Chapter 29 — Nicholas

I couldn’t say I was surprised to find Josiah back at the Blue Jay.

“Ace went through with the trade, didn’t he?” I asked.

Josiah nodded and bit his lip like he didn’t trust himself to speak without crying. Andrea and Isabel both cursed under their breath.

I placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “We’ll find him, don’t worry. What kind of spies would we be if we couldn’t track down one assassin?”

“Appreciate the thought, Nicholas, but we both know the Underground is adept at hiding people,” he said. “Come on, everyone else is in the kitchen.”

Harrison looked up when we entered.

“Nicholas, Isabel,” he greeted. “How is it that Spades got away from you on foot when you had a car to pursue him with?”

Isabel rolled her eyes. “He stole it to travel to the meeting point, the little sh—”

“Language,” Tom warned.

“As if no one’s heard worse. Besides, Ace gave up critical evidence to the enemy. I’m allowed to be mad.”

“He didn’t give up the evidence,” Sandra said.

I blinked. “What was that?”

“I said he didn’t give up the evidence.”

Josiah shook his head. “The EAGLE director destroyed his phone, and Ace doesn’t back up his recordings.”

“I downloaded it onto the computer when he left for Cropper Road,” Ishaan said. “I was planning on uploading the video to the Internet. Then I got distracted by apple pie, but that’s besides the point.”

My smile threatened to split my face in two. “The plan is still on track.”

“Except we’ll be sending out a search party for Ace,” Josiah added.

Isabel scratched her head. “Do we have to? He’s hardly in danger.”

Genevieve frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

Isabel fiddled with her hands. “The Underground leader is his father, you know? He won’t let anyone hurt Spades.”

Andrea fixed her with a glare that could have cut through iron. “You don’t know Seth like I do. He won’t let anyone kill Ace, but he’ll let them hurt him to satisfy their need for revenge. It’s necessary to keep them loyal.”

“From what I’ve seen, he could stand to experience a little pain.”

“It’s not a little pain,” Josiah snapped. “The day the van pursued us, we almost died because a man was willing to disobey the Underground leader to avenge his brother. I recognized him as Willhelm.”

Genevieve and Catherine gasped as Andrea buried her face in her hands. David looked like he was about to be sick.

“Are you sure it was him?” Catherine asked.

“My family hired him and his brother once,” Josiah said. “I’ll never forget their faces.”

Genevieve paled. “If it’s the Brothers Grimm, we have to find Ace fast.”

I frowned. “Didn’t the Brothers Grimm write the fairy tales?”

“The two we’re talking about named themselves after the original brothers,” David said. “They’re notorious for their skills in torture.”

“We’ll send agents after Ace if there’s time,” Tom promised, “but exposing the treachery is our priority.”

“Without Seth to restrain Willhelm, Ace could die.” Andrea sounded like she was on the verge of tears.

Harrison shrugged. “It’s not personal, but most of us aren’t willing to risk our necks for an assassin who’s killed our friends.”

Several of the EAGLE agents nodded in agreement.

Josiah’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Then we’re at an impasse. You need my help, which I’ll only provide if you rescue Ace.

“Arrogant of you to think our success hinges on your contribution,” Isabel remarked.

“It’s the truth. If you put the video on the Internet, the Underground can delete it before it gets to anyone. You need to reach a news platform, and you need a prominent figure to validate the evidence if you want to stand a chance. Horace Whitaker called me yesterday, saying that they had kidnapped his children. If we can recover them, he’ll expose the entire plot.”

“Then we must focus on tracking them down instead,” Tom said.

“Horace told me that the Underground leader threatened to set Willhelm on his children if he steps out of line. Willhelm would also be reluctant to wait to exact his revenge on Ace.”

“They’ll be kept together,” Andrea said. “Find one and you’ll find the other.”

With a plan in place, everyone stirred to action. Ishaan and Mary began checking security feeds while I helped Isabel and Genevieve compile a list of EAGLE and Underground hideouts.

After half an hour, David perked up. “I just remembered something. There’s been chatter in the Underground about a cabin in the woods. It could be irrelevant, but I thought it was worth a mention.”

Andrea’s eyes lit up. “No, that’s it! Seth and I used to have an inside joke about synonym connotations. He thought it was interesting how two words that were supposed to mean the same thing could have different tones, like butt dial and booty call.”

“I don’t see how this relates,” I said.

“Seth had his heart set on a giant piece of land in Grand Prairie with a cute little house at the edge of the property. He called it our cottage in the forest, or as David put it, cabin in the woods.”

Genevieve shook her head. “It wouldn’t be this easy.”

“I don’t think he expected me to remember,” Andrea said. “And the property is extensive. If he kept the prisoners in the house, no one would know they were there.”

When Tom adjourned the meeting, Josiah headed upstairs to place calls while the rest of us got settled for the night.

We decided that Isabel and Harrison would be the ones to check out the location, a fact that Brandon was not pleased with. But it was the logical choice. The EAGLE director had never spoken to them in person, preferring to give them missions through a middleman.

They left early in the morning, leaving the rest of us to wait, anxious and bored out of our minds. When they didn’t return by nightfall, my concern rose.

Tom insisted on giving them more time and ordered us to go about our daily business. That meant school tomorrow. My friends went with me to the Blue Jay in the afternoon, hoping Isabel or Harrison had sent word. There was no such luck.

By the weekend, even Brandon was starting to worry.

“They haven’t responded to any of our messages,” he said. “There have been no calls, no notes, and no sign that they’re okay.”

“Maybe they got inside the house and haven’t found a chance to contact us,” Sandra said.

Tom shook his head. “The goal wasn’t to go undercover. It was to scout the area and check if there were people held captive. Shouldn’t have taken over two days.”

“Then storm in and rescue them,” Genevieve said.

Ishaan snorted. “What are we? Spartans?”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Josiah said. “Everything is ready to go on my end. Horace will go live on national television when I tell him his children are safe.”

“We’re not certain his children are at the house.”

“If Isabel and Harrison have been gone for days, then there’s something worth checking out.”

Tom sighed. “I know you’re eager to have Ace back, but it’s imprudent to rush into these things.”

Josiah glared. “I’m seeing why Ace hates you so much.”

Brandon leaped to Tom’s defense, and the conversation devolved into a shouting match.

David intervened before it could escalate to physical blows, diving between the two and pushing them away from each other.

“Let’s put the decision to a vote,” he suggested. “All those in favor of trying our luck at the house...”

I raised my hand, as did several others. It was a majority, not a clear one, but a majority nonetheless. Tom kept his hand down, looking like he had eaten something bitter.

“Shouldn’t a smaller group go first to avoid drawing attention?” Alex asked.

I shook my head. “The time for subtlety has passed. It’ll be like an extraction mission. We go in, we rescue our friends, and we take down anyone in our way.”

His lips quirked up. “Like Spartans?”

“Exactly.”

Despite their initial reluctance, no one wanted to stay behind, least of all Andrea. Even Brandon’s excuses about a lack of weapons couldn’t sway her. Of course, they might have worked better had the two not been standing in Tom’s storage room with shelves upon shelves of firearms.

Andrea picked up a shotgun. “Your concern is sweet, Brandon, but I’ve picked up a few things from the Underground. I can look after myself.”

Alex and Elliot had to talk down Lexi from grabbing a submachine gun that would have been too hard to maneuver indoors.

We rode in cars to Grand Prairie, parking outside of the general store before starting the rest of the way on foot. Fully armed and wearing body armor, we must have been quite a sight for the locals. Then again, with Seth bringing Underground activity into the area, maybe guns and Kevlar were nothing new.

A desolate sign in the middle of a pasture announced we were crossing onto private property. Andrea guided us along a dirt trail choked with weeds. Delaney screamed as a snake slithered across the path.

Apprehension hung over our group like a storm cloud. My hand flew to my gun when debris blew our way, and Sandra fired off a warning shot at a bird call.

Isabel appeared at our side, making Brandon scream in a way I’d never let him live down.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed.

She was wearing a dirty shirt with ripped jeans, clothes she wouldn’t have been caught dead in back at the Blue Jay.

“I could ask you the same thing,” I said. “We’ve been trying to contact you for days.”

Isabel shrugged. “Reception’s spotty here. Harrison and I got jobs at the house since the Underground assassins don’t enjoy doing their own housework.”

“Have you found Ace?” Josiah asked.

“No, but he might be kept in the basement. The assassins go down there every day.”

“When we get in, it’ll be our priority,” Tom said.

Isabel shook her head. “Easier said than done. There are windows on the top floor facing all directions. The assassins have guns and the field surrounding the house is empty. You can’t just stroll in through the front door.”

“There’ll be another entrance,” David said, “hidden near the rain gutter.”

“How do you know?” Andrea asked.

“I grew up in these kinds of houses. If you can get us past the exposed field, I can get us inside without alerting the Underground.”

Isabel tapped her chin. “Well, I am supposed to help Harrison cart firewood once I bring back the groceries.”

No one warned me that the inside of a wheelbarrow would be so stuffy. I squeezed in with Ishaan, the barrels of our guns digging into my side. Harrison pulled the tarp over our heads and for a few minutes, my world was filled with dust and darkness.

He dumped us out next to the house. Genevieve, Andrea, and the others who had crossed earlier gathered around the side, watching David run his fingers over the wood.

To my amazement, he pressed on a random spot and a part of the wall swung open, revealing a cramped tunnel leading into the house.

He flashed us a thousand-watt smile. “Who’s up first?”

I took the lead, crawling through the hole into a tiny broom closet. When Andrea and Josiah popped up, we were forced to wedge in shoulder to shoulder.

I clicked the safety off my gun and held it close to my side as I opened the door. My senses were on high-alert, ready to fire at the first sign of movement.

But the hallway was empty and quiet except for the sound of running water.

We poured from the closet in a stream of people.

Then the sound of running water—a shower, I realized—shut off. A woman in a white bathrobe stepped into the hall, toweling off her red hair. Her eyes widened at the sight of a dozen armed strangers, and she opened her mouth to raise the alarm.

I leveled my gun at her chest. “If you scream, we’ll shoot.”

Her hand shot to her hip and closed on empty air. “Something tells me you’ll do that anyway.”

She cupped her hands over her mouth. “Intruders! Intruders in the back hall!”

David cursed and shot her in the leg. The woman fell to the ground, a crazed laugh bubbling from her lips.

We raced down the hall, coming face to face with several Underground assassins. Unlike the woman, they were all armed. And unlike us, these people had no qualms about killing.

Within minutes, the air was thick with bullets and the iron stench of blood. In close quarters, we were as likely to hit a friend as we were an enemy, but no side would abandon their guns. Without the Kevlar, I would have died several times over. Bruises dotted my chest and back. Genevieve grappled over a knife while Lexi and Delaney were holding on their own against a woman with long brown hair.

I fired off a shot at an assassin that had her weapon trained on Elliot. The bullet struck her hand, making her drop the gun.

A blunt force hit my chest and knocked the air out of my lungs. I locked eyes with my would-be killer as I sank to a knee. Understanding flashed across his face.

“Aim for the head!” he shouted. “They’re wearing body arm—”

I pulled the trigger. The man jerked back with a cry and collapsed on the ground, writhing in pain. I turned back to the fray, knocking the gun out of an assassin’s hand before she could aim at Ishaan and pointed my own weapon at her leg. There was an empty clicking noise when I tried to shoot.

Ducking to the side, I fumbled for a magazine.

“Nicholas on your left!” a voice called.

A body slammed into my side, sending me sprawling on the ground. My gun went skidding across the floor. I seized a fallen painting and was about to slam it over my attacker’s head when I recognized her face.

“Lexi?” I lowered her to the ground.

Her hands clutched her side, pressing like she was trying to keep a dam from breaking. Red welled up between her fingers.

Another gunshot rang out, and I flung myself over Lexi, the bullet smashing into my back hard enough to make me see stars. I scrambled for my gun. The weight of it in my hand made me breathe easier.

“Keep pressure on the wound,” I said.

Lexi managed a tight nod. I wouldn’t have a chance to help her until the fight was over. The thought gave me renewed vigor as I slammed my pistol into an assassin’s knee.

The hallway plunged into darkness. It was hard to tell whether the switch had been hit by an assassin or one of our own. The constant pops of gunshots dropped away, leaving an eerie silence. Lexi’s groan of pain was a flare gun. I tensed up, ready to throw myself across her if the noise drew unwanted attention.

But no one was willing to fire in the dark.

I fumbled my way along the wall, fingers running over the holes and grooves cut into the plaster. My hands brushed over a busted light switch. The insides hung out like jagged intestines. I hissed as a wire cut my finger.

A light appeared in the dark, so bright and sudden it almost blinded me. A series of gunshots rang in the stillness before the light blinked out. My blood ran cold. None of us had brought a flashlight. The assassin could pick us off one by one while we flailed like blind men in a maze.

I ducked down to make myself a smaller target and waited.

The light appeared again to my left. I swung my gun in its direction and let loose a stream of bullets, not stopping until I had emptied my entire clip. The man gave a startled curse. My intention was to leave a wound serious enough that he wouldn’t dare to try again.

But the light appeared twice more while I was trying to reload my weapon. The third time it blinked on, it wasn’t accompanied by the sound of gunshots.

“We’re clear.” Josiah’s features looked ghostly in the light. “All the assassins are down.”

I let out the breath I had been holding. “Bring the light here, Josiah. Lexi’s hurt.”

As I made my way back to her side, Josiah followed me, casting the beam over the floor. The light was coming from his iPhone. I had forgotten about the flashlight app.

Lexi’s chest rose and fell with unsteady breaths as I felt her neck for a pulse. It was weak and fluttery.

Then I looked down at her wound, and my heart caught in my throat.

“Someone, bring gauze,” I shouted. “We need to get her to a hospital.”

I should never have let her come. I shouldn’t have let any of them come. Elliot, Delaney, Alex. This wasn’t their world, and this wasn’t their fight. I had distanced myself from the fact that they could die, caught up in having more people on our side to help.

“Lexi, I’m so sorry,” I whispered, tearing off a strip of my shirt as a makeshift bandage.

The blood soaked through in seconds.

She couldn’t die. The bold, eccentric girl who held lightsaber fights and put flamethrowers in school projects could never do something as mundane as dying.

Elliot placed his hands over mine to put pressure on the wound, his mouth set in a grim line. His glasses had cracked some time during the fight. I felt another pang of guilt when I noticed the way he favored his left foot.

Lexi coughed, blood foaming at the corner of her mouth. The bullet must have struck a lung.

“Don’t waste your time with me,” she rasped. “Help someone who might have a chance of being saved.”

Elliot and I stared at her, speechless.

Lexi had the strength to roll her eyes. “You think I can’t tell when I’m dying?”

“Don’t say stuff like that, Lex,” Elliot said. “You’re not going to die.”

But his words weren’t fooling anyone. When I pushed past my disbelief, I could see all the signs. Lexi’s eyes were fever bright, her pulse erratic, and she was struggling for breath even in a well-ventilated area. Blood bubbled up between my fingers as Lexi dropped her head back and closed her eyes. Elliot tried to rouse her. If Lexi fell asleep, she would never wake up.

I prayed for a miracle.

“Stay awake,” Elliot said. “Think about your friends, your family.”

Her eyes flew open.

“My family,” Lexi spat, “refuses to accept who I am. They don’t care about me.”

The words tore from her mouth by pure force of will. Her energy spent, she closed her eyes once more.

Elliot and I stayed by her side, but the blood wouldn’t clot fast enough before the next wave of red tore past. We both felt the moment Lexi drew her last breath before her heart stuttered to a spot. I stared at the blood on my hands, trying to process what I was seeing.

Elliot let loose a heart wrenching scream. Tears welled up in my eyes as he flung himself across her body, shoulders shaking with violent sobs. Guilt wrapped around my throat like a vise.

I reached out to him. “Elliot, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want—”

He whirled around and slapped me hard across the face. “You dragged her into this, Nicholas. You knew how dangerous it would be, and you let her come anyway.”

“You insisted on it,” I defended.

But a nasty voice inside hissed that Elliot was right.

He struck me again and again. I stood against the onslaught, making no move to push him away.

“This is your fault.” Tears flowed down his cheeks. “This is all your fault.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Alex heading toward us. It took both him and Brandon to pull Elliot off of me. I sat on the floor in shock.

“Lexi would be alive if it weren't for you,” Elliot screamed.

“Don’t say that, Elliot,” Alex said. “It’s not his fault.”

I shook my head. “No, I should never have dragged you into this mess.”

“You didn’t drag us anywhere, a fact Elliot would do well to remember.”

“You’re siding with him?” Elliot stared at his friend in disbelief. “Did Lexi mean so little to you?”

“Lexi was my friend too,” I murmured.

“And Nicholas didn’t kill her. The Underground did,” Alex said. “Let’s place blame where it’s due, alright?”

Elliot shrugged him off but made no move in my direction. He turned his back on us, every fiber of his being bristling with fury. Alex gestured for me to leave him alone.

A few people had opened doors to random rooms, allowing the light from the windows to spill into the hallway. It illuminated the carnage left from the fight.

The floor was slick with blood, and there were familiar faces among the dead—Ishaan, Noah, Sandra, Catherine, Harrison, countless others whose names I had never learned. My history teacher would have called it a Pyrrhic victory.

Genevieve tapped me on the shoulder and I whirled around, almost taking off her head with my pistol.

She reared back. “Calm down, it’s just me. We need to find Ace before more assassins show up.”

Isabel led three of us down to the basement.

Josiah raised his gun to take out the woman guarding the entrance, but she held her hands up in surrender.

The room had been repurposed into a rudimentary jail. Only two of the cells were full. One held a couple huddled together on a dirty mattress. The other had a young woman. Even behind bars, she sprang to her feet, ready for a fight.

“Is your father Horace Whitaker?” Isabel asked.

“What’s it to you?” she snapped. “Want to make sure you didn’t kidnap the wrong person?”

Isabel shrugged and handed me a few hairpins. “I’m guessing that was a yes.”

I pulled off the hairpin tip with my teeth and inserted the sharp end into the keyhole. The woman’s face went from hostile to confused as I wedged the other pin beneath the first and began to pick the lock.

Josiah made a call to the politician as his eyes scanned the room. The lock came undone and clattered to the ground. I started on the other cage.

“Horace wants to talk to you,” Josiah said to the woman, holding out the phone.

She snatched it up and held it to her ear. When she gave it back to Josiah a few minutes later, she was sniffling. The man squeezed her hand through the bars.

“Brittany, if you don’t mind me asking, do you know where Ace might be?” Josiah asked once she had regained her composure. “He has a scar down the side of his face, dark hair, and blue eyes.”

Brittany’s eyes filled with sympathy. “He’s been gone for two days. It’s possible they’ve killed him.”

“No.” Andrea shook her head. “Seth would never. Blood came before all else for him. It always has.”

Josiah took a shaky breath. “Maybe you don’t know him as well as you thought.”

“It can’t be. My son is still alive.” Her voice cracked. “He has to be.”

Isabel bit her lip. “He is. He seemed fine when I saw him last night in one of the guest rooms, and unguarded at that.”

I frowned. “You don’t think he switched sides, do you?”

To my surprise, she shook her head. “I trust him. But you won’t find him in the house anymore.”

“You didn’t think to mention this before we lost over half our friends to assassins?” Josiah snapped.

“I did what I needed to. The country will know about the treachery, and the EAGLE director will be placed under arrest, as will the Underground leader when they catch him. You did good, Josiah. That has to be enough.”

Josiah raised his hand like he would strike her then slammed his fist into the wall.