gloved finger to her throat, almost unconsciously. “I took my marks. I’ll take the heat.”
“You’ll have to go into hiding until we’re sure it won’t be traced to you,” Zacharov says.
Lila nods again. “It’ll be worth it.”
Ruthless. That’s my girl.
Agent Jones pulls me to my feet. I stagger unsteadily, like a drunk. I want to cry out, but the tape smothers the sound.
The gun in her hand wavers.
I take one last look and then close my eyes so tightly that they’re wet at the corners. So tightly that spots dance in the blackness of my vision.
I wish I could tell her good-bye.
I expect the gunshot to be the loudest thing in the world, but I forgot about the silencer. All I hear is a gasp.
* * *
Lila is leaning over me, pulling off her gloves so that she can get a fingernail under the corner of the duct tape. She rips it off my mouth. I am looking up at the late morning sky, so grateful to be alive that I am barely conscious of the pain.
“I’m me,” I say, babbling. “Cassel. I swear it’s me—”
I don’t even remember falling, but I am lying on the gravel. Agent Jones is beside me, unmoving. Blood pools in the dirt. His blood, as bright as paint. I try to roll onto my side. Is he dead?
“I know.” She touches the side of my face with bare fingers.
“How?” I say. “How did you— When?”
“You are such a jackass,” she says. “Do you think I don’t watch television? I heard your insane speech. Of course I knew it was you. You told me about Patton.”
“Oh,” I say. “That. Of course.”
