Nate nods slowly, accepting it. Believing it.
Then alarm suddenly dawns on his face.
“You need to go,” he says. “Right now. Before I—before it comes back. Before she makes me?—”
“What about Cal?”
The question scrapes out of me. I don’t want to leave him here, lying on the floor like discarded trash. I can’t. He deserves better. He deserves so much better. He deserves a proper burial, a flag-draped coffin, someone to mourn him who isn’t just the woman who couldn’t love him back.
“I’ll handle it,” he says firmly, his eyes fixed on an empty spot on the wall. “I’ll take care of him. I’ll make sure he’s—” His voice breaks. “Just go. Get somewhere safe. Don’t tell me where. If I know, she’ll know. If she activates me again—Christ, Mia. She knew what she was doing when she sent me here. She wanted this to happen. And for all I know, she wants you dead now, too. And if I don’t do it, someone else will. You hear me? Your cover has been blown. Julia, I think sheknows. She has to know, she?—”
He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t have to.
I move without thinking, shedding the robe as I cross to where my clothes are draped over a chair. Jeans. Boots. Bra. Shirt. Sweater. Jacket. I dress with mechanical efficiency, myhands steady even though the rest of me is shaking apart. Muscle memory taking over when my mind can’t.
The earrings catch my eye.
The jewelry box is still sitting on the dresser where Nate left it, lid open, the delicate gold pieces glinting in the lamplight. New comms. That’s what Cal was bringing me. New ears to replace the ones Nate ripped out and swallowed.
I grab them. Shove them in my pocket.
My go-bag is under the bed where I always keep it. A few passports under different names, cash, another burner phone, a change of clothes, a knife I shouldn’t have been able to get through customs. Everything a girl needs to disappear.
I sling it over my shoulder and turn back to Nate.
He’s standing exactly where I left him, motionless, a statue of a man carved from guilt and horror. Cal’s body lies at his feet and for a moment I sway, unmoored by the horror of it all.
“Mia,” Nate says softly. “I’m sorry. I’m so?—”
“I know.”
I know he is, but I can’t hear his apologies right now. I can’t stand here and watch him fall apart while Cal’s blood is still warm, while the echo of that sound—that wet, final crunch—is still reverberating through my bones.
I glance at the gun on the carpet. I should probably take it but I know I can’t, can’t take anything that might connect me to this horrible scene. Vanguard will get rid of it.
I look at Cal one last time.
I’m sorry,I think.I’m sorry I couldn’t love you. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry the last thing you saw was him.
Then I look at Vanguard, knowing it will be the last time I look at him too.
Then I run.
The hallway blurs past me. The elevator takes forever to come, long enough that I almost take the stairs, but then thedoors slide open and I’m inside, jabbing the button for the lobby, watching the numbers count down while my reflection stares back at me from the polished steel—pale, hollow-eyed, a ghost of whoever I was twenty minutes ago.
Cal is dead.
Nate killed him.
And I’m running, just like Nate told me to, because that’s all I know how to do anymore. It’s all I’ve ever known how to do.
CHAPTER 41
MIA
The lobby is quiet,just a bored concierge scrolling through her phone and a couple checking in with too much luggage, nobody paying attention to the woman with the bag over her shoulder and the wild look in her eyes. I push through the revolving door and Manhattan hits me like a wall—cold air, wet pavement, fat drops of rain beginning to fall.
I make myself walk. A brisk walk. Running attracts attention.
