The Conspiracy of Us (The Conspiracy of Us 1)

“I think we’ve lost them,” Jack whispered, and I realized it was true. We had lost them. Me and Jack. Me and Charlie Emerson. We had done this together. I couldn’t have done it without him, and he couldn’t have done it without me. We, the two of us, had just jumped out a window. And ridden a motorcycle. And gotten away. I kind of liked that word. We.

Jack glanced down at me and his eyes were shining, but not with worry like they so often were.

“You—” He cut off and bit his lip.

“What?”

“Nothing. You’re—that was great. Really good.” He was panting as hard as I was, the red-yellow-orange dusting his shoulders and across his chest.

I couldn’t help but grin. And then I muffled another sneeze in my elbow.

A smile pulled at his lips. “It’s the spices. They’re almost in your eyes.” He reached up to my face but stopped, like he’d thought better of it. “Um.” He gestured to my eyes.

I wiped my face and looked back up at him. The dimple came out in his right cheek.

All of a sudden, I realized we were pressed so close between the two fabric stalls that we were practically in each other’s arms.

“Come here.” Hesitantly, he took my face between his hands. He ran his thumbs under my eyes, along my cheekbones, the tip of my nose. “There you are,” he said, in that perfect accent. “All better.”

I waited for him to drop his hands, but he didn’t. I suddenly realized how infrequently Jack met my eyes. He watched everything else so closely, not missing a detail, always prepared, but he hardly ever looked at me. Now his eyes, dark and stormy at the edges, fading to a glowing silver in the middle, held mine, the softness in them crowding out his hard edges.

I could swear he moved a little closer, or maybe I did.

I licked my lips, almost unconsciously, and now he wasn’t looking at my eyes anymore; he was looking at my mouth. And now I was looking at his, and his lips parted, and my heart sped up to a flutter—

The fabric billowed again, and we both startled. Jack’s hands fell away from my face. “Right,” he said. He backed a step away, concentrating a little too hard on fighting off the white canvas.

“Yeah. Right,” I echoed. I pulled the blazer tight around me. Had we really just almost kissed? I looked at his mouth again, and quickly away. This was just the adrenaline talking. Nothing else.

Plus, the words punishable by death still echoed loud in my head, and the thought of Liam’s Keeper, and the Emirs’ Keeper, and all the others who had undoubtedly suffered the consequences of going against their families. Jack wasn’t just risking his job by not turning me in—he could be risking his life. But he was doing it for Mr. Emerson, not me. Wasn’t he?

“What now?” I said quickly.

Jack cleared his throat. “I guess we go to the Hagia Sophia. I would say we wait until morning, but the clock’s ticking. The Saxons don’t care if you’re partying in Istanbul and I’m keeping an eye on you, as long as I—and by extension, you—am back in time to prepare for the ball tomorrow.”

I adjusted my bag. “So, what you’re saying is that we have twelve hours or so to figure out what Mr. Emerson meant and how it relates to this thing the most powerful people in the world have been trying to find for centuries.”

Jack ran a hand through his hair. “Right.”

I blinked. “Then we’d better get going. I’m sure you have connections that could get us in even though it’s the middle of the night, but I was thinking maybe we shouldn’t draw attention to ourselves.”

He cocked his head to one side. “I was thinking that exact same thing. If anyone in the Circle knew what we were up to, they’d be on us in seconds, and they wouldn’t be happy. But how—”

I glanced down at my dress. “I have another idea.”

CHAPTER 23

We sat at the end of the wide, tulip-lined walk to the Hagia Sophia. The postcard hadn’t done the massive structure justice. It glowed orange gold against the night, its four minarets pointing to the sky like sentries.

Behind us, its twin, the Blue Mosque, gleamed like a mirror image. With their manicured lawns and palm trees lit from beneath, the scene struck me like something you’d see at Disneyland.

I wished we were at Disneyland.

I prodded carefully at the new bandage on my leg. We’d picked up butterfly bandages, painkillers, and flip-flops on our way out of the market, and Jack had shown me how to close the cut, musing that I really would know first aid by the time we were finished. His touch was more tentative on my thigh than it had been on my shoulder earlier.

Now he checked his watch. “Three thirty-two,” he said, and we watched a pair of security guards stroll past the Hagia Sophia’s front entrance, then continue on their route.

He sat a careful distance from me—a distance that said he was still thinking about what almost happened in the market, too. I couldn’t help but look at his mouth again. Jack had the kind of mouth that makes you overly aware of your own—full, soft, almost pouting. He caught his lower lip between his teeth, and I pressed my own lips together and turned away.

The cold of the stone fountain’s edge bled through my thin dress, and I shivered, wrapping my hands around the warm, foil-wrapped kebab we’d bought from a street vendor on the way here. It was hard to think about eating right now, but I hadn’t eaten in forever—since back at home, maybe?—and the incredible smell wafting from the kebab Jack was already eating was making my stomach rumble.

I started to peel back the foil on mine, but my phone vibrated. I jumped to scoop it out of my bag. I’d assumed my mom would be on a plane until the morning, but I couldn’t stop hoping. It wasn’t her, though. It was Stellan. This was the eighth time he’d called.

I tossed the phone back into my bag. “Why is Stellan so worried if the Dauphins don’t know who I am?”

Jack tensed, just like he did every time Stellan’s name came up. It was obvious the two of them had a complicated history.

“You’re his assignment, even if he thinks you’re just a houseguest,” he said tersely, taking another bite. His white shirt, with its mutilated hem and spices smeared across the chest, looked orange in the streetlight. “He’s in line for a position in Russia if he proves himself. He can’t slip up at all.”