Take the Key and Lock Her Up (Embassy Row 3)

As they pass I hear Karina say, “Your boy really is handsome.”

And then I climb through the hole in the wall and join them.

There are shouts from the hired guns that fill the courtyard. Echoing cries fill the halls, and I know that some of the men are already inside, racing up the stairs.

They’ll reach us soon, see the room is empty and follow, so I run faster. Alexei is guiding Karina down the ladder when I see the huge SUV that is waiting for us.

“We borrowed it,” Rosie says, and I don’t ask any questions. We all just run toward the doors that are already open. The engine is running and Megan is behind the wheel.

“Hold on,” she says once we’re all inside. If they’re surprised by Karina’s presence, no one says so.

The SUV spins out, kicking up rocks and dirt and gravel, then fishtails as it pulls around the side of the compound.

The guardhouse is empty. The yard is abandoned. Four huge SUVs surround the tiny car that brought Alexei and me here, blocking us in. The men must all be inside, and a clock in my head is counting down the seconds until they realize that we’re gone.

We’re going to have to go fast.

We’re going to have to go far.

We’re going to have to keep running until we run out of earth. That’s the only way.

“They’ll find us,” I say, the words spilling from my mouth. “They’ll chase us and they’ll find us and—”

“They’re not going to chase us,” Noah tells me.

“Of course they are!” I shout. “They will never stop chasing me. You guys have got to leave. It’s too dangerous. I’m too dangerous. You’ve got to—”

“We have a Plan B,” Megan says.

“What’s Plan B?” I ask just as, behind us, a huge boom rings out. When I turn, I see black smoke filling the air. The little car that Alexei and I arrived in is now an inferno. Flaming debris fills the yard. Windshields are smashed. Tires are flattened. The smoke is blinding anyone who might be running out the front door. Even the roof of the little guard shack is starting to burn.

I’m almost numb as I turn to Rosie.

“That’s Plan B,” she says, and Megan keeps driving.

Sometime after midnight we cross the Adrian border, or so Megan’s super secret spy phone tells us. I can also tell because that’s when I start shaking.

We’re still hours from Valancia, and the countryside around us is vast and empty. We should be safe here. There’s no Internet, no cameras. No nosy innkeepers or customs officials asking us for papers. I swear none of us will ever use our real names ever again if we survive this.

I don’t stop to think about how big that if really is.

There’s a big barn up ahead, but no farmhouse. No town. There’s not a single telephone pole in sight. Bright headlights slice across an empty field when Noah steers the SUV off the road and pulls up to the barn’s big double doors.

“Wait. What are you doing?” I ask, leaning up between the two front seats.

“We’re stopping,” Noah says.

“No,” I tell him. “We can’t stop. Ever. We have to keep driving.”

It’s late, and we’re all tired. It takes Noah’s last ounce of patience to calmly ask, “Okay. Where are we driving to? And what are we going to do when we get there?”

He’s got a point, and I’m too tired to disagree. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

“Megan?” I don’t even have to ask the question.

“If the royal family is after you, then we should be okay here. Adria is more into tourism than national defense. They don’t exactly have a bunch of satellites they can reposition on a whim to track us down. So … we should be okay,” she says again.

“And if it’s not the royal family?” Alexei asks what everyone else is thinking.

Megan gives a sad, almost hopeless shrug. “I have no idea what the Society is capable of.”

None of us do, and that’s the scariest thing of all.

Inside the barn, we find bales of straw stacked on one end and park the SUV on the other. It doesn’t take long for us to spread out—we’ve been too confined for too long. At least Noah loaded up some canned food from the safe house, and now he and Rosie are trying to build a small fire in a ring of stones just outside the barn’s double doors.

I watch them work together in silence, in peace. We’re all getting way too comfortable with life like this.

Noah catches me looking and grins. Then he stands and wipes his dirty hands on his jeans and sidles toward me. He turns to see what I see—Rosie and the flickering flames, a dark night under a blanket of thick clouds, lightning striking in the distance. Wordlessly, he settles in beside me, leaning against the SUV.

We feel the rain before we see it. The wind turns crisp in a second and water falls to the dusty ground in fat, wet drops. Dust bubbles up, then turns to mud before our eyes. The storm rages and the wind blows and I breathe in the cool, fresh air. For a second, I relax, lost inside the thunder.

Maybe Noah feels it, too. Maybe that’s how he finds the strength to say, “So I was going to ask how Alexei’s mom was, but …” Noah gestures outside to where Karina is standing, staring up at the dark clouds, rain streaming down her smiling face.

“She thinks I’m my mom. Or she thought that earlier. I don’t really know what she’s thinking now, to tell you the truth.”