Take the Key and Lock Her Up

  “What?” I ask. “What did she say?”

  Alexei shakes his head. “She’s talking crazy.”

  “What did she say?” I have to know.

  Alexei looks defeated, and for the first time I realize that I wasn’t the only one who had come here looking for answers. He just hadn’t realized it himself.

  He takes a slow, deep breath, almost like the words hurt. “She said they’re going to storm the gates and kill the heir. She thinks it’s two hundred years ago, Gracie. And she thinks you’re your mom. We should go. She can’t help us.”

  Alexei’s already turning, starting for the door, when it opens.

  Viktor’s standing there, an orderly right behind him.

  “She just got here,” I say. I can’t let him take Karina away, not when all we’ve gotten so far are more questions. “You can’t make us leave yet.”

  Karina is still at the window, singing, “‘Hush, little princess …’”

  “We’re not leaving,” I say again.

  “I quite agree,” Viktor says. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Maybe I’m just too stressed—too tired—but what happens next happens in a flash, and yet it also feels like slow motion.

  The man behind Viktor is massive. He wears dingy gray scrubs, and when he pushes past Viktor, toward me, it’s almost like a tornado bearing down. But he never reaches me. Alexei blasts across the room, leaping and catching the massive orderly in midair, the two of them crashing to the floor in what feels like a blur of hits and kicks.

  The man is strong. He’s huge. But Alexei has something to fight for. And I realize with a start that the something is me.

  I watch him twist, launching himself over the bigger man, and in a flash Alexei has his arms around his neck and he’s squeezing.

  “Alexei!”

  Just a few weeks ago, most of the world thought Alexei was a killer. I never thought it possible—never thought him capable—until now. Jamie told me once that Alexei’s father was some kind of Russian special forces—that Alexei was the only kid who could ever keep up with the son of an Army Ranger. Only now do I see what he meant. He’s not the perfect boy next door anymore. He’s the guy my grandfather warned me about as he staggers upright, the orderly’s head and neck gripped too tightly in his grasp.

  “Alexei, no!” I snap. Alexei sees me, and a new terror fills his eyes as his gaze shifts.

  “Gracie!” he shouts, and I turn to see Viktor behind me. There’s a syringe in his hand, and a new terror fills me.

  I don’t know what drug it is, but my body can feel it long before the syringe touches my skin. I know the foggy haze that it will bring, the sense of floating, distant and free. And I know that it’s not right—not real. I know that whatever peace that syringe might bring me would be a lie—would be worse. I know that I don’t belong in a place like this. Not anymore. I may be crazy, but I’m not insane, so I lash out, kicking and clawing like a fiend.

  Like a madwoman.

  The orderly slumps as Alexei cuts off his air, but I can’t stop to think about that. Viktor swings his arm down, wielding the syringe like an ax. I throw my hands up, catching his wrist with both hands, pressing up as he presses down.

  Viktor mutters something under his breath. I don’t speak the language, but I know what he’s saying. That I’m reckless. That I’m dangerous. That I should just shut up and be the meek little girl that would make the world so much more comfortable for the likes of him.

  But I’m not that girl. And I never, ever will be.

  I’m the lost freaking princess of Adria, and I’m not going to take it anymore.

  The orderly’s on the ground, and Alexei’s jumping the man’s body, coming in my direction, but I don’t wait. Viktor lunges toward me, one last-ditch feat of strength, and I use his force and his weight against him, spinning like my father taught me long ago, twisting Viktor’s arm back until the syringe lands in his own leg. I hear his cry. I see the pain in his eyes. But I just reach for the plunger and push until that pain is erased by a mindless, empty bliss.

  Slowly, he slumps, falling to the floor.

  I look down but don’t have time to think about what’s just happened. Alexei grabs me, makes me look into his eyes.

  “Are you okay?” he asks. I could ask him the same thing. There’s a scratch on his face, a growing bruise. But we’re both still here and we’re still breathing.

  Then I remember the bad part: We’re still here.

  “I told you they were storming the gates,” a voice says from the window, and I look at Karina.

  Alexei moves to the window and lets out a Russian curse when he see what’s going on outside.

  I already know even before I look out and see it for myself. Dust clouds fill the road, kicked up by a convoy of SUVs.

  “Well, I guess now we know why they changed their minds and let us in,” I say.

  “Yes. And why they insisted that we wait so long,” Alexei says, but he’s not waiting anymore.

  He grabs my hand, tugging me toward the door. “We must leave. Now!”

  “But, Alexei—” I turn back to his mother, who is running her hand along the cinder-block wall.

  “‘Hush, little princess …’”

  “We must leave her,” he says.

  “But …”

  I don’t get to argue. There’s no time to fight. Because just as I open my mouth to speak, a blast shakes the room, throwing me off of my feet and into Alexei, who grabs me and then presses me to the floor, shielding me with his body as dust and debris cloud the air. I’m choking, gagging, as I hear a familiar voice say, “I told you there were explosives.”

  Rosie looks larger than usual as she stands silhouetted against the gray sky, surrounded by a cloud of dust. She’s a conquering hero. And she’s not taking any prisoners.

  “What are you two waiting for? We’ve got to go. Now!”

  The caravan of SUVs is at the gates, but the guards are nowhere to be seen. The gates are wide-open and they’re coming in fast.

  “Now!” Rosie shouts again, and then jumps. I run to the hole in the wall only to notice for the first time that there’s a roof not far below. There must be a single-story section of the hospital because Rosie is running across the roof, then climbing down a ladder that leads to the back of the facility.

  “Go, Gracie. Now.” Alexei is trying to push me outside, but I look back at the woman who is still behind us, singing and swaying in the dust.

  There’s no time to argue. Alexei just spins and walks toward his mother, sweeps her up into his arms, and runs in my direction, climbing through the hole in the wall that Rosie left in her wake.

  As they pass I hear Karina say, “Your boy really is handsome.”

  And then I climb through the hole in the wall and join them.

  There are shouts from the hired guns that fill the courtyard. Echoing cries fill the halls, and I know that some of the men are already inside, racing up the stairs.

  They’ll reach us soon, see the room is empty and follow, so I run faster. Alexei is guiding Karina down the ladder when I see the huge SUV that is waiting for us.

  “We borrowed it,” Rosie says, and I don’t ask any questions. We all just run toward the doors that are already open. The engine is running and Megan is behind the wheel.

  “Hold on,” she says once we’re all inside. If they’re surprised by Karina’s presence, no one says so.

  The SUV spins out, kicking up rocks and dirt and gravel, then fishtails as it pulls around the side of the compound.

  The guardhouse is empty. The yard is abandoned. Four huge SUVs surround the tiny car that brought Alexei and me here, blocking us in. The men must all be inside, and a clock in my head is counting down the seconds until they realize that we’re gone.

  We’re going to have to go fast.

  We’re going to have to go far.

  We’re going to have to keep running until we run out of earth. That’s the only way.

  “Th
ey’ll find us,” I say, the words spilling from my mouth. “They’ll chase us and they’ll find us and—”

  “They’re not going to chase us,” Noah tells me.

  “Of course they are!” I shout. “They will never stop chasing me. You guys have got to leave. It’s too dangerous. I’m too dangerous. You’ve got to—”

  “We have a Plan B,” Megan says.

  “What’s Plan B?” I ask just as, behind us, a huge boom rings out. When I turn, I see black smoke filling the air. The little car that Alexei and I arrived in is now an inferno. Flaming debris fills the yard. Windshields are smashed. Tires are flattened. The smoke is blinding anyone who might be running out the front door. Even the roof of the little guard shack is starting to burn.

  I’m almost numb as I turn to Rosie.

  “That’s Plan B,” she says, and Megan keeps driving.

  Sometime after midnight we cross the Adrian border, or so Megan’s super secret spy phone tells us. I can also tell because that’s when I start shaking.

  We’re still hours from Valancia, and the countryside around us is vast and empty. We should be safe here. There’s no Internet, no cameras. No nosy innkeepers or customs officials asking us for papers. I swear none of us will ever use our real names ever again if we survive this.

  I don’t stop to think about how big that if really is.

  There’s a big barn up ahead, but no farmhouse. No town. There’s not a single telephone pole in sight. Bright headlights slice across an empty field when Noah steers the SUV off the road and pulls up to the barn’s big double doors.

  “Wait. What are you doing?” I ask, leaning up between the two front seats.

  “We’re stopping,” Noah says.

  “No,” I tell him. “We can’t stop. Ever. We have to keep driving.”

  It’s late, and we’re all tired. It takes Noah’s last ounce of patience to calmly ask, “Okay. Where are we driving to? And what are we going to do when we get there?”

  He’s got a point, and I’m too tired to disagree. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

  “Megan?” I don’t even have to ask the question.

  “If the royal family is after you, then we should be okay here. Adria is more into tourism than national defense. They don’t exactly have a bunch of satellites they can reposition on a whim to track us down. So … we should be okay,” she says again.

  “And if it’s not the royal family?” Alexei asks what everyone else is thinking.

  Megan gives a sad, almost hopeless shrug. “I have no idea what the Society is capable of.”

  None of us do, and that’s the scariest thing of all.

  Inside the barn, we find bales of straw stacked on one end and park the SUV on the other. It doesn’t take long for us to spread out—we’ve been too confined for too long. At least Noah loaded up some canned food from the safe house, and now he and Rosie are trying to build a small fire in a ring of stones just outside the barn’s double doors.

  I watch them work together in silence, in peace. We’re all getting way too comfortable with life like this.

  Noah catches me looking and grins. Then he stands and wipes his dirty hands on his jeans and sidles toward me. He turns to see what I see—Rosie and the flickering flames, a dark night under a blanket of thick clouds, lightning striking in the distance. Wordlessly, he settles in beside me, leaning against the SUV.

  We feel the rain before we see it. The wind turns crisp in a second and water falls to the dusty ground in fat, wet drops. Dust bubbles up, then turns to mud before our eyes. The storm rages and the wind blows and I breathe in the cool, fresh air. For a second, I relax, lost inside the thunder.

  Maybe Noah feels it, too. Maybe that’s how he finds the strength to say, “So I was going to ask how Alexei’s mom was, but …” Noah gestures outside to where Karina is standing, staring up at the dark clouds, rain streaming down her smiling face.

  “She thinks I’m my mom. Or she thought that earlier. I don’t really know what she’s thinking now, to tell you the truth.”

  Noah nods. “I can see that. About your mom, I mean. In every picture that I’ve ever seen, you look alike. I can see where that might be confusing to …” He motions to the woman who’s outside, dancing in the rain.

  “I doubt she even knows what year it is,” I have to admit. “I dragged everyone across half of Europe, and she doesn’t know anything about my mom.” I look up at Noah. “She doesn’t even know Alexei.”

  I’m pretty sure Noah curses in Portuguese, but then he eyes me. “Don’t worry about Alexei. He’s worried about you. He doesn’t care what happens to him.”

  I look at Noah, cock an eyebrow, and he knows I’m not buying it. “Would you care if your mother didn’t recognize you? If she acted like you never existed?”

  Noah stares into the distance. “I’m not Russian.”

  I don’t argue with Noah’s logic. It makes as much sense as anything.

  “At least now he knows she didn’t leave him—that she was sick and had to go away,” I say, almost hopefully.

  Noah is spinning on me, though, a disbelieving look upon his face. “Is that really what you think?”

  “What?”

  Noah turns back to the woman who’s holding her arms out wide, turning in circles in the rain. “Maybe she went to that place because she was crazy. Or maybe ten years in that place made her insane. What do you think?”

  He’s not asking my opinion about Karina. He’s asking about me. What would have happened if my dad and Jamie hadn’t decided to stop fighting with me—if they hadn’t gotten tired of reminding me day after day that I was the one who pulled the trigger? Would I have gotten better there? Or would my last sliver of sanity have slipped further and further away with every passing day? It’s something I’ve never really considered. And, frankly, it’s an answer I don’t really want to know.

  Noah can tell. So he just nods again in Karina’s direction and asks, “Is she okay?” When I don’t answer, he turns back to me. “Are you okay?”

  But no one really wants the honest answer to that question, so we just turn back to the rain and the woman dancing in it.

  “What comes next?” Noah isn’t asking about tonight. He’s asking about tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that. It’s the question, and everyone but Karina gathers around, listens.

  “Tomorrow, I’ll drive you guys to the train station, and you’ll go back to Embassy Row.”

  “What are you going to do?” Rosie sounds almost hurt—like I’m throwing a party and she hasn’t been invited.

  “On the bridge that day, Princess Ann kept asking me if I’d found it—if my mom had told me where it was.”

  “What did she mean by it?” Noah asks, and I shake my head.

  “I’m not sure. I thought that maybe it was something Mom found on that last trip. I thought maybe …” I trail off but can’t stop myself from looking at Karina. She might have had answers. Once. But they’re locked away in some dark recess of her mind now. I know better than anyone how easy it is for a memory to stay buried.

  “I have to find it,” I say. “Whatever it is.”

  “Which means you have to come with us,” Megan says. “You’ve got to go back to Valancia.”

  “No.” I shake my head. My hands tremble and my blood pounds. “No. I can’t. It’s not safe there. No.”

  “On your mom’s last trip, she saw Karina and she saw your grandfather,” Noah says. I hate him for his calm, cool logic. “If there are answers, they’re in Valancia.”

  “No. I have to keep moving.” Because as long as they’re chasing me, then Jamie’s safe. Jamie’s resting. Jamie is somewhere under Dominic’s watchful eye, getting stronger every day.

  They all want to argue. They want to fight. I want to climb into the SUV and start driving.

  “Let’s get some sleep now. Perhaps an answer will present itself in the morning,” Alexei says, and we’re all too tired to argue. As the others drift away, h
e pulls me into his arms. “You’re not going anywhere without me,” he whispers too low for the others to hear.

  “Your name’s been cleared,” I say, but I don’t pull away. “You can go home.”

  He squeezes me tighter. “I am home.”

  Alexei’s mother is twenty feet away from us, but he never even glances her direction. He just pulls my head to his shoulder and holds me. I could cry now. I could break down—allow myself a little weakness. No one here would judge me. But I would judge myself. So I don’t shed a single tear.

  Alexei holds me until the fire dies and the barn seems to go to sleep around us. Even the storm seems to be drifting away, but then I hear a sound like thunder coming closer. The low rumbling is followed by the flash of headlights through the open doors, and I’m already pulling away from Alexei. I’m turning. I’m getting ready to yell for my friends to run when a car door slams and a single word slices through the storm.

  “Grace?”

  I know the voice, but I can’t believe what I’m seeing when a woman steps from the shadows. Her suit is dark. Her heels are high. And the brown eyes behind her glasses are rapidly filling with tears.

  “Ms. Chancellor?”

  Then I realize that she’s not alone. At the first sign of movement, I pull back. In a flash, Megan is running past me, rushing into the other woman’s arms.

  “Mom!” Megan cries, and her mother swallows her up. Megan and her mom look alike. They both have the same sleek black hair and huge brown eyes. But Megan’s mom wears her hair in a sleek bob. When she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear just like I’ve seen Megan do a thousand times, something about it makes me want to cry.

  My mom will never hug me again, never worry about me or whisper in my ear or tell me everything is going to be okay. Things will never be okay again, and I have no one but myself to blame.

  So I blame everyone.

  “What are you doing here?” I say.

  “Grace …” Ms. Chancellor starts toward me slowly. She knows me well enough to know I’m looking for a fight. I don’t care where it comes from. That’s probably why one always finds me.

  “It’s my fault.” Megan moves out of her mother’s grasp. “I called them. I … We need help.”