Nate followed suit, as did Agnes, who kept a careful distance between them and didn’t actually get into the sedan until Dante did. She stopped pointing the gun at Dante’s head when they were all in the car, but she didn’t put it away, and Nate knew she was poised for any attempt to wrest it away from her.
Wondering what the hell he’d gotten them all into, Nate buckled in as Dante started the car and pulled out of the space.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Nate didn’t realize what a complete disaster his situation was until he’d had a few quiet minutes to think about it. He knew he and Dante needed to talk about the plan to get to Nadia, but it was hard to even begin discussing it with Agnes sitting in the backseat and listening to every word they said. She’d as much as said that she was considering this her own personal recon mission, and letting the daughter of a foreign Chairman find out there was a sizable, organized resistance movement in Paxco wasn’t such a hot idea. However, Nate was pretty sure they were going to need inside help to get Nadia out of the Sanctuary, and he was dying to ask Dante about his resistance contacts.
Unable to think how to start a conversation, Nate sat quietly in the passenger seat as Dante drove through the streets of the city, going as fast as he dared when it was imperative they not draw attention. And in that quiet time, Nate realized that his life would never be the same.
If he was right, and Gerri’s death meant she had led the Chairman to the blackmail recordings, that meant there was nothing to stop the Chairman from killing Nadia. Before his mother’s funeral, Nate had assumed he himself wouldn’t be in any real danger, because his father needed an heir and no longer had Thea around to make a blissfully ignorant Replica if he disposed of Nate. But now the Chairman had Dorothy, whom he had publicly acknowledged as his daughter. He could get rid of Nate and still have an heir.
Did his father hate him that much?
Sure, the man had already had Nate killed once, but knowing he could create a Replica—one who hadn’t overheard the Chairman and Dirk Mosely talking about Thea’s human experimentation and therefore wouldn’t make waves—must have made it feel like he wasn’t really killing anyone.
Nate’s father had been angry with him for almost as long as Nate could remember. And Nate had taken every opportunity to foster more anger, acting like a spoiled, selfish brat for the sheer pleasure of pissing his father off.
But did that anger lead to actual hate, into something so toxic it would drive him to murder his own son?
The fact was, Nate couldn’t be sure. And that meant that once this adventure was over, even if everything went perfectly and they got Nadia out of the Sanctuary without a hitch, he couldn’t go home, couldn’t go back to his old life.
The realization was like a brutal kick to the chest, forcing all the air out of his lungs and triggering a moment of sheer panic. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists as he tried to fight it off, but he felt the sweat beading on his forehead and upper lip. He thought for a moment he was totally going to lose it, right there in the front seat of the car with both Agnes and Dante as witnesses.
“We’ll get her out,” Dante said gruffly, making the natural assumption that Nate was freaking out because he was worried about Nadia. But Dante didn’t have a clue what was really happening.
And then what? Nate wondered. Neither he nor Nadia could set foot in their homes. Nadia would have no money, no access to money, and nowhere to go. Nate might be able to get hold of some scrip before his father came up with an excuse to freeze his account, but even that would be dangerous, giving those who might be hunting him a bead on his location, even if it was just for a short while. So he might have a temporary supply of scrip, but that would be it. Like Nadia, he would have nowhere safe to go. In fact, the only place he could even imagine going was the Basement. He at least had some experience there from the jaunts of his reckless youth, but a sheltered Executive girl like Nadia might as well have the word “victim” tattooed on her forehead in a place like that.
“Maybe now is a good time to tell me what’s really going on,” Dante prompted when Nate failed to pull himself out of his panic nosedive. Dante frowned at the rearview mirror, once again letting Nate know how unhappy he was about Agnes’s presence.
Nate turned in his seat so he could meet Agnes’s eyes. “Can I trust you not to repeat everything I say?”
“Will you believe me if I say yes?” she countered.
Good point. He still didn’t quite know what to make of her. Clearly, she wasn’t the meek little pushover he’d thought, but he had no clue what she was really made of. Hell, for all he knew, she was a spy planted on him by the Chairman to try to eke out his secrets. Though surely if she were meant to act as a spy, she would have better-developed social skills.
“You know, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Tell anyone you think should know.” His neck was getting stiff from the awkward position, so he shifted in his seat and faced forward once more. Maybe it would be easier to talk about what had happened if he didn’t have to look into someone’s face anyway.
“Nadia was arrested on suspicion of treason a few weeks ago,” he started.
“Yes, I know,” Agnes said. “But she was cleared of all charges.”
“Well, yeah, but it’s the why of it all that gets us into trouble.” He sneaked a glance over at Dante, who was watching the road with studious concentration.
“She was wearing a transmitter when she was arrested,” Nate said. “I went to try to help her, and got into a big fight with my father and our late chief of security, and they said some things they would never have said if they’d known about the transmitter. They said things so incriminating that once they found out Nadia had been transmitting to a secret location, and that she’d set it up so that the recordings would be released if she died or disappeared, they had to let her go.”
Nate stalled out, remembering the horror of seeing Nadia strapped to a table with Thea poised to vivisect her. Nadia had been gagged, unable to reveal that she had the transmitter on her and therefore unable to use the information to save herself. If Nate hadn’t figured it out …
“I don’t understand,” Agnes said. “You got into a big fight and they said ‘incriminating things.’ In front of you. I mean, I get that they didn’t expect Nadia to be able to tell anyone about it, but what about—” She interrupted herself with a gasp.
“You’re a Replica…”
Dante frowned and looked at Agnes in the rearview mirror. “Surely you already knew that.”
Nate couldn’t help turning in his seat again, despite the stiff neck. Agnes’s shocked expression told him that whatever she might lack in social graces, she had one hell of a sharp mind. She was making all the connections, despite having very little information to go on.
“He felt free to talk in front of you because he was planning to kill you,” she said in a horrified whisper. “Then he was going to use an old backup to make a new Replica who hadn’t heard any of his secrets.”
Nate nodded, but Agnes wasn’t finished making connections yet.
“What happened to the original Nathaniel Hayes?”
Nate and Dante shared a look. Dante knew the answer to that question because Kurt had witnessed the murder. It had been passed off to the public as the work of Dirk Mosely acting alone. But after everything Agnes had figured out so far, she was never going to buy that story.