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For Vikka? “She practically murdered Sasha. And Fraser. And now Ned is out there, committing treason to save my life. Which probably won’t work because Lukka is planning on selling me—and Vikka, for that matter—into slavery, so, really, Judah?”
He leaned on his shovel, gave her a soft look. “You know what comes after ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me’?”
She, too, stopped shoveling as the wheelbarrow man dragged the dirt away. “Enlighten me.”
“‘Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou hast anointed my head with oil; My cup runneth over.’”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that in the middle of battle, when we’re surrounded on all sides, God still provides for us. In fact, he blesses us with more than we even need. We are still his chosen ones.”
She blinked at him, her jaw tightening, and shoot, tears filmed her eyes, burning them. “I’ve never been his chosen one.”
“Never?” he said quietly. “He’s never shown up for you? Been with you in trouble?”
The wind picked up and blew against them, around them, and the flaps on Judah’s grimy fur hat lifted, little wings on either side of his bearded face. His mouth offered a grim smile.
Maybe. Uncle Ian. Ned. The PEAK Rescue team in Montana. Ned’s family.
Judah.
“You are not alone, Shae. And you are still safe.”
The words shook through her, took ahold of her bones, turned them weak. Her mouth opened— “Who are you?”
He smiled, then turned back to the dirt. “We have all the blasting powder we need to get out of here. We just need the moment to be right.”
She still stared at him. “And what moment is that?”
He looked over and winked at her. “You’ll know it when you see it. Until then, dig.”
The guard shouted behind her, and she jerked.
Then she set her shovel into the ground.
Nine
The answer was simple.
Really, Ned had no choice. He’d come to that in a split second, watching Shae struggle for breath.
He could spend the rest of his life in Leavenworth if it meant she lived.
So, done. Yes.
He’d commit treason.
Ned sat on a hill that overlooked the Gorleben mine in Germany, the former-but-still-current location of the caesium-137. Forest surrounded him on all sides—he sat under a massive black pine, a scope to his eye, watching the movements inside and around the facility.
His plan was simple, really—the simplicity of it almost comical. Since his team had been the ones who’d transported the containers of the radioactive waste to this location, or at least had ridden shotgun as a team of NATO nuclear waste specialists oversaw the transfer, it hadn’t been super hard to find his way back here.
At least physically. Mentally, Ned had wrestled with himself from Kamchatka Airport to Moscow to Berlin, where he’d rented a car and then found his way to Gorleben, just a three-hour drive.
And by the time he arrived, the resolve had settled in his chest like a boulder.
He’d drive in, steal the caesium, rescue Shae, then turn himself in. Confess, and spill everything he knew.
And pray hard that millions of people weren’t murdered.
