Max Edwards led the way down a long, narrow hallway. Cameras hung at regular intervals. It was all steel and concrete, and I felt the chill that seeped through the walls. “So how far underground are we?” I asked the man, who didn’t say a thing.
We passed beneath a series of strange grates.
“Biohazard detectors?” I asked. “Air vents?”
Again, the man was silent, but I didn’t need him to reply. I just needed him to take me to Preston, so I kept counting our steps, noticing the gradual incline of the hall. I wasn’t exactly new to covert underground facilities, so wobbly head and upset stomach or not, I was starting to feel like I might be on slightly familiar ground. But then the hallway turned, and I came to an abrupt stop in front of the most intimidating door I’d ever seen.
“Well, this is special,” I said while Edwards waved up at a security camera that was stationed overhead. “If I didn’t know any better”—I talked on while Edwards placed his palm on a scanner and looked into a retinal image camera—“I’d say this is a door fit for a…”
The door sprang open, swinging wide, as I finished, “…prison.”
I glanced up at Agent Edwards, but again he said nothing. Still, I could see in his eyes that I was right.
There were guards and thick walls. Cameras covered every angle, not hidden, not disguised. It was a place built to remind you that Big Brother was watching.
The doors were made to lock down in a flash. It was all steel and chrome and concrete, and even if Edwards had had the forethought to pack me a jacket, I’m pretty sure I would have shivered.
“He shouldn’t be in prison,” I snapped at the man beside me. But Agent Edwards only laughed, a condescending huff that, despite the chill, burned me.
“Preston Winters is the next generation of one of the most powerful and notorious criminal families in the history of the world. Put your hand here, Cammie,” he instructed, almost as an afterthought, but I did as I was told.
My palm stung, but I didn’t let him see me wince.
Finally, the guards cleared us to go through yet another massive door. I felt Agent Edwards’s hand on my back. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn he was worried for me as he instructed, “Once in the room, Cammie, do not leave your chair. You cannot carry anything in your pockets or in your hair. Do not mention the day of the week or the time of day.”
There, among those windowless rooms and artificial lights, I knew the game they were playing.
“I don’t know the day of the week or the time of day,” I reminded him.
“Of course.” He didn’t scold me. He sounded too nervous.
“This is wrong,” I told him. “He doesn’t deserve to be here.”
“These are the rules, Cammie. Now, you can abide by them, or you can leave and we will have gone to a great deal of trouble for nothing. It’s your call.”
There comes a time in every spy’s life when you don’t have the luxury of caring. Emotion is a rarity, a commodity so precious that you have to dole it out in special, secret batches. Agent Edwards had passed that point. This was a place for people who had to be immune to what they did, to what it meant. And I didn’t know if the chill inside the prison came from being underground or from the cold hearts of the people who filled it.
He looked at me as if I were still young and innocent, as if part of him envied me because I was still able to feel. A part of me wondered how much longer I had before my heart froze over too.
“Come, Cammie.” He reached for the final door. “Your country needs you.”
The first time I met Preston Winters he’d been twenty pounds too light for his frame, wearing clothes that were chosen by some focus group somewhere. He’d been too quick to smile—too easy to laugh. He’d been all about bad jokes and good eye contact, and I’d liked him. I’d liked him a lot.
But walking into the small, sterile room with a lone metal chair and a window of darkened glass, I couldn’t imagine the boy I knew inside that place. The Preston Winters I’d met had been normal. Helpless. Free.
“I can stay with you, Cammie.…” Agent Edwards sounded nervous, afraid for me, as if part of him were starting to regret bringing me here and making me a part of this world. But it was my world too.
I thought about the scars on my body.
It was my fight.
So I turned to him. “Get out.”
I walked nervously to the heavy metal chair in the center of the room and sat down like I’d been told to do. In the reflection of the glass I could see the cameras trained on me. I had no illusion of privacy. Preston and I would be recorded from every angle; they wouldn’t miss a single word. But at least I’d get to see him. At least I’d get to tell Macey he was okay.
I sat alone for ten minutes, but I didn’t shift. I didn’t waver. I wasn’t about to let the men on the other side of those cameras see me sweat.
Then a buzzer sounded. The glass went bright, and I looked through to the other side at Ambassador Winters, who sat smiling back at me.