“Liz, get back into the NYPD database and alert all units in the area that we have possible terror activity. If Homeland Security isn’t going to take this seriously, maybe the NYPD will. Let’s see if we can’t get them to shut this thing down.”
“I’m on it,” Liz told me.
In my mind, I flashed back to another clear day, another charismatic man behind a microphone while crowds cheered. At the time, Macey’s father had been running for vice president, and we’d thought that she was the one the Circle of Cavan was chasing. At the time, Mr. Solomon had spoken about security perimeters—long-range, mid-range, short-range. Zones A, B, and C. And I looked to the horizon.
“What can we do about snipers?” I asked, and Zach scanned the skyline. Clear views and light wind. And even without saying a word, I could see it in Zach’s eyes. He didn’t like the situation.
He looked at Bex, who shook her head.
“That building puts you on top of three different bus routes. It’s a clear shot with great exits. So…nothing,” she said. “There is nothing we can do about snipers except…”
“We’ve got to get him out of here,” I filled in the rest.
On the stage, King Najeeb spoke on, a somber silence sweeping farther through the crowd with every word. “I do not hate the men who burned my father’s statues. I have forgiven the mob who dragged my mother from her bed.”
I thought of my own mother. Where was she sleeping? And would she wake one night to the feeling of a cold barrel of a gun against her temple?
A limousine and two NYPD police cruisers were pulling around the back of the crowd to a small area behind the stage. I felt a tiny bit of hope that maybe it was working—that he was leaving.
Together, we started pushing through the crowd, trying to make our way to the stage and the man upon it, who kept speaking. If King Najeeb knew the danger he was in, he didn’t show it.
“The home I love is gone now, but I do not mourn for it. I pray instead for the promise of a new day, a new era, a new beginning, when peace and love can shine upon all the children of Caspia. A new reign of hope and not of fear, of promise and not of terror. I pray for home. I pray for Caspia. I pray for the future.”
Applause filled the streets, followed by chants and cries. King Najeeb stepped away from the microphone and waved triumphantly at the crowd. I felt my heart start to beat again, knowing he was finished. He was okay. But he wasn’t safe, and we all knew it. I waited for him to leave the stage, for his guards to hurry him into the waiting car; but the king pushed his guards aside.
“He’s a man of the people,” I said, citing some article that Mr. Smith had made us read once about all the royals in the world who were living in exile. The former king chose an apartment over a palace, a subway pass over a limousine. And, whenever possible, he liked to walk wherever he went.
The peaceful, easy chanting of the crowd was changing, morphing from song to roar, as the people parted and the king climbed down from the stage, easing out into the crowd as if intending to shake the hand of every person who had gathered there.
“No!” I yelled. “He’s got to go! Make him go!” I yelled to no one in particular. My cries were lost inside the crowd.
There were guards in dark suits speaking into his ear, but King Najeeb didn’t seem to notice them or care. He was shaking the hands of his people. Blessing babies and waving at the masses like a returning, conquering hero.
He walked without a worry or a fear in the world right through the heart of Security Perimeter B—the area that was most dangerous for short-range arms and high-powered explosives.
Was it that thought that made me stop? I don’t know. Maybe my subconscious saw the small, abandoned package before the rest of me could process what it meant. Maybe it was Joe Solomon’s voice in the back of my head or my father’s angel on my shoulder, but in any case I did stop.
And I looked at the package on the ground, directly in the king’s path.
And I heard my own voice scream, “Bomb!”
Looking back, it was like it happened in slow motion—like running through sand. One moment, I was watching the king stroll through his people, shaking hands. The next there was nothing but a cloud of smoke and terror. People screamed. Children cried. But it all sounded so far away, like a TV blaring in a distant room.
I coughed and squinted. The force of the blow had knocked me to the ground, and my side ached. My hands hurt. It took everything I had to force myself upright.
“Cam!” Zach was yelling. I realized there was static in my ear. The blast must have knocked out our comms units. In the smoke, we were practically deaf and blind.
“Cam!” Bex yelled.
“I’m here!” I said. There was a bleeding woman carrying a child.
A man stumbled through the crowd, his face so covered in blood that I couldn’t even tell what damage had been done.
“I’m here,” I said, softer, as I pushed against the current of people trying to flee the blast site. I had to see it. The crater where the bomb had begun. The mangled bodies of the guards and the man who was Caspia’s only hope for peace.
“And I’m too late.”
Chapter Thirty-one