Sydney glanced up—and sure enough, there was the car, with the same license plate as the police vehicle that had been at the roundabout.
“Shit,” Tems swore.
Sydney glanced at Tems. “Are we going as fast as possible?”
“As fast as possible?” Tems’s face darkened. “Do you not remember how fast we were going during a motorcycle course in training? Of course I can go faster than this.” Then he floored the gas pedal, and they shot forward.
Sydney clung to the sides of her seat with all her strength as they rocketed up to the taillight of the car in front of them, then swerved out of the way at the last second.
Behind them, the police car disappeared over the bend of the road.
Tems tapped on his phone, then tossed it aside in frustration. “Can’t reach the CIA.”
“Can you reach Sauda?” Winter asked Sydney.
“Trying,” Sydney answered, looking down at her phone. She couldn’t bear to think about Sauda’s voice on the phone, about having to break the news to her. But the connectivity had already been low at the event. It was nonexistent now—and as they drove on, she saw the bars drop to nothing. An error message popped up on her screen.
Please still be at the airfield,she thought.
Tems glanced over at her. “If our attackers are targeting Panacea, then they might know about the airfield.” He stared gloomily out at the road. “What time is it?”
“Eighteen twenty-two,” Sydney said.
He nodded. “We’re within the time limit that Sauda gave us—and at this pace, we’ll arrive within the half hour.”
Sydney found herself nodding along. He was right, of course. They’d be in the air long before any authorities could stop them. But no thought of escape could bring any of them relief. All this time and effort. All the sacrifice, arguments, fights—just for it to end horrifically. The president was dead. The diplomatic fallout from this would be catastrophic.
But Sydney couldn’t even think about that right now. She could only think of Niall.
Niall was gone. Had died right before her eyes. She couldn’t stop seeing the explosion over and over, couldn’t stop remembering the dazed look in his eyes as he turned his gaze to Sydney, blood trickling down his face.
And that moment, right before the explosion, he’d looked like he knew he was going to die.
“There will be war,” Winter said, his voice so quiet that Sydney could barely hear him. “Won’t there?”
Tems gave him a subtle nod in the mirror. “If we’re lucky, it will happen from a distance.”
Sydney looked out the window at the airfield that now came into view and wondered, as her adrenaline surge began to level out, whatdistancereally meant. What was the point, if everyone else would be swept up in it? If they hadn’t accomplished what they came here to do?
As they pulled off the freeway, the tension in her gut surged again. Her eyes searched the airfield for the plane that Niall had described.A Cessna Citation Longitude,she told herself, looking for the airframe. He had said it would be parked here, at the east end of the private field, waiting for their arrival.
But all she saw was an empty field.
Other planes were in their hangars. The only aircraft in sight weretwo commercial liners waiting at their gates. But no other planes were here.
The tension in her gut churned into white-hot dread.
“It’s not here,” she whispered as they slowed to a stop at the end of the airfield.
Tems stared at the runway, his face pale. “It has to be here,” he argued, searching for a plane that didn’t exist.
Winter said nothing. He looked not at the field, but at Sydney, and as their eyes met in the rearview mirror, they seemed to telegraph the same sinking realization.
Panacea’s plane had been forced to leave them behind.
21On Your Own
“The international airport has been locked down,” Tems said as he scrolled through the news on his phone. “I’m seeing confirmation online. No planes allowed to take off, and no cars allowed through any of the airport’s exit points.”
