Chapter 98 – The Endgame

**Julia POV.**

**THREE YEARS EARLIER.**

Amelia took out a tracker identical to the one Dan had given me earlier. The one that I was supposed to hide inside Bryan Whimore’s shoe. The one I had falsely claimed to have been misplaced after Bryan’s death, even though it was still with me.

“Have you seen anything like this before?” Amelia stood right in front of my face and showed me the tracker. It was a thin layer of plastic, meant to be stuck inside the sole of the target’s shoe, exactly like the one Dan had given me.

I didn’t bother to reply. But Amelia’s piercing gaze spotted my discomfort and her eyebrows danced mysteriously. She stole a quick glance at Douglas Claymore who stood a few feet away, his gun aimed at me. Amelia flashed a sly grin for just a second before bending down to plant the tracker inside my shoe.

She stood up, hugged me, glanced at Douglas from the corner of her eye, and said, “Give us good news by noon tomorrow.”

Then, lowering her voice to a barely audible whisper, she put her lips to my ear for a split second and said, “You know what to do with the tracker.”

I was completely taken aback by this sudden turn of events. Douglas’ threat, Amelia’s secret whisper, and my own mental turmoil overwhelmed my feelings.

I walked back to the lighthouse with a storm raging inside. Dan was waiting for me there.

“How did it go? Where did Douglas take you?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

“He … um … wanted to strike a deal,” I made up the lies as I went along. “He wants you to deliver the file to him personally. Tomorrow.”

Dan’s eyes narrowed further. I expected it. A veteran spy, he would spot a lie from a thousand yards away. And I was lying to his face. Literally.

“Tomorrow? Where?” pat came his response.

“The same place,” I quickly made up the words again. “That old lighthouse. Sometime tomorrow afternoon.”

“Did he say that? Tomorrow afternoon?” Dan sported a deep furrow in his forehead. “What time exactly?”

“He didn’t say,” I replied with a straight face. “Did you find Emily?”

“No,” Dan quickly shifted his gaze elsewhere. But it didn’t escape my notice that he was lying too.

“And what about the classified files in the hidden chamber inside the lighthouse? Did you manage to locate them?”

Dan didn’t reply. His gaze was elsewhere, and so was his mind. I could literally hear his mind racing with multiple permutations. He was certainly thinking of a plan B, if not a C or D.

My mind was racing, too. Amelia’s whispers kept echoing in my ears all day long: “You know what to do with the tracker.”

By evening, I figured out what to do with it.

That night, while he was asleep, I planted the tracker inside Dan’s shoe. Not the one he had given me for the operation on Bryan, but the one Amelia had planted in my shoe earlier in the day.

I managed to remove it from my shoe using a box cutter and a kitchen knife. I inserted it in Dan’s shoe, and planted the one I had been hiding all along in my own shoe.

I picked up Dan’s tracker location device, a large palmtop, and checked if it blinked. It did. Which implied that my location could now be tracked by Dan.

I hastily wrote a note and kept it at his bedside table. It read, “I have the files. I have planted the tracker in them. If you want to find out the location of those files, just track their movements. Julia.”

I smiled in satisfaction at a job well done. It went smoothly, just as I hoped it would. The diabolical idea that had been germinating in my mind for the past two days had now taken a different shape and form.

I decided to kill two birds with one stone.

Leaving the note behind, I left and melted into the darkness of the night.

I walked for an hour before I reached the old lighthouse. I broke open its ancient lock with a rock and entered inside its pitch black belly. I climbed the spiralling rickety iron staircase very carefully, one step at a time.

Until I reached the very top. The roof.

There, in that solitary attic, surrounded by glass walls, I lit the primitive beacon of the lighthouse. It looked broken, rusty, but managed to glow with moderate intensity.

And then I removed my blue scarf and used it to cover the face of the beacon. Immediately, its glow turned blue.

For a second, it felt as if I was in some wonderland. High on top of the world, overlooking the ocean underneath, with blue light surrounding me from all sides.

The blue light spread far and wide, to the distant sea and not-so-distant landscape, and I crossed my fingers hoping for a miracle.

I didn’t have to wait for long.

In an hour, she turned up, right in the attic, quiet as a mouse. Sneaked in unannounced.

But not unexpectedly.

“So, it worked?” I smiled at Amelia. “You remembered.”

“I remember every childhood memory, good or bad,” Amelia scoffed. “But I am surprised that you still do. Turning this beacon into a source of blue light was a smart idea.”

“It caught your attention,” I smiled again. “And here you are.”

“How am I supposed to forget the insignia of my own pack?” Amelia snickered. “We were born in the Blue Moon clan. This blue light is our identity, our symbol. It was a smart move on your part to draw my attention this way.”

“I have a proposal,” I said in a serious tone. “You betrayed me in Valley Ridge and left me to die in prison. And now you want me to hand over Dan to you. I deserve payback.”

“For what? My betrayal, or for delivering Dan?” she sneered in hostility.

“For both. Listen to me carefully, and then decide if you choose to accept or not.”