When the woman reappeared with a sleek metal case, she smiled and placed it on a small table, closed the door, and left me alone.
I knew it wasn’t a bomb, of course, and yet, reaching for the lid, I could have sworn I felt my heart stop beating.
Had I purchased that safety deposit box when I was there last summer? Had I left a clue inside? Or was it just an elaborate cover, a ruse I’d used to access the bank and run some other scheme?
Those were just a few of the thoughts inside my head as I reached for the lid and slowly lifted, expecting anything but what I saw.
“Dad’s journal?”
I’d wondered where it was for weeks, but holding it in my hands felt anticlimactic. “It’s Dad’s journal,” I said again, just as there was a knock on the door.
“Is everything okay?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” I called, shoving the journal into the back waistband of my jeans.
Looking down at the now-empty box, I tried to focus on the positive. “I was here,” I told myself.
The fact should have made me happy. There was another point on the atlas, a thumbnail on the map of the war room in Sublevel One. But then I had to admit that the box itself was worthless. We had come a long, long way for nothing.
There was a new attendant waiting for me when I finally opened the door and stepped outside. He glanced behind me and saw the empty box sitting on the table, then asked in Italian if everything was okay.
“Sì,” I told him. I started to turn and go back the way we’d come, but the man gestured in the opposite direction.
“This way,” he said.
“But…” I pointed to where the main lobby lay.
“The exit is this way,” he said, so I followed.
I don’t know if it was some latent memory or just a sick feeling in my gut, but the comms unit in my ear crackled, and I felt alone with that strange man.
Way too alone.
The corridor slanted upward, and as we walked, I knew we had to be nearing the surface, and yet there was nothing but static in my ear.
Something was wrong, I knew it. And then the man leaned forward to push open a door. His blazer gapped, and that’s when I saw the gun beneath his arm, holster unclasped and gun ready to draw.
A primal, urgent cry was sounding in my head, and before the sunlight even hit me, I was already spinning, kicking him to the ground, knocking his head against the stone wall and starting to run.
“I’m in an alley southwest of the bank,” I said, but no one answered. Even the static was gone. I heard nothing but the revving of engines as two motorcycles started down the alley, coming fast.
I turned and bolted in the other direction. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that the bank had been compromised. My comms unit was silent. And the motorcycles were getting closer.
Soon they’d overtake me. My only hope was the street.
I had to make it to the street.
And then…
“Cammie!” a voice yelled. Ambassador Winters was parked in the mouth of the alley, throwing open the door of a car. “Get in!”
Chapter Twenty-eight
It didn’t feel like a rescue, and it wasn’t an extraction. I studied Preston’s father—the way he gripped the steering wheel too tightly and drove too fast down incredibly narrow cobblestone streets.
“Ambassador Winters, thank you so much. I was lost and—”
“Now’s not the time for lies, Cammie,” he said, glancing frantically at the street behind us. He hunched over the wheel in a totally inappropriate posture for high-speed driving as he examined the rearview mirror. “How many are there?”