Niall looked like he was typing away at something. “Early tomorrow morning, at nine.”
Sauda nodded. “Don’t say a word to anyone. When Penelope’s final party rolls around in seventeen hours, you should both be back here in America. Understood?”
Sydney wanted to scream at them both. She could feel the frustration searing through her bones, stinging the tip of her tongue. Her skin tingled with anger. They had just gotten a breakthrough. And now all of it had been a waste of time.
When she spoke again, though, her voice came out steady and cold. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You know there’s no other way,” Sauda told her, her words solemn.
“You taught me there’s always a way,” Sydney replied.
“In the training arena, yes. In the real world?” The woman’s eyes flickered, and for a moment, Sydney felt as she had when Sauda first discovered her stealing habits, when she’d sat in Sauda’s office as Sauda patiently ran her through drill after drill of resisting the temptation to take.
It’s impossible,Sydney remembered saying as she failed a drill.
Nothing’s impossible,Sauda had replied.Do it again.
But now the woman was staring at her with a look of resignation. “In the real world,” she went on, “we are pushed by forces greater than ourselves. Survival depends on knowing when to succumb to those forces.”
“But—”
“No more questions, Sydney.”
Sauda’s gaze was so piercing that Sydney finally looked away toward Winter. He said nothing.
“See you both at customs,” Niall said.
Then he and Sauda ended the call, and their images vanished.
Sydney let out a long, slow breath. Her shoulders hunched with sudden exhaustion, and she stared down at her open palms curled in her lap. Then she looked up again, locking eyes with Winter on the other side of her silent phone.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly.
He shrugged and looked away toward the shaded window. “What for?”
“I know this isn’t what you expected.”
“Has it ever gone how you expected?”
She shook her head. “More often than not, no,” she admitted.
“It never does,” he murmured.
The haunted expression still hovered on his face, and in it, she couldsee a remnant of something in his distant past, memories plaguing his mind. It reminded her of the way he’d looked during the tour of Panacea’s headquarters, when she had brought up Artie Young more callously than she should have.
His eyes skipped back to hers, and his grieving look vanished as quickly as it had come. He looked down. “We can’t leave like this.”
She nodded. “And we won’t.”
He searched her gaze. She stared calmly back. There was something hypnotically soothing about his presence, something that gave her strength. She wanted to be nearer to him. She wanted to do something about the sudden charge that the air seemed to hold.
“You’re suggesting going rogue?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
A pause. “Sauda and Niall are going to be so pissed off at you.”
She shrugged. “Let me handle Sauda and Niall. This is bigger than any of us now. So if I have to go it alone, I will.”
