open my mouth to answer her—because now I feel sick, too, only I feel sick because I want to go to this school more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I have nothing here. I will only ever be the blind sister, the poor blind orphan. At a school like this, I could be Annie. I could figure out who Annie is besides the blindness. But I can’t leave Fia behind. Ever.
Before I say anything, John/Daniel speaks. “You feel sick about this? Can you describe the feeling?”
“No, I can’t describe the feeling,” she snaps. “All I know is that this is a bad idea and you’re a liar and I should keep Annie far, far away from you and your stupid school.”
He stands, and I can hear the smile slide back into his voice. “You’re twelve, correct? You know, Sofia, we like girls with independent spirits. I can see that you two are a package deal. How would you feel about joining your sister? And I should tell you that the Keane Foundation has a lot of ties in the medical community; we would immediately start researching to see if there is a way to reverse Annabelle’s retinopathy—the condition that caused her blindness.”
I squeeze Fia’s hand, my heart stopped. A school. A new chance. And maybe, just maybe, new eyes that would see only what they were supposed to. “Please, please, oh please, come with me. Please come with me. You felt sick about it because we were going to be separated, but now we won’t! It’s perfect.”
“It’s still wrong,” she whispers, but I don’t let go of her hand. I won’t. I already know I’ll win this, because she always lets me win, and we’ll go together, and our lives will really start.
I CHECK THE THREE MEN—ALL ARE DOWN. WE NEED to go now. “Come on.”
I walk toward the other end of the alley, but Adam doesn’t follow. “What just happened?” he asks.
“Please,” I say through gritted teeth. “We need to get out of here. One of those guys was calling someone and I can’t fight anyone else.”
Adam still hesitates. He looks at the men and then at me, over and over again, like he is trying to put together a complicated puzzle.
“Please,” I say again. “They’re going to kill you. They already shot me. Please.”
And then, his eyes wide with shock, he runs to catch up with me. He doesn’t walk right next to me, but rather a few feet away and behind, wary. He’s decided I’m his best option. I hope he’s right.
“We need to call the cops.”
“No, we can’t. You need to be dead, Adam.”
“I—what?”
“I don’t know what those guys wanted with you. But the guys I work for want you dead. And if you aren’t dead, they’ll keep coming after you, and they’ll kill the only person I love in the whole world to punish me for not doing what they told me to. So as far as anyone is concerned, you are dead.”
He stops again. Please stop stopping, Adam, we don’t have time for this. “So you really were going to kill me?” He’s reacting calmly—too calmly, he’s probably in shock. He regards me with a strange sort of analytical intelligence in his face. I am still a puzzle. A violent puzzle.
I want to grab my arm, I know I need to slow the bleeding, but it will hurt so much more if I touch it. “Yes. Well, no. I was sent here to kill you. But I wouldn’t have. Couldn’t have. Obviously. Which is why we are both in this mess now.” I take a deep breath (it hurts, even breathing hurts, I wish I would pass out but I don’t have time to) and look straight up into his eyes. “I work for very, very bad people. And I am going to do whatever I can to keep you safe from them. I need you to help me keep you alive, okay?”
He looks back to the alley and I can see in the lines of his body that he is still completely torn. Then his shoulders settle and angle toward me and I’ve won him, at least for now and now is where I do my best work.
“Okay,” he says. “But you’ll have to answer some questions.”
“Believe me, I have more than you do. We need a car.”
“I have a car—”
“You’re dead, remember? This means no car, no ATM, no using anything that can be traced back to you.” My head is spinning. I can’t hear my instincts if my head’s not clear. I’m already so scared that I don’t know how to listen to just myself. “The other guys. They have a car waiting. We can use that.”
There are so many problems. There will be no body because Adam isn’t dead. But no! Cole in the alley! A whole new avenue is opening up to save me and Annie and Adam, too. North really was the right choice. Maybe my instincts aren’t totally broken.
I pull out my phone with my good hand and lean heavily against the wall of the building we’re in front of.
“Someone’s going to see us.” Adam looks around nervously. “You’re bleeding. A lot.” He stares at my arm, not blinking, like he’s entranced. Then he shakes his head, closes his eyes, and opens them. I can see in his face he’s made a decision, decided not to be freaked out. It’s not what most people would do right now. I kind of love him for it. “Let me take care of your arm.” He drops to a knee and pulls his backpack off his shoulder. “I have a kit in here.”
“It has to look like something I could have done myself.”
He nods and opens a compact first aid kit (why does he have that in his backpack? I should have one of those), pulls out scissors, and cuts away my sleeve above the wound. I don’t look. I hate blood.
“I’m going to call someone. Be totally silent. He can’t hear you.” I push the 1 on my phone and it rings twice before James answers.
“Fia, beautiful, are you done? Do you need me to arrange a flight home?” His voice is light and easy, but there are questions there. He’s worried about me; he didn’t want me to do this job in the first place. I want to read into it, but I can’t let myself.
“Ambushed,” I say, gasping in pain at something Adam does. “I got shot.”
“Where? How bad?” James tries to sound like he is all business, but I hear an undercurrent of genuine concern. Maybe I’m just pretending I do. I don’t know.
“In the shoulder.” I grit my teeth, then swear loudly. Adam’s hands are steady and sure, and I wonder why he can be this calm over something a gun did when he was so terrified by the gun itself. “I’ll live. Three guys, don’t know who they were with. They weren’t ours.”
“Of course they weren’t ours!”
“You never know. I left all three down but alive.”
“And the mark?” He asks this more carefully. He knows what this will do to me. He knows, but he still couldn’t stop his father from sending me.
The mark is carefully applying tape and gauze to keep me from bleeding too much. The mark has gentle hands that are stained with blood now, though not in
