by Jenna Black
“Bring my daughter to me,” Belinski said, “and I’ll do what I can to help your friends.”
Belinski was a powerful man, with a powerful military at his fingertips; however, he was deep in enemy territory, whether he knew it or not, and there was no way he’d be able to help the Red Death—especially not if Dorothy’s orders to her security forces were to shoot them on sight. The chances were high that anyone who participated in creating the diversion was going to die, either immediately, or later in custody.
There was a long silence as they all looked at one another, but Nadia soon found that both Shrimp and Nate were looking at her expectantly. Waiting for her to make the final decision. How did it become her responsibility to decide the fate of all these people? She was in the presence of the leader of the Red Death and the rightful Chairman of Paxco, and yet it was her they both looked to.
Nate met her eyes gravely. “Sorry to put this on you, Honey Badger,” he said with a faint smile that quickly faded. “But this is our battle, not Shrimp’s, and we both know you make better decisions than I do.”
“It’s my battle, too,” Shrimp protested, “or I wouldn’t be volunteering. But it’s still y’all’s decision.”
Nadia looked up at the man who had kept them all safe from Maiden and had done so much to aid their efforts. Words couldn’t express how much she hated the idea of risking his life like this, but without the diversion, she didn’t like their chances of successfully meeting up with Chairman Belinski.
“You take only volunteers,” she told him. “I don’t want anyone forced into this.”
Shrimp grinned, showing his gold tooth. “Take a good look at me, Honey. Do I look like I can force these guys to do anything?”
She shrugged. “All right, let’s say pressure instead of force.”
“I picked these guys to come with us for a reason. I won’t need to pressure ’em. Dorothy’s killing our people; we’ll do whatever we have to, to stop her.”
Nadia’s throat felt tight and her eyes burned with suppressed tears. She was almost glad Agnes was unconscious and didn’t have to know what Shrimp was planning to do.
“Sounds to me like you’ve already decided,” Chairman Belinski said. Somehow he managed to look both sympathetic and impatient at the same time. “Tell me where you are. My team is ready to come get you.”
“We’re at the 125th Street subway station,” Nadia responded.
Belinski spoke to someone over his shoulder, then nodded and turned back to the phone. “The car will be there in fifteen minutes. They’ll text this number when it’s time to start the diversion.”
Nadia was afraid she’d start crying if she spoke, so she merely nodded.
“Take good care of Agnes,” Belinski continued. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “She means the world to me.”
Nadia nodded again, and Belinski hung up.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Fifteen minutes wasn’t a whole lot of time to plan much of anything, but Nate was perfectly happy to accept the limitation. The longer they hung around this station, the closer it came to the time for the place to open, the more danger they were all in. And Agnes had not regained consciousness since the talk with her father, not even when Nate had tried to rouse her. At least she was breathing, but the faster she got medical attention, the better.
Shrimp talked things over with his men, all of whom volunteered to be part of the diversion. Nate looked at the Red Death with new eyes, wondering how a gang of murderers and cutthroats had turned into unlikely heroes.
“Seeing your people bombed into oblivion will do that to people,” Kurt said, and Nate jumped, not having heard him approach.
“Was I talking out loud without noticing?” Nate asked, though he knew he had not been.
Kurt grinned at him. “Your face is an open book.”
Nate grinned back, though the expression was forced. “You can’t read, remember?” Nate had been teaching him, so he supposed that was no longer technically true, but it made Kurt smile anyway.
“Only because you’re such a lame-ass teacher.”
Kurt surprised him by pulling him into a hug, holding him tight. Nate had no desire to object, though they were both filthy and stinky, covered in who-knew-what.
“You know I’m not coming with you, right?” Kurt whispered into his ear.
Nate’s arms tightened convulsively, as if he could keep Kurt by his side if only he held on tight enough. “You have to,” he croaked, though a part of him had known all along this was going to happen.
Kurt rubbed his back soothingly. “I can do a hell of a lot more good in the Basement than I can do up there.” Nate felt him jerk his chin toward the stairs leading to the surface. “That’s your territory. The Basement is mine.”
Nate shook his head. “I can’t do this without you.”
Kurt drew away, despite Nate’s attempt to hold on to him, but he didn’t go far, cupping Nate’s face between his hands and peering into his eyes. “Yes, you can. You just don’t want to.”
“Kurt—”
“It’s gotta be this way. We’re the new resistance, remember? That means we’ve all gotta do our part.” He dropped his hands from Nate’s face and gestured toward the far end of the room, where Nadia and Dante were locked in a desperate-looking embrace. “Betcha they’re having the same conversation. The Red Death are gonna need all hands on deck after another night of bombing. You know it’s true.”
Nate did. He hoped getting as many people into the subway tunnels as possible had saved a lot of lives, but there would have been significant casualties nonetheless. There would be people who were trapped, people who were injured. Kurt could save some lives—assuming he could even get back, of course. And there was no guarantee Belinski would be willing to shelter Kurt or Dante anyway.
Nate nodded and tried to look stoically accepting. He suspected his expression was closer to scared and miserable. “Don’t you dare get yourself killed,” he said, his voice going hoarse. “I will so kick your ass if you do.”
“I’ll do my best if you promise you’ll do the same.”
“I’m not the one going back into the war zone.”
Kurt gave him a knowing look. “Yeah, like walking outta here and into Thea’s domain is sooo much safer.”
Nate had to admit, Kurt had a point.
The phone dinged with an incoming message—the signal that it was time to launch the diversion. Nate seized Kurt by the back of the neck, hauling him close and giving him a hard, desperate kiss, hoping against hope it was a see-you-later kiss rather than a good-bye kiss.
“That our cue?” Shrimp asked as soon as the kiss ended.
Nate dragged his eyes away from Kurt and faced Shrimp. “Yeah, that was it.”
Shrimp gestured his men forward, and eight of them stepped up. “I’m sending the others back with Bishop and Captain Studly,” he said, sounding ridiculously cheerful for someone who was about to turn himself into a target. “Can’t leave my peeps back home completely in the dark.”
The eight Red Death members who were part of the diversion were all armed, and Nate hoped they weren’t going to kill any innocent bystanders while they wreaked havoc above. One of them kept coming forward when the others stopped. Shrimp started to turn with a puzzled look on his face, but he didn’t get all the way around before the butt of a gun made contact with the back of his head and he went down like a rock.
“Hey!” Nate yelled in protest, though he wasn’t in any position to stop eight armed men.
The guy who’d hit Shrimp stuck his gun in his waistband while those who were going back to the Basement stepped forward to pick Shrimp up.
“No point him getting killed over this,” the guy said. “We don’t need him. The rest of the Red Death does.”
“You could have just said that,” Nadia said with a glare.
“He wouldn’t have let us go without him.” He and the other seven men of the diversionary party started toward the stairs to
the ground level. “Let’s have some fun!” he shouted, then charged forward.
There were gunshots even before the men reached the top of the stairs. Nate hoped that was just Shrimp’s men making noise to draw attention. He picked up Agnes, who didn’t even stir at his touch, and he and Nadia waited at the base of the stairs for the sounds of the diversion to move away from the entrance. He looked over his shoulder to see Dante, Kurt, and the other Red Death members making their way back down to the platform, carrying Shrimp. Kurt met his eyes briefly, then blew him a kiss and disappeared into the darkness below.
* * *
Nadia waited with Nate and an unconscious Agnes at the base of the stairs, working hard to shut down all emotions so she could concentrate on the task at hand. She didn’t dare let herself think that she might never see Dante again. If she thought about that, she’d lose it completely, because having him had been the only bright spot in her life since the day the original Nate Hayes had died.
There was a loud metallic crash from above, and a section of what looked like fencing came clattering down the stairs. The Red Death yelled and whooped and shot, making so much noise people could probably hear them from a mile away. Glass shattered, and a car alarm started screaming.
“When these guys create a diversion,” Nate quipped, “they go all out.”
“Do you think the car is here yet?” she asked.
“Only one way to find out. Let’s hope our friends don’t get carried away and crush it before we get there.”
Cautiously, they started up the stairs. The Red Death had destroyed the fence blocking the subway’s entrance with a combination of gunfire and one of the well-used crowbars. When Nadia peeked around the railing on one side of the stairs, she saw three of them beating cars—the one wielding the pickax doing an impressive amount of damage. It looked like the other five had found a convenience store and had broken through its front window to loot it. Which, considering Dorothy had shut off food deliveries to the Basement before she’d started bombing, seemed like an excellent way to make their actions have a logical explanation.
Already, there was the sound of approaching sirens, and any civilians who’d been on the street had fled indoors to avoid the mob. In the distance, Nadia saw a car start to turn down the street, but the driver got a look at what was going on and swiftly changed his mind. Which made the old-fashioned station wagon that calmly pulled up to the curb all the more obvious.
“That must be our ride,” Nate said, then ducked reflexively as another gunshot split the night. The sirens were a lot closer already, and a couple of the Red Death were firing at a uniformed officer who must have been patrolling on foot. Hopefully, the officer was too busy trying to stay alive to notice Nate and Nadia as they hurried toward the station wagon, Agnes still unconscious in Nate’s arms.
It was the station wagon’s rear hatch that opened, rather than any of the passenger doors, but that was just fine with Nadia. She sprinted ahead, meaning to jump in and help Nate with Agnes, but Belinski’s security team took charge with a vengeance. One man leapt out of the back and grabbed Nadia, practically throwing her into the car while another snatched Agnes from Nate’s arms.
Nadia didn’t see what happened next, because someone turned her over onto her stomach and sat on her, grinding her face into the carpeted floor of the station wagon and fastening a zip tie around her wrists behind her back. Her every instinct urged her to struggle, but she forced herself to lie still and unresisting. There was no reason for Belinski to trust her or Nate with only the information they’d provided so far. Agnes hadn’t been conscious enough to fully vouch for them, and as far as he knew Nate had kidnapped his daughter and assassinated the previous Chairman of Paxco. Nadia wasn’t the least bit surprised that they were being treated like criminals, even if the injustice of it stung like hell.
Nate was not so resigned, and when he was shoved into the back of the wagon, he tried to kick out at the man who jumped in behind him and pulled the hatch closed. The car took off with a lurch, and Nate’s kick missed. He fought and cursed foully as the man who’d secured Nadia’s wrists got off her and went to help his buddy secure Nate. Nate managed to get him in the shin with one flailing leg, but the kick didn’t have enough leverage to do any damage—except to the man’s temper.
“Stop it, Nate!” Nadia ordered, worried Belinski’s security team was going to get pissed off enough to hurt him. “You’re not helping anything.”
“Listen to the young lady,” one of the men advised, grabbing a fistful of Nate’s hair and using that grip to pin his head down.
Ordinarily, Nate was too stubborn and hotheaded to take such rational advice, but either he realized the futility of his efforts or he was just too exhausted to keep fighting. He went limp and allowed his wrists to be secured behind him. Unlike with Nadia, the men secured Nate’s ankles as well—payback because he’d given them so much trouble, perhaps.
“We just smuggled Agnes out of the Basement at great personal risk,” Nate grated, “and this is how you treat us?”
No one had any comment on that.
“Is it okay if I sit up?” Nadia asked. The men were probably on a hair trigger thanks to Nate, so she didn’t want to make any move without permission first. However, lying facedown in a moving car was far from comfortable, especially when they went around turns. She was going to have rug burns on the side of her face.
Belinski’s men didn’t answer out loud, but one of them helped her into a sitting position, her back braced against the side of the car.
The station wagon ordinarily would have had three rows of seats, but one set of seats was folded down to make it roomier in the back. That’s where Nate and Nadia and the two bodyguards were. Agnes had been laid out across the second row of seats, and a man wearing latex gloves was kneeling on the floorboards in front of her, frowning fiercely at the obviously infected wound on the side of her head.
“Damned savages,” she heard him mutter under his breath as he reached into the bag beside him and pulled out a small pair of scissors.
“The health-care plan in the Basement consists of dropping bombs on their heads,” Nadia informed him, glaring. “They did the best they could under the circumstances.”
The doctor or medic or whatever he was curled his lip in scorn. “By sealing up a dirty wound? Yeah, that was real helpful.”
“It would have been so much better to leave it open and bleeding,” she agreed, taking a thorough dislike to the man already. But Agnes needed him, and it did no one any good for Nadia to waste time arguing with him, so she refrained from any other smart remarks. “She’s also got a wound on her ribs on the right and almost certainly has a concussion.”
The medic rolled his eyes. “That your professional opinion?” He turned his attention back to Agnes, carefully picking out the clumsy stitches.
Nadia refused to rise to the bait and gave Nate a precautionary look in case he was about to snap. He was clearly grinding his teeth, but he kept quiet.
“I’m assuming it’s useful for you to know her symptoms,” Nadia said, “since she’s not awake to tell you herself. She was dizzy and disoriented and she threw up a lot.”
The medic didn’t respond, instead talking to the driver. “Crack the windows, would you? It reeks back here.”
Nadia’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment. They had to stink, of course, but she’d gotten used to the smell and didn’t much appreciate having it pointed out.
The man who had helped Nadia sit up flashed her a rueful smile. “His bedside manner reeks almost as much as you guys do, but believe it or not he’s good at what he does.”
“And luckily most of his patients are unconscious when he works on them,” the other member of Belinski’s team muttered under his breath.
Nadia didn’t have it in her to laugh, or even smile. Instead, she laid her head back and closed her eyes while trying to convince herself she was safe now.
* * *
Nadia didn’t know where Bel
inski’s men were taking them—they weren’t exactly a communicative bunch—but it was somewhere out of the city, and for that she was grateful. There was too much surveillance within the city limits, and much less of it out in the suburbs and the countryside.
They drove for what Nadia guessed was the better part of an hour, the dangers of Manhattan disappearing behind them as the sun rose and the steel and concrete of the city morphed into rolling farmland and quaint small towns.
Eventually, the car pulled into a winding gravel drive that led to a picturesque farmhouse with no visible neighbors. The bonds around Nate’s ankles were cut so he could walk, and he and Nadia were hustled in through a side door. They passed a pair of men carrying a stretcher, which was presumably for Agnes, who had remained unconscious throughout the medic’s ministrations and the rest of the drive. Nadia had met with nothing but a glare when she asked how Agnes was doing, and she worried that the girl needed to be in a hospital instead of being furtively treated in someone’s country home. Not that she had any say in the matter.
Nate and Nadia were directed to a small but comfortable bedroom featuring a queen-sized bed covered in a patchwork quilt Nadia suspected was handmade. The night-stands and dresser had a rustic whitewash finish, and the walls were covered in blue- and white-striped wallpaper, all of which lent the room a homey feeling very much at odds with the heavy-duty electronic locks on the door and the surveillance cameras in the ceiling.
“The windows are locked and the glass is bulletproof,” the head of the security detail, who’d introduced himself as Mr. Parker, informed them. “Don’t get any funny ideas.”
“We’re not planning to go anywhere,” Nadia assured him. “When can we see Chairman Belinski?”
Mr. Parker shrugged. “When he feels like it. Now hold still.”
Mr. Parker’s hands were coolly professional enough that Nadia didn’t feel violated by his perfunctory pat-down, though she could tell by the high color in his face and the glitter in his eye that Nate was seething. For once, however, he managed to keep his mouth shut and endure in silence. Mr. Parker had already divested him of the gun when he’d first been shoved into the car, and he had no other weapons on him.
