Chapter 24 — Ace

Nicholas turned Tom’s calendar into a countdown until Election Day, and my heart jumped whenever I saw more days marked off. Several of the EAGLE agents still looked at me with suspicion, but they had enough self-control to avoid acting on their misgivings.

I had brought Genevieve and David into the loop as well, ignoring the voice in my head that screamed at me for putting them in danger. To my surprise, they hit it off with Isabel. It became typical to find the three of them sitting together, swapping stories from their school days.

“Spades!” Ishaan shouted from upstairs. “Come here. It’s really important!”

I rushed to the computer workspace. The people there were tracking down digital breadcrumbs, trying to cobble together a case solid enough to convict Harker and Seth in a court. So far, the evidence they found was tenuous at best.

“What is it, Ishaan?” I poked my head in. “Did you find something big?”

“I cannot stress the importance of the mission I’m about to send you on.” Ishaan looked me dead in the eye. “Isabel’s about to make cookies, the good kind with chocolate chips, not the ginger snaps she gives to us peasants. I need you to steal me a plate.”

I huffed and slammed the door behind me. It was another practical joke. Did the EAGLE agents have a hazing ritual I was unaware of? It felt like I spent all my time at the Blue Jay running back and forth on their ridiculous errands.

A burst of laughter came from the computer room.

“Come back, Spades,” Leon said. “Don’t be like that. We have a serious question.”

There was a pause.

“Shoot, I think he left.”

“And whose fault is that, Leon?” Mary said.

The doorbell rang. I was expecting Nicholas or Alex since the two always seemed to come by. Instead, it was Josiah with a suitcase in tow.

He tossed his coat over the couch. “My parents are on a trip to Dubai, God knows for what reason. I convinced them to let me stay by myself at the manor with the excuse of not wanting to miss school. Problem is, cars like the black van started showing up around the neighborhood. I figured I could crash here for a few days.”

I made a time-out sign. “Hold on. You’re scared of a few strange cars outside your house? Oh, this is gold. You’re acting like a child afraid of staying home alone.”

Josiah pulled me into a headlock. “Do you want to repeat that?”

“I said you’re acting like—”

He poked me in the side, making me laugh and squirm in his grip. “If I had known you were so ticklish, ghetto boy, I would—”

“I don’t want you to finish that sentence,” I said. “I don’t think you want to finish that sentence either.”

“You’re all bark. We established long ago that you don’t make good on your threats. On the other hand, you seem afraid of me making good on mine.” He fingered the collar around my neck. “Why else would you leave this on?”

I shrugged. “I guess I forgot about it.”

Judging by the smile that spread across his face, Josiah didn’t believe me.

To prove my point, I unclasped the collar and tossed it on the couch. “All the rooms are taken in the Blue Jay. Several people had to double up.”

“Do you have a roommate yet?” Josiah asked.

I shook my head.

“Good, I’m moving in,” he said, starting up the stairs. “You owe me for letting you stay in my room.”

“There’s only one bed.”

“You’re used to sleeping on the floor by now, aren’t you?”

It took a moment for his words to sink in.

I raced ahead to block his path. “No way. You can’t show up and kick me out of my bed.”

He pushed past me. “I can and I have. You’re staying in the sailor room, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

Josiah set his suitcase by the door and flopped down on the mattress. “Seeing as I barged in here unexpected, it is a little rude of me to make you sleep on the ground. If you asked nicely, I might let you share.”

I stared at the blue sheets. “Josiah, it’s a full size bed.”

“So? I’ve shared a twin with my cousin on a camping trip.”

“Maybe when you were eight. Now you’re over twice that age and twice the size.”

Josiah got to his feet. “Are you calling me fat?”

“Before you react, please remember you’re a bigger person than that.”

He threw a pillow at me. It went sailing over my head and smacked Tom in the face as he came through the doorway. I stifled a laugh.

Josiah’s eyes went wide. “Sorry about that.”

Tom sighed and tossed the pillow back on the bed. “When you boys are done fooling around, we’re gathering in the living room to talk.”

A few minutes later, everyone in the house crammed on the couches surrounding a coffee table. Nicholas and his friends from school were trying in vain to share the same sofa. Lexi ended up hanging half off the armrest.

I took one look at the scene and sat down on the ground, not wanting to get into a fight for a cushion.

Genevieve cleared her throat. “We’re off to a good start. It’s as awkward as a family meeting.”

“Our first order of business—which one of you left the toilet seat up in the guest bathroom?” Isabel joked.

“On a more serious note,” Tom said. “What have you found on Harker and Vasiliev?”

A silence fell over the room. It took a bit of prompting and shoving before someone spoke up.

“They’ve been thorough in covering their tracks,” Ishaan said. “Every time we latch onto promising information, it leads to a dead end.”

“What about their emails?” David asked.

“The firewalls around their accounts are impossible to get through.”

“You’ve been hacking at it for weeks,” Harrison complained. “How long does it take to get past one measly firewall?”

“You try it if you’re such an expert,” Noah snapped. “Harker and Vasiliev have spread out their messages over several accounts. The snippets we find make little sense on their own.”

“Throw in several decoy accounts with false information, and we have a perfect mess on our hands,” Mary said.

“Can you work faster?” Tom asked. “Election Day is tomorrow, and once Horace Whitaker is the president-elect, the EAGLE director will increase the pressure on him.”

“He doesn’t take office until January,” Lexi said. “We have over a month before he can transfer any power to EAGLE.”

“As the president-elect, politicians will follow his lead,” Josiah said. “If Horace suggests delegating more power to EAGLE, they might do it to get on his good side.”

Nicholas shook his head. “How can government officials in a democracy be so self-serving?”

“It’s human nature,” I said. “To think otherwise is naive.”

Elliot looked at me. “I’d hate to see the world you’ve been living in.”

“Your method of searching for evidence online isn’t working,” I added. “We need to solve the issue another way.”

“Have faith, kiddo,” Genevieve said. “They’ll figure it out. Just give them time.”

“Time is the one thing we don’t have.”

“Ace has a point,” Nicholas said. “We’re searching for information that might not exist.”

“No man is perfect. Harker and Vasiliev will slip up at some point,” Tom said. “Once they do, we’ll have them right where we want them.”

“Are you spies or snails?” I asked. “Send people undercover instead of setting them behind a screen.”

“It’s not that simple,” Tom said. “An identity needs to be constructed and indoctrinated into the agent until it feels like a second skin. Contact needs to be established with headquarters, and secondary methods of communication need to be implemented in case the original is compromised. The agent needs time to gain the trust of people around them. Not to mention, the mission itself needs to be approved by the government in order for it to be legal—”

“We’re a little past caring about laws at this point.”

Isabel gave me a dirty look. “If we ignore the law, then we’re as bad as the people we’re trying to stop.”

“Maybe that doesn’t bother you, Spades,” Ishaan said. “What’s the saying again? Like father, like son?”

Nicholas frowned. “Ishaan, he can’t control who his father is.”

“But he can control what he’s done. Can you honestly tell me he’s better than the Underground leader?”

David’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Isabel turned to him. “You’ve heard what he’s done to his victims.”

“Isabel!” Genevieve cried.

“I know Spades is like a little brother to you, but you can’t deny he’s tortured and killed innocent people for his own enjoyment.”

“I do my job,” I said. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

Isabel scowled. “You may have fooled some agents into trusting you, but you won’t trick me that easily.”

Josiah got to his feet. “Hey—”

“Wait.” I grabbed his arm. “I want to hear this. What do you think I’m tricking you into doing?”

Harrison’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t threaten Isabel.”

I was taken aback. “It was a genuine question! What do you mean—”

“Enough,” Tom said. “We will continue with the current plan. If you have a problem with it, Spades, you’re welcome to leave and take your chances with your father.”

I gritted my teeth. “Can’t you see I’m trying to help you?”

Noah stood up. “Let’s put it to a vote? All in favor of continuing with the current course of action?”

Almost every hand in the room shot up, even Genevieve’s and David’s. Josiah kept his own down in a show of support that surprised me.

“Outvoted, Spades,” Isabel said.

It took an enormous amount of self-control to walk away instead of punching the smirk off her face.

“Afraid of a little confrontation?” she called. “Cruelty and cowardice do go hand in hand. I wonder who the bigger coward is, you or the Underground leader.”

I stopped in my tracks. “Don’t compare me to him.”

Isabel seemed encouraged by my reaction. “The traits of the father are amplified in the son. There wasn’t a lot of good to pass on, and your mother’s hardly the epitome of virtue.”

My vision went white as I lunged for her throat. I managed to land a blow before rough hands jerked me back.

Isabel called me a slew of unflattering names, pinching her nose to stop the bleeding. Rivulets of red ran down her face and dripped onto the ground. Catherine hurried up to her with a wad of gauze.

She fixed me with an accusing stare. “You’ve broken her nose.”

Tom nodded to Josiah and David. “He might have done worse if they hadn’t stopped him. Thank goodness for small blessings.”

I shrugged their hands off. “Isabel was looking for a fight. She provoked me.”

The faces in the room were hard and disbelieving. Only David and Genevieve looked sympathetic. If Isabel had said the word, they would have cast me on the street in a heartbeat. The moment Tom adjourned the meeting, I ran up to my room.

My appetite didn’t return for dinner. In boredom, and perhaps spite, I took a loop of decorative rope off the wall and began tying knots into it as I considered my next steps.

While having more hands on deck had seemed like an improvement, it did more harm than good when our minds weren’t on the same page. EAGLE agents were so stuck in their ways that they would continue on the course of action Tom gave to them, even when it was obvious it wouldn’t work.

A clatter came from the hallway.

“What are you doing?” Josiah ripped the rope out of my hands.

I winced. “What was that for?”

“I swear to God, you are the most sensitive person I have ever met. One blow to your pride, and you’re considering death?”

As Josiah continued to rant, I tried to connect the dots. Then it clicked into place.

“Josiah,” I said. “Take a good look at the rope. Does it seem anything like a noose to you?”

It was dotted with knots at random intervals, but there was no loop a neck could go through.

Josiah gave a sheepish smile. “I guess I owe Tom another plate.”

Ceramic shards and salad leaves were scattered across the doorway.

“We should clean that up before someone notices,” I said.

“By ‘we’ you mean ‘you’ since the food was yours anyway.”

“Right, I forgot that Josiah Sargon is incapable of doing anything resembling work.”

“And I must have forgotten how annoying you could be, otherwise I wouldn’t bother doing something nice for you.”

I rolled my eyes before going off in search of a dustpan. When the broken plate was in the trash and the rope was back up on the wall, albeit with a few more knots than before, I flopped back on the mattress. Josiah set a dinner roll next to my head.

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

“You have to eat.”

“Who are you, my mother? Even she doesn’t nag me like this.”

“You’re upset about something—”

I snorted. “Obviously.”

“—but that’s no excuse to run yourself into the grave.”

“People here would be happy if I did,” I said. “They’re determined to let Seth and the EAGLE director get away with whatever they want. It’s no skin off my nose.”

“You can pretend not to care, but I know you’re a better person than that.”

“You would be the first. After everything I’ve done, everyone I’ve killed, do you think I’m incapable of looking the other way?”

“You want to do good. Your morals just got a little skewed along the way.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you knew what I’ve done.”

“My father keeps files on Underground assassins,” Josiah said. “Trust me, I do.”

“Then you also know how many people I’ve killed. Isabel has a point. The world might be a better place without me.”

Josiah got to his feet. “She said that?”

“Not to my face.” I hated the way my voice shook. “All those people, all those children—dead. Did I have more of a right to life than they did?”

The weight of my actions crashed down like a tidal wave.

“What you’ve done in the past is less important than what you’ll do in the future,” Josiah said. “You have a chance to make amends.”

“Those people never got another chance. I made sure of that.”

“But you feel guilt for it. That’s a start.” He handed the dinner roll to me. “Eat, then go to bed. Everything will be better in the morning.”

I did as he said. Josiah laid down beside me and pulled me to his chest. It had been so long since someone had held me like that. The unexpected sympathy, from the most unlikely source, sent me tipping over the edge. Tears stained the pillow as my shoulders shook with sobs.

Josiah rubbed my back and whispered words too quiet for me to hear. When I regained my composure, I twisted to look at him. We were nose to nose.

“Josiah?” I said.

“Yes?” he replied, half-asleep.

The words I wanted to say got lost on the way to my lips.

“Thank you,” I said instead.

It was both nothing and everything I wanted to tell him.