They stopped abruptly before the table. Sydney heard Penelope rise in a smooth motion, then looked up to see her holding out the cube.
“Where’s the hairpin?” Penelope asked Sydney now.
“I lost it,” Sydney lied, glancing toward Connor.
Penelope glanced at Winter. “Maybe you gave it to him. Shall I ask?”
Winter stayed quiet.
Say something!she screamed at him in her head.Tell any lie!By the time Penelope figured it out, Winter could have also worked out a way to escape.
But he didn’t speak.
“Be done with him already,” Connor said to Penelope with a sigh. “Everyone still thinks he’s at the hospital, anyway. Tell them to send out word that he succumbed to his fan’s gunshot wound. We can get intel out of the girl instead.”
Sydney met Winter’s eyes, could see him trembling from the strain of his bonds. How could they have missed the clues about Penelope? How had she hidden her true self so well?
Penelope turned her hardened gaze back on them, then gestured again at her guards.
Sydney felt the two men holding her shove her violently forward. She fell hard to the floor, curling instinctively inward as if to protect herself, and forced her head to stay down.
She heard the restraints on Winter’s wrists pull taut above her and knew that he must have seen her fall.
“Let me ask again,” Penelope said. Her voice seemed to stay the same, but Sydney could hear the slightest hardening of the words. “Where is it?”
Thoughts raced through Sydney’s head. By now, Sauda and Niall would know of their predicament—her brief signal to them should have done that much. She knew Panacea would be doing all they could in order to get them out. But they still had no way of knowing where Winter and Sydney were being kept, especially now that they were on board a moving ship. Their devices had all been stripped from them. They were off the grid, and still on their own.
Their only saving grace was the fact that Winter’s body was missing from a hospital. News about his being shot onstage should have hit the newswires already. That meant every fan on the planet was searching desperately for updates on how Winter was doing. If Panacea couldn’t find them, then maybe the rest of the world could.
She knew Penelope knew this. Winter would have to die soon. The sound of the waves crashing against the hull of the ship echoed through Sydney’s body.
“Still no answer?” Penelope said, and this time Sydney looked up from the ground. The girl looked mournful, as if they were forcing her to be cruel. “Please, Winter. I could have sworn you cared for her more than this.”
Sydney’s eyes darted to Winter. He was still lying on the table, his head turned toward her as far as he could manage, and his eyes were wide, glossy with fear. Gone was the flirt, the graceful swagger and the mischievous grin. He looked at her as if pleading with her to do something, as if something from her training with Panacea might kick in at any moment to save them.
He looked at her in the way he had when she’d been poisoned.
Before she could say anything, one of the guards seized a fistful of her hair and forced her head up. She winced as he pulled hard enough to bring her momentarily off the ground.
“Hold her mouth open,” Penelope said.
Sydney saw the girl approach her, then hold up the cube. Everythingin her seemed to narrow into a blade. Her fear funneled her concentration into a needle.
“Stop! Stop!”
Winter’s voice, hoarse and anguished, cut through the moment.
Sydney met his eyes and saw resignation there.No,she wanted to yell at him.No, do not let them break you now.
Winter tore his eyes away from her and back toward Penelope. “I had it. Back at the house. It’s in my luggage—I never gave it to her.”
Sydney couldn’t believe her ears.
The lie slipped from his lips like water, so devoid of hesitation and so crystal clear in its desperation that for an instant she forgot Panacea existed. And here she’d thought Winter was too terrified to know what to do or say. A memory came back to her of Winter from his first performance—the way he’d transformed in a second from a tied-up boy against the floor to a dark-eyed heartbreaker. The way he’d broken free from his bonds.
Only now did she see his hands twisting subtly against the restraints, moving so quietly that it might as well be a magic act. He was working on freeing himself, and no one even noticed.
Sauda would be proud.
