“We’re not playing games right now,” Vaughn says. “You are going to tell me where that ledger is, and I am going to go get it.”
“And then what?”
“One step at a time.” Vaughn sets down the gun and places both hands flat on the table.
I slide my hands into my lap and then up on the underside of the table. I’m feeling for anything I can use as a weapon. A metal joint. A loose screw. Hell, even a sharpened pencil would be better than nothing. My hands feel something. A valve. And a tube. This is the advanced chemistry lab. And I mean advanced. So that means—
“Hands on the table,” Vaughn says. Dammit. Of course he would notice. I yank out the tube without moving more than a millimeter, then I place my hands flat on the table and touch the valve with my knee. I shift in my seat a tiny bit to see if it will turn. It does.
“Where is the ledger?” Vaughn repeats. “You have thirty seconds to tell me.”
I don’t ask “or what?”; I shift again and turn the valve on full blast. This is either the most genius idea I’ve ever had or the decision that is sure to send me to an early grave.
“I’ll tell you where the ledger is if you tell me one thing.” My voice shakes. Dammit. I take a quick breath.
Vaughn raises an eyebrow but doesn’t respond.
“Why did you have Kennedy killed?”
Vaughn’s mouth creeps into a smile. “Not the question I thought you were going to ask. I thought you were going to ask if I ordered that your dad be killed on the mission, and for the record, the answer to that question is yes.” I don’t blink. He’s trying to throw me off guard. He is. My insides collapse into a puddle of anguish, and I feel vomit rise in my throat.
“Answer the question!”
Vaughn clucks. “You’re in no position to be making demands, Amanda.”
“I think I am. You want to know where the ledger is, and I’m willing to tell you. You just need to—”
“Because!” Vaughn yells. “Because Kennedy needed to be taken out if we were going to go into Vietnam. Kennedy negotiated a withdrawal in 1964. We needed Johnson to rush us into the Gulf of Tonkin and escalate the conflict. I knew Eagle could make a fortune off a war, so I studied the conflict, read the necessary classified documents, and made an educated guess.”
I blow out a breath. “You killed a president on a guess?”
“An educated guess,” Vaughn says. “Which turned out to be correct.”
I’m dizzy. I sway to the side and fall off the stool. My hands are on the floor, just inches from where a pool of blood begins. Vaughn just told me everything. He has no intention of letting me escape here alive.
But then a loud roar of voices erupts in the courtyard below. Vaughn is over at the window in a flash. I know that he sees them. The backups. The men from the helicopter. They must be storming the building as we speak. But I don’t have time to wait for them. Vaughn aims his gun at me and cocks the trigger.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” I say as I push up. “You see, I turned on the hydrogen valve, so the gas is slowly seeping into the room. You do remember what happens if you mix hydrogen, oxygen, and fire, right?”
Vaughn looks at me with disbelieving eyes, and he’s at my side in a second. He bends under the desk to check, and I don’t think. I raise my elbow and bring it back down onto his neck.
Vaughn falls to the floor, and my training tells me to make sure he stays down, but my instinct has me scrambling to the door. Vaughn hops up and yanks me back. I swing. I connect with flesh. My hands and knees hit the ground. The ledger falls out of my back pocket. I gasp. Vaughn gasps. He pushes me out of the way and lunges for it. I grab on to his head and push him back. But his arms are longer. His fingers close around it. And then he pushes me to the ground as he rises.
I fly across the room to the trash can. Alpha’s gun is sitting on the floor next to it. I grab it, cock it, and aim it at the hydrogen valve.
“Drop it!” I order.
“You shoot that, you kill us both.”
“Don’t think I won’t do it.”
“That’s exactly what I think.”
A door bangs open down the hall. The backups! Vaughn rushes to the window. He’s going to jump! He’s going to escape.
I don’t think. I squeeze the trigger, and the room erupts in a burst of flames. My body is picked up and hurled back. I slam into the door, which opens, and I drop to the ground in the hallway. Black boots rush toward me. The world spins overhead. A voice I recognize. Abe. Abe is here. He’s over me, screaming and touching my face, and that’s the last thing I remember.
CHAPTER 28
I come to in the back of an ambulance. It feels as if someone took a hammer to both of my temples. The door to the ambulance is open, so I see it’s parked in the middle of Peel’s quad.
“Hey,” a voice breathes next to me. I don’t have to look to know who it is.
“Abe,” I whisper. “What happened?”
Abe’s face appears over mine. He looks older to me. There are dark-blue bags under both of his eyes and dirt caked on his face. No. Not dirt—smoke. The explosion. I suck in my breath as it all comes back to me.
“Alpha?” I ask.
Abe presses his lips together. “Dead.”
I close my eyes and squeeze them as hard as I can. “He tried to surrender to me. He . . . he seemed truly sorry.” Life’s not black-and-white. Nothing ever is. There are very many shades of gray that litter the spectrum. Alpha wasn’t on the white side, but he wasn’t on the black side either, I’m starting to realize. Somewhere in there was a man who got caught up in something he couldn’t control. And while what he did is unforgivable, I did see glimpses of the man he could have been had he made better choices. I open my eyes and look at Abe.
He’s quiet for a few seconds. “If it’s any consolation, Vaughn survived. He’s pretty banged up, but he’ll live to answer for his crimes.” Then Abe’s face changes. “Close your eyes!”
I obey without question, and several moments pass before Abe finally says, “Clear.”
I open my eyes and raise an eyebrow.
“Investigators. Dozens of them. State and federal and higher-ups that you would not believe. They all want to talk to you. I figure you want to be left alone for a little while.”
“Talk to me?” I ask. “You mean interrogate me?”
“Probably.”
“It’s still my word against Vaughn’s, isn’t it?” I squeeze my eyes shut. “Nothing’s changed.”
Abe’s fingers interlace with mine, and he brings one of my hands to his mouth and kisses it. “Everything’s changed. They found a notebook by Vaughn. Half of it had been burned but the other half had a bunch of numbers and dates in it, and they’re trying to figure out what it all means. Plus, Annum Hall is probably being torn apart as we speak. Vaughn’s the one under investigation now, not you.”
I think of what Alpha said before he . . . before he died. One of his ramblings. XP knows. XP. I wonder if that’s related to Vaughn and Eagle Industries. It has to be. Why else would Alpha mention it? I wonder if XP is anywhere in that notebook.
Suddenly there’s a voice outside the ambulance. A crotchety, no-nonsense voice.
“I don’t care that you don’t want me in there; I’m going in there. Now stand aside.”
Ariel appears in the back of the ambulance.
“Abraham, help me up,” he says. Abe extends his hand to his grandfather and pulls him up into the ambulance. And then Ariel’s warm, familiar arms are around me. He’s holding me so close it’s like he’s my own family. And I realize that he is. He is my family. He always has been and always will be. I wrap my arms around him.
“You came through for me,” I say.