20. Nowhere to Run

Whenever things devolved into chaos, Sydney's brain went on autopilot, and she saw time happen in snatches. In stills.

She experienced it now, this jolty, surreal, stilted moment. Chunks of metal and glass burning on the grass. Her view from the ground as she looked up at the flaming remains of the wreckage that contained Niall's body. Winter staring, stunned into silence, at the scene. Tems rushing toward the two cars, only to throw his hands up in defense as another explosion sent more fire and smoke in every direction.

Get up! Move!

She could hear Niall's voice in her thoughts, as if he were shouting at her, saving her even now. Sydney forced herself to her feet. Her ears rang. She reached out to Winter and seized his hand, yelled at him to come with her. She heard herself calling to Tems, who had already turned around and was running back toward them. Had he not shouted at them to stop, they would have all been caught in the firestorm.

Sydney's mind struggled to process it.

That was no accidental crash. She recognized the ferocity of the eruption as surely as if she were back in training, watching controlled experiments of various explosives in Panacea's underground facility. Niall had been killed by a professional device planted on the second car that had engulfed him in the blast.

Someone had murdered him.

All this time, she had been thinking of her own safety—Niall had been worried for her—when she should have been afraid for him.

Through hazy vision blurred with tears, she heard Tems's voice.

"We have to get out of here!" he shouted.

Their escape. Sydney's body kicked into high gear. The three of them sprinted across the lawn away from the explosion.

There. She saw another parked car along the street, with an official license plate. Winter must have seen the car at the same time, because they moved in sync toward it.

As soon as Sydney reached it, she snatched the long pin out of her hair and began working on the door handle.

"Two o'clock," Tems said as he caught up to them, and Sydney looked up. A guard had noticed them and pointed in their direction in the midst of the chaos. "Hurry up, Syd."

"Hurrying," she snapped, her voice hoarse.

As she went, her mind whirled. It was obvious someone else at the event was working with Seah—but Niall? Why did they want him dead?

The same mysterious reason they'd wanted Sydney dead. Why Tems had gone into hiding. Someone was targeting Panacea in order to silence them.

At last, Sydney heard the car door open with a gratifying pop. She immediately hopped into the driver's seat. Winter slid into the passenger side at the same time, while Tems went to the back.

"Who's the best driver in here?" Winter muttered.

"Me," Sydney and Tems said in unison. She glared at him through the rearview mirror.

"I've been in this city for three months. I know it like the back of my hand," Tems said. "Switch with me after it starts."

"Fine." Sydney pried open the car's ignition panel and stared at the tangle of wires.

The faint sound of sirens from the front of the estate now reached their ears. More police and emergency vehicles had been called in. If they didn't move within the next thirty seconds, they ran the real risk of being blockaded in on this side street.

"Come on," Sydney whispered to the car as she worked.

Seconds later—it felt like a lifetime—the car rewarded her with a satisfyingly smooth roar of ignition. Winter hopped out from the passenger side to the back seat, she slid nimbly to where he'd been, and Tems jumped forward into the driver's position.

"Go," Sydney snapped at Tems.

"We're already late," Tems replied. He stepped on the gas—they all jerked back against their seats as the car shot forward down the road.

"Easy, Tems," Sydney said through gritted teeth. "We're trying not to attract attention, remember?"

Tems eased the car into a legal speed limit, then glanced at her with a wry grimace. "I think we might be past stealth, sweetheart."

Then they reached a roundabout, and Sydney's retort died on her tongue as a police car turned at the opposite end of the traffic circle.

For a moment, the police car seemed to pause, as if watching them make their way around the turn. Through the rearview mirror, Sydney saw Winter's head turn slightly to keep the car in view.

"Don't look," she reminded him, her face turned resolutely in the direction of the road.

Winter followed her advice in an instant. As he did, she held her breath, waiting for the police car to turn with them and follow.

But at the other side of the roundabout, it went on in the direction of the gala building. Securing the estate must overrule anything else right now, she guessed.

Adrenaline was still surging through her veins, making her tremble all over. Now that their immediate flight was over, now that they were inside a car—Sydney could feel it overwhelming her, making her dizzy. She reached up over and over to wipe tears from her face. When she looked at Winter, she saw his face stunned into blankness, pale from shock. He was looking down at his phone.

"Claire?" she asked.

He nodded wordlessly. "No signal," he answered.

Tems shook his head, his face pale and stricken. "Who'd set up Niall like that?" he murmured.

Silence hung heavy in the car at his question.

Winter swallowed and said, "Maybe the same person who set up Seah."

"The bigger question is why," Sydney said.

"What do you mean?" Winter asked.

"Why bother creating two plans?" she went on, her voice still shaking. "It succeeded in leading us astray—but it also meant putting your enemies on high alert that something would happen to the president on this evening. It meant the gala had been crawling with soldiers and security, which would have made the entire operation trickier to execute. Better to have just a single plan and launch it as a shock." Her eyes met Winter's. "So why the trouble? Why not make it easier for themselves?"

"Unless this was easier," Winter replied.

Sydney turned back around in her seat. "It's not easier," she murmured. But Winter's answer echoed in her head until she realized that maybe he wasn't wrong.

Unless thiswas easier.

"They must want everyone to suspect a different person," Tems said as he pulled onto a freeway. "They wanted everyone to know, first of all, that Seah—who we were guided to target—was not the assassin. Then they wanted everyone to know that someone else was."

"What's the point of that?" Winter said.

"To set someone up," Tems replied. "Now the entire country is on a manhunt for who the president's real killer is, and who else might be behind the operation. When they find their culprit, they'll get the consequences they were aiming for."

"Don't look back," Winter suddenly said.

Sydney didn't. But she froze in her seat at his words. "Why?" she asked.

"The police car from that roundabout," Winter said calmly, his face forward in the rearview mirror. "It's behind us."

Sydney glanced up—and sure enough, there was the car, with the same license plate as the police vehicle that had been at the roundabout.

"Shit," Tems swore.

Sydney glanced at Tems. "Are we going as fast as possible?"

"As fast as possible?" Tems's face darkened. "Do you not remember how fast we were going during a motorcycle course in training? Of course I can go faster than this." Then he floored the gas pedal, and they shot forward.

Sydney clung to the sides of her seat with all her strength as they rocketed up to the taillight of the car in front of them, then swerved out of the way at the last second.

Behind them, the police car disappeared over the bend of the road.

Tems tapped on his phone, then tossed it aside in frustration. "Can't reach the CIA."

"Can you reach Sauda?" Winter asked Sydney.

"Trying," Sydney answered, looking down at her phone. She couldn't bear to think about Sauda's voice on the phone, about having to break the news to her. But the connectivity had already been low at the event. It was nonexistent now—and as they drove on, she saw the bars drop to nothing. An error message popped up on her screen.

Please still be at the airfield,she thought.

Tems glanced over at her. "If our attackers are targeting Panacea, then they might know about the airfield." He stared gloomily out at the road. "What time is it?"

"Eighteen twenty-two," Sydney said.

He nodded. "We're within the time limit that Sauda gave us—and at this pace, we'll arrive within the half hour."

Sydney found herself nodding along. He was right, of course. They'd be in the air long before any authorities could stop them. But no thought of escape could bring any of them relief. All this time and effort. All the sacrifice, arguments, fights—just for it to end horrifically. The president was dead. The diplomatic fallout from this would be catastrophic.

But Sydney couldn't even think about that right now. She could only think of Niall.

Niall was gone. Had died right before her eyes. She couldn't stop seeing the explosion over and over, couldn't stop remembering the dazed look in his eyes as he turned his gaze to Sydney, blood trickling down his face.

And that moment, right before the explosion, he'd looked like he knew he was going to die.

"There will be war," Winter said, his voice so quiet that Sydney could barely hear him. "Won't there?"

Tems gave him a subtle nod in the mirror. "If we're lucky, it will happen from a distance."

Sydney looked out the window at the airfield that now came into view and wondered, as her adrenaline surge began to level out, what distance really meant. What was the point, if everyone else would be swept up in it? If they hadn't accomplished what they came here to do?

As they pulled off the freeway, the tension in her gut surged again. Her eyes searched the airfield for the plane that Niall had described. A Cessna Citation Longitude, she told herself, looking for the airframe. He had said it would be parked here, at the east end of the private field, waiting for their arrival.

But all she saw was an empty field.

Other planes were in their hangars. The only aircraft in sight were two commercial liners waiting at their gates. But no other planes were here.

The tension in her gut churned into white-hot dread.

"It's not here," she whispered as they slowed to a stop at the end of the airfield.

Tems stared at the runway, his face pale. "It has to be here," he argued, searching for a plane that didn't exist.

Winter said nothing. He looked not at the field, but at Sydney, and as their eyes met in the rearview mirror, they seemed to telegraph the same sinking realization.

Panacea's plane had been forced to leave them behind.