checked in to the international airport in Athens. I could just imagine some warning system in one of Davis’s buildings going off, alerting them I’d surfaced.
I made room for Ethan, then Alec, behind me. Josh and Ty waited just past the little booths. As I moved to join them, I gripped the strap of my backpack, my knuckles going white, and looked up for the security camera. I spotted it in the corner, near the ceiling.
Davis would get access to it.
With every bit of determination and anger I possessed permeating my gaze, I stared it down as if it were the devil himself perched in the corner and not an inanimate object. Just for good measure, I mouthed, Come and get me.
Then I turned and marched to our boarding gate.
Thirty
We had fifteen hours—the time it took to travel from Athens to Washington DC—to mentally prepare for what was to come. I’d expected to find it impossible to sit still, expected to fight against the adrenaline, but as we reached cruising altitude, a kind of calm fell over me.
Alec and Tyler slept most of the way, conserving energy while they could. Ethan dozed too, but he found it difficult to get comfortable in the tight seats, which were definitely not designed for someone his size. Josh and I didn’t sleep a wink, both of us lost in our thoughts.
We needed to give our people on the ground time to prepare, but I still wished the flight wasn’t so long. We’d debated taking a shorter one, just going somewhere in Europe or even waiting for him in Athens, but in the end, we’d decided to go home.
According to intelligence reports, Davis was somewhere on the West Coast, and I wanted to make sure he came for me himself. Mostly, I wanted to send him a message—I was done running. He was not going to keep me from my home any longer, stop me from being where I belonged. While we weren’t flying into New York, it was close enough. Besides, DC was a smaller airport and would be easier to evacuate.
We landed in late afternoon, the hot sun casting golden light over the vast planes of the airport, but when we parked on the tarmac and didn’t move for a long time, it became clear something was wrong. Passengers were getting restless by the time the pilot finally made an announcement. “Folks, we have an emergency situation, and I’ve been instructed by ground control not to approach the airport terminal. We’re going to deploy the emergency slides and disembark. I’ve been assured we’re safe here, but we do need to evacuate the aircraft in a calm and timely manner. Please pay close attention to what your flight attendants are saying. Thank you for your cooperation.”
The level of chatter rose among the passengers as they started to get a bit panicked, but he flight attendants were professional and efficient, deploying the slides and ushering people down.
Once on the ground, all the passengers were herded onto waiting buses. Men clad in black and holding automatic weapons stood by, watching everything carefully. As we approached the bus, one of the armed men stepped forward and gestured for the five of us to follow him to the side. I could feel the eyes of the other curious passengers burning a hole in the back of my head.
The buses drove off, leaving us with the four armed men on the deserted tarmac. As soon as the other passengers were out of sight, the men relaxed their tense stances and greeted Alec and Tyler.
“Everything’s in place. Airport buildings should be cleared within the next ten minutes,” the man who’d stopped us in line reported.
“I don’t know if this is brilliance or pure fucking madness,” another said to Tyler, but his eyes kept darting to me. I must’ve looked like a mess after the long-haul flight, my hair crazy, my clothes wrinkled, my skin drenched in sweat from the summer sun. It must’ve been ninety degrees out there.
“We’re not paying you to wonder about the merits of missions,” Tyler said with a teasing grin.
“Man, you ain’t paying any of us for shit. I don’t even know if we’ll have jobs after this, if we even make it out alive. Anyone from Melior Group that’s here today is going rogue, acting against direct orders from the board and siding with Lucian Zacarias and you fuckers.”
People were putting their jobs, their lives, on the line to help us. Some of the