“I’m sorry, Agnes,” Nadia said gently. “But no, not even you.”
Agnes closed her eyes and nodded, her lower lip quivering.
“I wish you hadn’t dragged her into this,” Nadia said to Nate, though it wasn’t fair of her to blame him.
“It was that or let her shoot Dante,” he responded. “It was kind of a tough decision, actually.”
Dante took a hand off the wheel to make a rude gesture that he probably thought Nadia and Agnes couldn’t see.
“It’s my own fault,” Agnes said. “They tried to tell me how dangerous it was, but I wouldn’t listen.” She plucked at the ruffles on her gown. “I wanted to feel brave, just this once.” Her eyes flicked briefly to Nate then away, and Nadia read between the lines easily. Agnes had been trying to impress Nate, fighting against the contempt her future husband had shown her from the moment they’d met.
Impulsively, Nadia leaned over and gave Agnes a quick hug. “You were brave,” she said. “I just wish you hadn’t gotten sucked in with the rest of us.”
“Well, she has,” Dante said, sounding like he was pretty fed up with all the touchy-feely stuff. “And the only place I can imagine you being able to hide for any length of time is in the Basement.”
Nadia shuddered at the thought. The Basement wasn’t safe for adult gangbangers with years of experience on the gritty streets. It certainly wasn’t a safe place for a handful of Executive teenagers and a Paxco security spy. However, it was the one place where it was possible to live entirely off the grid. Not only that, but the Basement “dress code” meant they could easily disguise themselves to the point of being unrecognizable. Wigs, masks, face paint … All were used in abundance in the Basement.
“Somehow, I don’t see us wandering into the Basement with me in this tux and Agnes in her evening gown,” Nate said. “Not if we want to make it in one piece, that is.”
“We’ll make a pit stop first. The apartment I grew up in is in one of the crappy fringe neighborhoods. I moved my folks out as soon as I could afford to, and I haven’t set foot in the place since I got my first assignment. We ought to be able to hole up there for a little while. I’ll put in a call to Bishop and see if he can meet us there with some new wardrobe options.”
“I’ll call him,” Nate corrected.
Nadia didn’t much care for this plan. It would be daylight by the time they reached their destination, and she and Nate and Agnes were hardly inconspicuous. And if anyone in Nate’s household realized Dante was missing and told the authorities, they might guess that Dante and Nate were together and check out Dante’s apartment. Even if everything went right and they made it safely to the Basement, how were they going to survive there?
But the fact was, with the kind of enemies Nate and Nadia—and their friends by extension—had gathered, they had very few options. So for now, hiding out in the Basement was the best they could do.
Dante’s apartment was in a seedy neighborhood within sight of the first line of identical concrete high-rises of the Basement. Everything was dingy and run-down, and there wasn’t a ground-floor window in sight that didn’t have bars or metal mesh protecting it. There was graffiti on the scaffolding leading up to the elevated train. The scaffolding was a dreary shade of green, but lighter patches gave testament to the neighborhood’s ongoing attempts to combat the graffiti.
The apartment itself was cramped, and its aging fixtures looked like they would fall apart if someone breathed on them. There was a coating of dust on everything, and the air smelled stale.
“You said you moved your folks to a better place,” Nadia commented as she looked around the dismal living room with its faded wallpaper and threadbare couch. “Why didn’t you go with them?” Dante was eighteen and striking out on his own, but it was hardly unusual for an eighteen-year-old to still live with his parents. Not that Dante really seemed to be living in this apartment, at least not while he was posing as a live-in servant.
Dante hunched his shoulders. “They don’t approve of my career choice. My dad especially. People ’round here don’t think too highly of Paxco security goons.”
“So they don’t know…?”
Dante glanced over his shoulder at Agnes, who had a dazed expression on her face as she looked around and didn’t seem to be listening to them. He lowered his voice anyway. “That I’m with the resistance? Hell no. The less they know, the safer they’ll be if I ever get caught. Not that that’s too likely anymore. I doubt the resistance will have much use for me after I disobeyed direct orders. And used one of their cars to do it.”
“I’m sorry,” Nadia said, reaching out to touch Dante’s arm. Everyone had given up so much to try to help her. “I—”
“Shh,” he said, putting a finger to her lips and stepping closer. “It was my decision to make. And I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Nadia wanted to wrap her arms around him, hold him tight, maybe even kiss him. But she couldn’t do that with Nate and Agnes around. She didn’t have a reputation or status left to protect, but a lifetime’s worth of caution and propriety didn’t evaporate overnight, so instead she gave him a brief squeeze and a peck on the cheek. Even that had her blushing as she stepped back and put proper distance between them.
Nadia paced the length of the living room while Dante scrounged in the cupboards of the kitchen in search of some canned food that hadn’t expired. He came up with two large tins of beef stew and dumped them into a pot. Nadia had never eaten canned beef stew in her life. It would make a spectacularly unappetizing breakfast, but who knew when their next meal would come?
Nadia suspected hers wasn’t the only stomach to do a backflip when Dante distributed four bowls of brown slop. It smelled like dog food, and looked like … Well, never mind what it looked like.
“Sorry,” Dante said, with an edge in his voice. “I gave my chef the day off.”
He’d probably grown up eating this stuff, and having three Executives turn up their noses at it was putting the habitual chip back on his shoulder. Nadia couldn’t blame him, though based on the spark in Nate’s eye, he wasn’t as forgiving.
“So what are we going to do now?” Nadia asked, then shoved a spoonful of stew into her mouth and tried not to make a face at the taste. She gave Nate a pointed look, and he meekly obeyed by taking a bite. Agnes was still stirring the stuff around, looking a little green.
“I suggest we all try to get some sleep until Bishop gets here,” Dante said, with his mouth full.
According to Nate, Bishop was planning to show up with costumes in hand around nightfall.
“And then we go to the Basement,” Nadia said.
Dante nodded.
“And then what?”
That was a question no one had a good answer to, so they all spooned up some stew and chewed in silence. Even Agnes, though she seemed to chew the tiny nibble she’d taken far longer than necessary, as if she couldn’t quite force herself to swallow it.
“Then I guess we just try to stay alive,” Nate said grimly, when no one else spoke.
“That’s it?” Nadia asked. “We just turn a blind eye to everything we know? We let the Chairman get away with murdering my sister and trying to murder me?” Nadia had spent most of the previous night feeling helpless and afraid; now she gave in to fury. “And what about Thea? Do we just figure she’s someone else’s problem now? We have to do something.”
Nadia looked around at her friends’ faces and didn’t like the expressions of defeat they all wore.