13. Walking on a Blade

"You promised me he would be at the table."

Sydney could barely make out his syllables, but it was enough for her to understand the Mandarin.

"No, I did pass it on."

She missed the next few lines. Then his words came back into focus.

"But I expect him to be there. If you want me to pull through, you'll have to—"

Him?Sydney wondered.

His words seemed to turn into a hiss here, as he momentarily lost his composure and stabbed the air with a finger. As he turned his head slightly, Sydney lost the trail of his words, only to see glimpses of his moving lips as he paced a little against the railing, ignoring the occasional fan or security guard passing by.

Her heart pulled tight as she continued to piece together his conversation. There was no direct mention of the president's name again, not that she could discern, but she saw pieces of other words.

Gala.

Others.

Table.

Intermixed within these was a word she couldn't quite decipher.

Kǔ.

She frowned, trying to understand the context. Her Mandarin was good for a foreigner, but one of her weaker languages. She thought through the basic characters that matched. Kǔ could mean "bitter" or "hardship" in one intonation, or "to cry" in another. Neither quite worked in the context of Seah's conversation, though. In this moment, she wished desperately that Winter was at her side, that maybe he knew better.

As if he'd heard her, Winter shifted seamlessly into a new song inside the stadium, and the audience responded with a fresh burst of cheers. By the railing, Seah stopped talking to glare in annoyance toward the building's interior. At the same time, Tems's voice returned on her earpiece.

"Whoever Seah's talking to," he murmured to Sydney, "the person's also here at the stadium."

Sydney stiffened, her gaze searching the general area. Tems must be able to see her location on his tracker. "Near where we are?" she whispered.

"I'm tracking the signal on his call. It's not a phone. It's on a local area network. The other person's right outside the stadium's perimeters."

As Sydney looked on, Seah hunched lower to continue speaking, his lips obscured by the phone.

Over time, Sydney had learned to recognize the subtle differences between a suspicious conversation and a simply nervous one. Seah seemed like a somewhat awkward man, perhaps prone to anxiety, but there was something about the stiffness of his stance, the way he kept looking at his watch as if he needed to be somewhere.

Back at the reserved box,she thought. He knew he couldn't be absent for too long.

After a while, he straightened his jacket and started walking back in the direction of the box.

Sydney sank deeper into the shadows as he left, then followed him with her gaze. "He's heading back now," she whispered into her earpiece. "ID on the other person?"

"Still outside," Tems replied. "Hasn't moved. You should follow Seah."

"On it," she murmured. She hoped that she'd managed to capture some of the video and audio of the cabinet member's conversation. Then she materialized from the shadows of the plants, turned in the direction of the reserved box, and straightened her sleeves.

That was when she saw it. A red dot of light flickering against the fabric of her suit, inches above her stomach.

A laser sight from a gun.

She didn't think; she just moved.

In an instant, she had darted behind one of the pillars of the balcony where Seah was standing just minutes earlier, her body hidden completely behind the stone. When she looked down again, the red dot was no longer there.

The other person's right outside the stadium's perimeters.

She could hear blood roaring in her ears. Someone had a target on her right now—someone located out in the trees beyond the stadium— and she had just narrowly avoided getting shot in the chest. She looked around, her eyes skipping from the few passersby in the hall—a trio of young attendees searching for their seats, a couple heading for the nearest bathrooms, a pair of security officers. None of them paid her any attention.

Whoever it was out there must either have been watching her or Seah, must have been scouting out this place—scouting her—for a while. Was it the same person who'd been at the airport?

She switched the frequency of her earpiece from Winter to Tems. "Tems," she whispered, covering her mouth with a subtle hand to prevent anyone watching from reading her lips. "There's a target on me."

He answered immediately. "Where?"

"Open hall between entrances three and four." She could feel her hands trembling at the encounter as she looked down the hall. "Seah was just here."

"That's near the other person's location."

"I'm calling Niall," she whispered. "See if he can get someone to intercept our mysterious interloper."

"Can you get back on your own?"

His voice was low, quiet, and urgent. It calmed her somewhat, a reminder that there was another seasoned Panacea agent here paying attention to her—and with that thought, she looked down the hall and gauged her options.

"Don't come," she whispered. "Note my location and make sure I'm still moving."

"I've got you," he answered.

She let his words still her, then turned her focus back on the hall. There were other scattered security guards here, patrolling the corridor, as well as the occasional cluster of concert attendees hurrying along, giggling and laughing, oblivious to what might have happened here, to a laser point fixed on her.

Would they try shooting her in public like this, with witnesses scattered all over the place? Surely they wouldn't want to cause a scene.

Sydney took a deep breath, silently counted for ten seconds—and then stepped out from the safety of the pillar, moving as precisely as if she were walking on a blade.

She immediately passed a pair of guards heading in the opposite direction, then kept pace with a group of laughing friends, all giggling about the new merchandise they'd just purchased from the stadium's front stands. Her pace stayed steady, even as she braced for the feeling of a bullet ripping into her body.

It didn't. Not yet, at least.

The hall's population thinned again. Now she was nearly alone, and a long, open corridor stretched between her and the location of the box.

So the sniper—whoever they were—didn't want to gun her down in front of a crowd, or else they would have pulled the trigger minutes ago. It'd given her a little leeway, but she needed to get back immediately, needed to warn the others.

Then, as she saw two security officers round the bend, she stepped out into the open and began walking back to the box.

From her periphery, she caught a glimpse of the red dot glimmering again on her sleeve. She forced herself to continue walking calmly, although everything in her screamed to bolt. One of the security officers gave her a disinterested nod as she approached him.

"Excuse me," she said, trying to sound sheepish. "I'm supposed to be in the reserved box as a bodyguard for Winter Young, but they won't let me back inside. Could you come with me to speak with them? I have all my identification."

The officer shook his head. "I'm sorry, ma'am," he said. "We're expected at the entrance on the other side of the stadium in a few minutes. What's your name?"

"Ashley Miller, sir."

"I'll radio them," he said, already starting to turn away. "They'll know you're coming."

She cursed inwardly as she started walking again, too, her head still turned toward them—but on the surface she gave them both a pleasant smile and a nod. "That would be so great," she replied. "Thank you."

He nodded back at her before he and his partner turned around and continued down the path. The protection of their proximity waned—and as Sydney turned back around to face the empty hall, she braced herself for gunfire. Her eyes darted around, looking for any more cover she could use.

"Ashley?"

Then the familiar voice came around the turn of the corridor—and Sydney found herself bumping right into Gavi.

"Oh!" Gavi let out a startled yelp before she rolled her eyes and gave Sydney a wry smile that looked more like a grimace. "They said you were lost out here. I stepped out to grab you."

Relief washed over Sydney. It took all of her willpower not to grab Gavi and hug her senseless. Instead, she chuckled dryly and looked down, as if embarrassed. "I appreciate the help, miss," she said as Gavi began leading them back the way she had come.

Gavi shrugged before folding her arms together and leaning closer to her. "In all honesty," she muttered, "I was trying to get a break from a minister in there who keeps loitering near me. You're a good excuse. Now, stay close so I don't have to keep talking to the guy."

Sydney felt a twinge of guilt at using Gavi as a shield from her attacker. Still, the girl was completely unaware, and the shot never came. By the time they rounded the corner and the glass doors of the box came into view, the laser sight hadn't reappeared. The moment her assailant had wanted to take advantage of was gone now.

So was Gavi's sense of camaraderie. The instant they returned to the space, she made a beeline for a woman standing near the food trays, sipping on a cup of tea. Sydney recognized her as the prime minister's assistant. So much for sticking near Gavi—but Sydney did nevertheless, feeling both weak with relief after her encounter and uneasy with the idea of an assassin lying in wait outside for her.

Down below, Winter's performance continued. He had taken off his glittering suit jacket, revealing a silver shirt made out of a gleaming, rippling fabric that moved like water when he did. His smile now was genuine, full of mischief as he belted out a high note and then winked at the audience, making the stadium burst into delighted screams.

She was glad that he hadn't been with her out in the hall. It ruled out her hypothesis that her airport assailant had been there for Winter instead of her. Perhaps he had a stalker of his own, but this—this was a deliberate targeting of Sydney.

She imagined the way his eyes would constrict in fear if she told him what had happened, and the uneasiness churned in her stomach again. It was the same look he'd had on his face during their most dangerous moments in London, when it seemed for a while that they might not make it out alive.

It was the act of him worrying that bothered her, the fact that her well-being could affect his emotions so visibly. She was too used to walking alone through life. Sure, Sauda and Niall cared about her safety—but this, this attention from Winter, this sudden tethering of another person's emotions… was different. This scared her.

Tethers like this cost lives.

"All's well?" Tems murmured through her earpiece as she came to stand near Gavi.

"All's well," she murmured in return. "For now."

"I'm doing surveillance of the surroundings for your attacker," Tems asked. Unlike Winter's concern, Tems took the danger she'd been in and reacted in the way an agent should. With cool, even cold, professionalism. It felt familiar to her, safer. "They must be stationed in the parking structure."

"Did you send it to Niall yet?"

"Not yet. Are you reaching out to him?"

"On it."

Sydney sent her coordinates to Niall, along with a quick note about the laser target. She waited until another of Winter's songs had started and the people around her turned their attention toward the stage.

Niall buzzed her earpiece almost immediately. "Target was unmistakably on you?" he said, without a greeting.

"Yes," Sydney replied.

"Get yourself inside immediately."

"Heading in now." She made sure her back was facing a wall and tapped her phone. When it did, she synced it to her earpiece and played the recording for the analyst. "Here's what I overheard."

"Send it."

She could hear the tension in his voice, knew that he was worried for her, and it made her stomach tighten. "Does the term kǔ mean anything to you? I can't parse the meaning in the conversation, even though I heard it several times."

For a moment, there was silence on the other end. Down on center stage, Winter's harnesses launched him high into the air, and the audience let out a chorus of screams that shook the stadium. As everyone around her burst into cheers, Niall's voice came back on again.

"Found something on the term kǔ. I've traced it to a new drug on the black market in the East. Apparently it was entered into our Eastern databases earlier in the year. Kǔ. It's a neurotoxin."

Down below, Winter did a somersault high in midair and landed on a floating platform. The audience screamed. Sydney felt a warning buzz in her head.

Seah was going to poison the president.