“I never knew it was real,” Alexei says. “Even driving here, I kept thinking that it couldn’t possibly be real. But there it is.”
“I hate to say it, but Rosie’s right,” Megan says.
“Hey!” Rosie spins on Megan, but Megan isn’t deterred. She just clicks through the images displayed on the little screen on the back of her camera, showing the place close up for the first time.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Megan continues. “Why would Grace’s mom come here?”
“I—” I start, but I can’t finish once I see Alexei’s face. He’s staring at the back of Megan’s camera, at the image there.
“Because that’s my mom,” he says.
When we leave, Megan drives. Noah sits with her up front, while Rosie and I sit in the backseat, Alexei beside us. But he’s not here. Not really. Alexei is a million miles away.
I don’t ask where we’re going. To be perfectly honest, I don’t care. I only know that Alexei is too quiet, too still, and there is far too much that we don’t know.
“I think …” Megan says, turning the car down a dirt road, slowly moving until the dim headlights flash over a small house that looks like it has grown right out of the earth. “Yeah. We’re here.”
Only Noah asks, “What is this place?”
We get out of the car and gather our things, follow Megan onto the porch. Somehow I’m not surprised when she knows exactly where to find a key.
“When we moved to Adria, my mom sat me down and made me memorize fifty phone numbers and twice as many addresses. This is one of them,” she says, then opens the door.
I watch her pause on the threshold, like she’s half-expecting to be shot on sight. Or at least to hear the roaring of an alarm. But nothing greets us but silence.
“What is it?” Noah asks.
“It’s a safe house,” Megan says.
“But what kind of safe …” Noah trails off when Rosie turns on the lights. The bulbs crackle and hum, like they haven’t been used in a decade or two. An eerie glow fills the room, but there’s no mistaking the row of guns that lines one wall, the computers and monitors and maps that cover another.
We all look at Megan, stunned.
“What can I say?” She shrugs. “Safe. House.”
Megan’s mom works for the CIA, and that fact has never been more obvious to any of us as we all spread out, carefully opening doors and examining cabinets.
“Is that a shower?” Noah asks, peeking into one room. “Please tell me that’s a shower.”
But I can’t let myself relax. “Megan, should we be here?”
“Do you have someplace else to be?” she asks, which is an excellent question. And the obvious answer is no.
“What happens now?” Rosie says what everyone else is thinking.
Megan got us to this place, but she’s not in charge; I can feel it as everyone turns in my direction. They’re looking at me like I’m supposed to lead, but all I really want to do is take a hot shower, eat whatever food we can find in this Cold War kitchen, and then sleep until it’s time to meet my mom in Heaven.
I’m so relieved when Noah steps forward and says, “Now we sleep. And we eat. And we try to figure out what comes next.”
“Yes!” Rosie sounds entirely too chipper. “Exactly what is the best way of breaking a woman out of a former Soviet mental facility? Explosives? I think it might be explosives.”
Luckily, Alexei doesn’t roll his eyes. “There can be no explosives, Rosemarie.”
“Of course there can be,” Rosie says, undaunted. “I saw some in that cabinet over—”
“My mother is in there for a reason!” Alexei’s practically shaking now. Not with rage, with something else. It’s like another Alexei is inside of him, trying to break out of this calm, cool shell.
I’m seeing cracks, and I don’t like it.
“She is in there for a reason,” he says again, his voice full of a calm I can tell he doesn’t feel. “That is where we found her. And that is where she will stay.”
“Alexei—” Rosie starts, but his eyes are like ice.
“This is not a debate. Whatever she did, she should stay there. People get sent to Binevale for a reason. She deserves it.”
I don’t realize I’m rocking. I don’t even know I’m speaking until the words are free. “I deserved it.”
It’s like Alexei has just remembered where I am. What I am.
“We should get you back to Dominic,” he tells me, then turns to the others. “You need to return to Adria now. Forget about us. Stick to your routines and your embassies. There are no answers here.”
Alexei grips me tight. It’s supposed to comfort, to soothe, but it just reminds me of another time when I was held too tight and for too long.
“No,” I say, pulling away from him and stalking to the other side of the room.
“Grace?” Noah eases toward me. “Are you okay?”
“No!” I snap again, then wheel on Alexei. “My mom came here. And if there’s a chance that your mom knows why, then I am going to take it.”
“You don’t understand, Grace. People do not get sent to Binevale by accident. Whatever she did to end up in that place …”
“Oh, and no one has never been imprisoned unjustly?” I ask. “Besides, criminal or not—crazy or not—I don’t care. I have to talk to her. I am going to talk to her. I don’t care what it takes.”
They know that I mean it. It’s not hyperbole or exaggeration. I’d cut off my own arm if it was the only way inside those gates. And Rosie would find me the knife.
When I turn to Megan, she’s already shaking her head, carefully considering the question I don’t have to ask.
“It didn’t look that secure,” she says. “I hate to say it, but I think Rosie might be right.”
“I’m standing right here,” Rosie says, but Megan isn’t fazed.
“It’s old. Unless they’ve spent a lot of money upgrading it, then the walls should be fairly breachable. And there weren’t a ton of guards. If we watched for a few days and mapped their patterns, then there might be a window of opportunity. Of course, there might also be a fortress and an army hidden underground or something, but … I kind of think we could do it.”
A part of her hates saying this, I know. And another part is itching for the challenge.
Noah shakes his head, almost as if he can’t believe what he’s about to ask. “Just to be clear, by ‘it’ you mean break someone out of a Cold War–era, former Soviet facility that is so infamous and scary and generally feared that it has become a bad nursery rhyme that people use to scare children? Also, though I hate to point this out, we are children.”
“Nursery rhymes usually start with the truth,” I say, thinking of the song my mother used to sing to me about Adria’s lost little princess.
“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Noah says.
“I’m just saying that I don’t think it’s impossible,” Megan says, throwing up her hands. Noah’s starting to fire back when Alexei laughs. It’s a cruel, cold sound.
“What is it?” Megan asks him.
“People don’t get sent to Binevale because they’re dangerous. They get sent because they’re the kind of people no one is going to come looking for.”
As this settles over us, that a woman’s own son would say such a thing, Rosie nods thoughtfully. Then she asks, “So explosion? Or helicopter. Because—”
“We don’t have to break her out,” I say.
“But we could,” Rosie says.
“We have to talk to her,” I say. “I have to talk to her.”
“Grace, I don’t think they’re going to let you walk up to the gates and schedule a meeting,” Megan points out.
“No.” I turn to the boy beside me. “But they might let her son do it.”
“She no longer has a son.”
He’s out the door before I can catch him.
Sometimes, when I was a kid, Dad would go away. We wouldn’t know where. We would
n’t know for how long. We just knew that—if we were lucky—he’d come back eventually.
And, eventually, he always did.
Sometimes, in the days or weeks after, I’d wake up to the sight of light flickering in the hallway. I’d crawl out of bed to find my dad sprawled on the living room couch, some show on the TV that he wasn’t really watching.
“I’m too tired to sleep, Gracie,” he’d say. He’d be bruised, scarred, and alert at all hours of the night. He was home, but his mind was still off in some faraway war zone, struggling to stay alive.
That’s what it feels like now. My body knows that it should rest, but my head just won’t let it. I trust Megan when she says this house is secret and secure. I’m sure that we’re as safe here as we are anywhere. But that isn’t saying much.
Finally, I close my eyes, and my mind drifts. I hear my mother’s voice. I see her sitting on the stairs. The beautiful box is on her lap.
“See, Gracie, it’s a puzzle box,” she says.
“Open it for me,” I tell her.
But Mom only laughs. “That would be cheating, sweetheart. Besides”—she runs her hand along the wood—“I don’t know how. Yet.”
I sit upright in bed. Sleep, I know, will never come. So I ease out from beside a snoring, kicking Rosie and start toward the main room.
The box is sitting on the table, atop the pile of papers and photos from Mom’s shop. It’s cool and smooth as I run my hands across the surface.
“What’s that?”
Megan’s voice makes me jump. I whirl and take in her form standing in the shadows. Slowly, she comes forward.
I look back at the box. There’s a single light on in the kitchen, a bare fluorescent bulb that burns low, casting the box in its yellow light.
“It was my mom’s,” I say. “I think it was a puzzle box.”
All Megan really needs to hear is puzzle, and then she’s standing beside me, fully intrigued.
“Do you know how to open it?” she asks as she leans down and eyes it at table level.
“No.”
Megan has never turned away from a challenge. “Do you mind if I try?”
I hold my hands out, as if to say, Go ahead.
For a moment, she just looks at it, studying the different pieces of wood that blend together in a gorgeous mix of light and dark.
Then, carefully, she reaches for it, running a fingertip along the strips of wood.
“I saw this once,” I tell her. “When I was a little girl. Mom told me that I’d figure out how to open it when I needed to.”
“I don’t see anything,” Megan tells me, standing upright again. “But it’s beautiful. Do you mind if I work on it for a while?”
“Go ahead,” I say. But I’m not optimistic.
This is a mistake.”
I’ve seen Alexei cocky and scared and worried, but nervous is a whole new look on him. I’m not sure if it’s the Soviet-era institution that scares him or the woman we hope to find inside.
No, I realize then. I do know. And I can’t blame him for what he’s feeling.
The morning air is cold, and a heavy frost lies on the ground around us. The night was long and winter is coming, and I want to get out of here before we all start to freeze. But it’s too late for the boy beside me. His heart froze over ages ago.
I try to make light of it. “I know this whole plan seems a little crazy. But crazy is kind of normal for us these days, isn’t it?”
“We should leave her in there,” Alexei says.
“We are going to leave her in there. We’re just going to talk to her—find out what happened.”
“We should leave her in there. Alone.”
I’ve known love, and I’ve known hate. But I’ve never seen how easily one can morph into the other. Alexei’s mother left him. She didn’t just hurt him; she changed him. And I know the boy beside me is proof of what happens when you grow up knowing you’re the kind of person who can be left behind.
“Alexei, don’t you wonder how she ended up in there? I mean, do you think your dad had her committed? Because if he didn’t … If my mom got killed, maybe your mom got locked up? Maybe she didn’t leave you.”
When he turns, he’s almost a stranger. “My mom left long before she went away.”
“Alexei, we don’t know what happened. We don’t know why your mom is in there or why my mom went to see her. We don’t know anything.”
Alexei’s voice is cold. “Maybe it’s better that way.”
He takes my hands in his. They’re big and warm, and I let myself savor that feeling. I let myself feel safe.
“Sometimes it’s better not to know,” he says.
No one knows that better than I do. I think back to before I knew. About who killed my mom. About why. Would I go back if I could? I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter. Time only runs in one direction.
“Promise me something,” Alexei says, pulling me closer.
I look up. “Anything,” I say, and I mean it. I actually do. I don’t stop to think about why that scares me.
“If something goes wrong today, I want you to run.”
“I’m not going to leave you.”
“You’re too important,” he says, then pushes a strand of hair out of my eyes. “To the world. To me.” Then Alexei looks at me—I mean really looks at me—and says, “Promise that you’ll keep my girlfriend safe.”
I can’t help myself. I pull back, look into his too-cool, too-blue eyes. I almost choke on the words. “I’m your girlfriend?”
“No.” Alexei shakes his head, then pulls me to him again, holds me closer. “There’s not a word in either of our languages for what you are to me.”
And then he kisses me, soft and sweet, and for one brief second I actually let myself think that maybe—someday—it is all going to be okay.
When Noah clears his throat, Alexei and I pull apart. I jerk back, but he’s so calm and sure. He’s not ashamed to be seen kissing me, and that’s the first sign that maybe he’s not entirely sane, either.
“We ready?” Megan asks as she walks from the house to the car.
Alexei and I look at each other, equally unsure of the answer.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Noah asks, pulling me aside.
“I have to do this.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “You don’t have to go in there.”
Noah is my best friend, so maybe that’s why he sees what the others don’t, why he hears what I don’t say.
Noah doesn’t want me to rethink my plan because the compound might be filled with guns and guards. Noah wants me to stay here because it might be filled with ghosts.
“Don’t go in there, Gracie. Don’t do that to yourself. Let Alexei go. I’ll go with him. I’ll ask your questions, just … don’t go.”
“I have to.”
“No!” Noah snaps. “You don’t. We can help you. Let us help you.”
Noah is smart and kind and right—there’s no denying that he’s right. I’m the last person who should walk into Binevale, but you don’t end up in a place like that in the first place if you always make the smart decision.
“She saw my mom,” I say, because, really, it’s the only thing that matters. “She saw my mom and then my mom died. I have to go.”
Alexei and Rosie are loading the cars, both the one we got at the station and the one we found in the garage. We won’t come back here, I know. No matter what happens today, tomorrow we’ll move on. We have one shot.
When Megan comes up, I’m half-afraid of what she’s going to say. “Can I talk to you?”
“Sure.” I brace myself for another you-don’t-have-to-do-this pep talk. Only Rosie seems to think this is an excellent idea.
But when Megan turns back to me I don’t quite recognize the worry in her eyes.
“Alexei’s going to have to give his real name,” Megan says, and the words knock me off guard. “He’ll have to give them his real name and then maybe—maybe—they’ll let him
in. He can’t hide in there. He’s going to be on the grid. And you’re going to be with him.”
I wasn’t expecting this particular argument, and maybe that’s why I stand for a moment, totally unsure what to say.
“I have to go,” I reply, because it’s a reflex now.
“They might not let you in anyway,” Megan says. “I mean, if the place is as legendary as Alexei says, then we don’t know what to expect. But I’m gonna see if I can hack in and make it seem like you’ve got clearance. That is, if their systems are hackable. I mean, that place looks pretty analog, but I’m gonna try. Don’t worry. About getting in, I mean.”
I’ve never heard Megan talk so fast or look so worried. I know she hasn’t even gotten to the good part.
“But, Grace …” she starts slowly. “If Karina is … I mean, since she’s in there, there’s a chance she might be …”
“It’s okay, Megan,” I say, taking pity on her. “I’m fluent in crazy.”
“That’s not what I mean. It’s just … she could be one of them—the royal family or the Society or whoever is behind this. Or she could be in there because of them. We don’t know. But we do know that your mom came here and then she died, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. That’s why I’m saying one more time that you don’t have to go in there.”
I look across the yard at where Alexei stands, waiting by the car. “That’s why I’m saying that I do.”
The car is older than we are. By a lot. I imagine the CIA probably stashed it here about the same time the Berlin Wall came down. But it’s ours now, and we’re grateful to have it.
Alexei is silent as he drives. The stick shift is rusty and the gears grind as we crest the hill and look down at the stark gray building that lies in the small valley.
He’s stoic and calm, utterly competent in all that he does. Even this—driving a car that’s twice as old as he is, down a beat-up road, on his way to confront the woman he used to love—seems natural for him. I almost wish he’d mess up, skip a beat. Times like this it would be nice to have proof that he is human.
But we both stay quiet as we reach the valley and drive toward the chain-link fences.