“Always,” he affirmed again.
“Good. Because I think the only answer is to fake our own deaths.Onthe mountain.”
He held me at arm’s length, eyes crashing around my face until darting around the coffee shop to make sure no one had overheard me. “Are you kidding me?”
“I wish I was.”
He guided me out of the cafe quickly, shuttling me down the street a block before catching both of my shoulders in his hands. “Tell me again, I’m praying I misheard you.”
“You didn’t.” I could feel the adrenaline coursing through my veins. “Look what they did to my mother, this is life or death. It always has been. I thinkCis Chuck, Tav’s father. The man that strung my mother along for years, the one that had her accident arranged to shut her up.”
“Are we really talking about the same man?”
I nodded, scared of my own assumptions. “What now?”
Bradley waited long moments as he seemed to gather his thoughts. “Now, I guess Brad and Freya die.”
Hot tears spilled at my eyelids.
“I love you, Frey, I just regret that when I finally persuade you to say I do, it won’t be with the beautiful name you had when I first met you that day at Sunday school, but it won’t make the day any less sweet.”
“You’ve always been too good to me.”
“I feel the same way. It’s always been you and me, no matter what the world throws at us, I wouldn’t trade a single Sunday out of the next three thousand with you.”
Bradley wrapped me in his arms then, the years of history woven between us knitting together tighter than they’d already been.
“Frey...if anyone harms a hair on your head, I swear to God I’ll kill them.” I tensed at my oldest friend’s words.
“W-why does it feel like…” I trailed off. Why did it feel like Bradley knew more than he let on?
His voice lowered.“I didn’t want to tell you this, but someone sent me a message...they’re on our team, Frey.”
“They?”
He nodded, eyes warm with pity.
I hated him at that moment. Hated that he seemed to know more than I did.“Who are they?”
“I-I don’t even know for sure. They know everything, and they just kept repeating that they’re on our team. If anything happens, it’s their opinion that we stay in populated areas, but keep a low profile. It’s easier for them to keep an asset on us, digital or otherwise. They said now that Tav is out of the picture, it’s important.”
“Oh my God,” I pressed a hand over my mouth before whispering, “is Tav really dead?”
“I-I don’t think so, Freya, but they said he left you everything. His life insurance and the sole inheritor of a variety of safety deposits and lockboxes around the East Coast. I think it doesn’t matter if he is or isn’t, it matters that on paper he is.”
“Oh.” A cold numb sensation spread through my veins. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“I shouldn’t leave you, that settles it, I’ll hire someone to clear out our houses, we’ll move as far away as you want. Whatever it takes for you to feel safe.”
“Safe?” I slumped against the brick wall of the coffee shop. “If—if they are on our team...who isn’t?”
Bradley’s shoulder lined with mine against the brick wall. His voice low and steady, he whispered, “Foreign actors. Ecuadorians maybe. They repeated that they couldn’t reveal much, but that Tav struck a deal with a very important oppositional leader for access to his father, under the assumption Tav’s father would win the election.”
“Tav struck a deal?”
“Tav struck a deal and accepted a down payment in cryptocurrency for brokering what would be the historic conversation.”
“And now that Tav is dead, they want their money?”
