“Not Maeve’s passport,” Nolan said.
I looked at him. “Todd’s?”
Nolan shook his head. “Anton Vladescu’s.”
We’d established that Todd’s head of security was a Russian national named Anton Vladescu, but this was the first time that information was more than just interesting.
“Let me guess,” Aloha said, still looking at his computer. “Bucharest.”
Nolan nodded. “Bucharest.”
Aloha had clearly been on the same track.
For a long moment, no one said anything. Then Bram pushed back from the table so fast his chair tipped over.
He stalked toward the hall, pausing to look back at us when he realized he was the only one moving. “Pack your fucking bags.”
3
MAEVE
I wokeup to the clanging of metal on metal followed by footsteps on the stone outside my cell.
I was groggy, more out of it than I wanted to be, but I scooted back against the stone wall and waited while a figure in jeans and a T-shirt approached the iron door to my cell.
I was happy to see it wasn’t the older beefy guy. We’d already tussled twice, and the scratches I’d left on his face and my kicks to his obviously bad leg had earned me a gag, zip ties around my wrists, and a black hood that had almost obliterated my sanity.
After that, I’d promised to “behave,” if only to avoid the zip ties and the hood. I couldn’t escape if I was bound and blind.
They’d started sending the younger skinnier guy in with my meals, and I couldn’t help feeling a little satisfied that I’d spooked the beefy Russian (I assumed he was Russian from his accent) enough to keep him away.
“Don’t be stupid,” the young guy said, entering my cell with a tray.
He had brown hair and a face that might have been nice if he hadn’t been one of Todd’s incel flunkies. He was more hesitant than the Russian, and I had the sense that he was unsure, thatthere might be a thread of uncertainty in him about what he was doing.
And there was another thing: I recognized them. They were the guys who’d taken the Ghosts’ place in the second Hunt, the team who’d stripped me and chained me to the wall, who’d cut my neck.
Meathead and Mr. Skinny.
The realization had come to me in the moment before I’d lost consciousness outside the loft, when Ethan Todd had spoken to me.
There you are.
I’d recognized his voice immediately, had known he’d been in the tunnels during the second Hunt. The Ghosts had been wearing masks, but the terror of their taunting voices when I’d been stripped and hung from the chains lived in my bones.
I would have recognized them even if they’d still been wearing masks, but now I knew that Meathead had thinning brown hair, a crooked nose, and a fleshy, pockmarked face. I knew that Mr. Skinny was young, maybe even younger than me, with a smooth baby face that made me think, uncomfortably, of my little brother Simon.
“If you help me, the Butchers might not kill you,” I told Mr, Skinny as he stepped into my cell.
“Shut up,” he said, setting the tray on the floor.
“You don’t even have to do anything to help me get out of here.” I was desperate to plead my case while I had the chance. “Just contact them, tell them where I am. They’ll reward you.”
I might have been talking out of my ass, but I didn’t think so. If I closed my eyes, I could see the way Bram had looked at me in bed, the love in Remy’s eyes when he’d started to confess his feelings at the overlook, the way Poe took my hand whenever we walked together like we were an old married couple.
“I’m not going to help you,” Mr. Skinny said. “You don’t need help, remember?”
“What are you talking about?”
