“I’m happy you made it out okay.”
“Me, too.” Da Vinci patted the top of her hand before glancing at the clock above the doorframe. “We don’t have much time. I have someone I need to go meet.”
“The agent who saved me?”
“No.” Da Vinci shook his head. “Someone else, but you have to believe me when I say that I will come back. Not soon, but I will.”
“What?” Ruby widened her eyes and her heart rate spiked so quickly the monitor lagged behind it. “You’re leaving me, too?”
“I have to. For you to be safe and be able to live a normal life, I have to, Ruby. It isn’t safe for us to be in contact right now.”
“Da Vinci, you can’t.” Her mouth hung just open, her breathing shallow. “I…I…What if something happens? What if more agents come?”
“They won’t. I promise you they won’t, but you have to let me go for now.”
“Where are you going to go?”
“I’m going to see my son.” It was such a pretty lie. “There’s a war coming, a big one. Lots of people are going to die and he’s going to be one of them.”
“More death.” Ruby stared at her lap. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’ll be all right, and so will you, okay?”
“I’m scared.” She teared up.
“Here.” Da Vinci took a pencil and notepad from the bedside table next to her. It was watermarked with the hospital’s logo. “Take this address and write to me. You remember the cipher Diana taught you?”
Ruby nodded in confirmation.
“Use it.” He then scribbled a number below it. “And call this number, but only in a serious emergency. Things are going to be rough at first, but you’ll grow back into your old life. You have to. This dark, horrible world I’m in, that Rigan was in, it doesn’t have to be yours, but you have to make that choice, Ruby. Contact me when you need me and know that I am looking out for you. We’ll see each other in due time.”
“I’ve spent nearly every day for the past three months with you all, and I’m just supposed to go on pretending nothing happened?”
Da Vinci smiled sadly. “For now. It’s the only way to guarantee your safety.”
She hesitated before speaking. “Do you know this because you’ve seen it? Or is this…uh…wishful thinking?”
Da Vinci moved his shoulders with exhausted exaggeration. “I know how you die, Ruby Starr, and it’s got nothing to do with spies.”
“Okay,” Ruby said. “And you have to go…in order to make that happen?”
“Yes.” A tear ran down Da Vinci’s cheek. “You don’t want to know how you die?”
“And torture myself like you? No, thanks.” She smiled through the pain. What was done, was done.
“Before I go, I need you to promise me three things.”
“Anything.”
“First, you steer clear of drugs. There’s a plague coming and I don’t want you in the middle of it. Second, you stay in the hospital long enough for your parents to come visit you.”
Ruby opened her mouth to protest, but Da Vinci quickly shut her down.
“I said come and visit. You don’t have to move back in.” He teased her with a melancholy kind of tone. “Give your folks some closure and peace of mind before you run off into the great beyond, kid.”
Her face relaxed as she listened to his third stipulation.
“And last—” He dug into his back pocket and fished from it an old, beaten compass. “I want you to take this.”
Ruby held it in her hands and ran her thumb across the scratched-up glass.
“It was mine, and then it was Rigan’s, and now it is yours. Whenever you start to doubt if any of it really happened, I want you to hold onto this, all right? It was real. We were real. We mattered.”
“I’m going to miss you, Da Vinci.” Ruby nodded tentatively, likely not understanding the gravity of his words.
“I’m gonna miss you, kid.” He leaned over the barricade of the bed and hugged her before standing. “I’m going to leave now, but I won’t be gone too long, all right? Just long enough.”
Ruby bit her lip and smiled, simple tears running down her face.
As Da Vinci left, he remembered the first time he’d seen all the day’s deaths unfold some months ago in the basement of the KGB facility. Da Vinci revisited this memory all too often. It was the last time he’d spoken to her before he knew. The last time he saw her before he saw her death. There was a careless optimism about his former self that he envied. But his wallowing was cut short by the wailing of a steam engine and the reappearance of three familiar faces.
The tall always-graceful Minerva stepped off the train first. Sleek, swooning Geronimo followed her, and behind them was Adams. Da Vinci stopped them all midstride.
“Niccolò.” Adams sounded surprised.
“You’re alive.” Geronimo smiled, wide. “Where are the others?”
Da Vinci maintained eye contact with Adams. “Top of the mountain by Hazel Creek. Nothing left but a remains recovery.”
“Shit.” Minerva balled her hands into fists.
Adams turned to his partners, then removed and cleaned his thin-framed glasses. “You two go. I’ll be there shortly.”
Geronimo turned and started off toward the end of the train terminal. Minerva stayed back only for a second before following.
“How’d she go?” Adams asked, then walked past Da Vinci and sat on a small, wooden bench close by.
“Nikola.” Da Vinci joined him on the bench.
Adams had an expression on that showed little surprise but great sadness. “Always knew that one would come back to haunt her…Marco and Dresden?”
“Both killed by Nikola,” Da Vinci assured him. “They died defending her.”
“What about Nikola’s team?”
“No team.” Da Vinci shook his head. “She’d gone rogue.”
They sat for a moment, staring out at the trains pulling away from the station, and the crowds of people hurrying by.
Eventually, Adams said, “I’m sorry about Marco.”
“I’m sorry about Hera.” Da Vinci ran his hands along his head, smoothing his bandana. “I don’t think I can do this anymore, Adams.”
“Give it time,” Adams hushed him. “We’ll go over your options later.”
Da Vinci sat, knowing he had only one option. He’d spend the rest of his life protecting Ruby Starr. She’d get to live. She’d get to be happy. They’d all died for her. In due time, he’d die for her, too. Da Vinci stood and followed Adams out of the station, back to the woods where he knew no bodies would be found.
Epilogue
JULY 3, 1965
Ruby rested her elbow on the diner counter, she had a Coke in her hand and a straw pressed between her plump lips. Her hair was beautiful and wild, curls in every direction. She had not only a compass dangling on a chain around her neck, but also the attention of all the patrons at the diner’s counter.
“So, I’m running as fast as I can, and my feet are slipping and sliding on the ice of the mountain, and for a second there, I think I’m going to go over the edge of this cliff. When all of a sudden…Wham!” Ruby slammed her hand on the diner’s counter and the girls listening all jumped in their seats. “A yeti bigger than my van comes tearing out of a cave and runs right past me.” She spread her arms as wide as they’d go, showing just how large the yeti had been. “I catch my balance and narrowly escape with my life. I was this close.” Ruby held up her hand and pressed her thumb and index finger close together. “To death and the yeti, come to think of it.”
“Bull!” A tall, dark-skinned girl cocked her head to the side and jumped down from her seat at the counter, pulling Ruby’s attention away from the flock of listeners and centering it on herself. “I can believe the one about aliens in Greece. I can even believe the one with the groovy harpoon death on an ocean liner, but Ruby Starr, I cannot—cannot believe that a North American yeti would reveal itself so easily. That just don’t make sense.”
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br /> “Misty, girl, you are always bringing me down.” Ruby sighed, looking to her friend Bruno for support. “Bruno, do you get me?”
“Mission control, I hear you loud and clear.” He laughed, wrinkling his forehead.
“But are you receiving?” Misty pulled off Bruno’s hat and placed it on her head. “Come on. Let’s blow out of here. We’ve still got a couple hours left before dark. I bet we can make it even closer than last time.”
Ruby picked up her bag from the counter and left a few spare bills as a tip. “You two are always tag-teaming me.” She pouted.
As they stepped outside, the desert heat hit her. They were in for a long day and an even longer night. Ready to roll, she slid on a pair of sunglasses and dug her keys out of her purse. She paused only when the sound of a motorbike echoing off in the distance caught her attention. For a moment, her heart broke and overwhelming sadness took her, followed by overwhelming happiness.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to my parents for their immeasurable love and support.
Thank you to my partner Pedro for encouraging me to follow my dreams when I was ready to give up.
Unyielding thanks to the team over at Nine Star Press for picking me out of hundreds of twitter pitches and helping improve both the manuscript and myself.
A grand bow to Sara Gay, Brett Hill, Alec Schaeffer, and Andrea Stimpson for reading the book in its earliest draft –I speak for all of us when I say yikes.
And a special shout out to Susan Halle Hays and the rangers over at the Smokey Mountain National Park visitor’s center for always ensuring my love of history was strong and fiercely fact checked.
About the Author
Hannah Carmack is a writer and spends most of her time connecting reluctant readers and bookworms alike to the world of literature and science. Although living with an auto-immune disease is difficult, she finds power in using her writing as a way to convey the world that people with disabilities live in to people who may not fully comprehend it.
Website: www.hannahcarmack.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/HannahCarmackAuthor
Twitter: @manlyhamm
Instagram: www.instagram.com/manlyhamm
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