No Return (The Internal Defense Series) (9 page)

Spotting spies. Uncovering hidden loyalties. This was what Internal had trained her for. Exactly this.

She shook her head. “It’s too dangerous. If she’s working with Internal and she finds out who I am, I’ll be handing her the resistance.”

“We won’t tell her our names.” Kara was already starting to pace again. “We won’t tell her you lead the resistance. All she’ll know is that we’re offering her an opportunity. A chance to do something big.” Back and forth. Back and forth. “If she’s innocent, she’ll be flattered. If she’s a spy, she won’t be able to resist. Either way, she’ll want to talk to us.”

“It’s still a risk.”

Kara stopped. She met Becca’s eyes. “You were right before. We aren’t going to find anything else like this, no matter how many of these reports we get. So we either do this, or we kill her now.”

Becca knew what she had to do.

Call Meri. Give the order. Sacrifice Ryann’s life like she had sacrificed so many others.

“We’ll talk to her,” she heard herself say. “I’ll have Meri set up the meeting.”

* * *

Another handful of stores had closed since Becca’s last trip to the mall. Almost half the storefronts had gone dark, with banners from their hasty going-out-of-business sales still hanging in the windows. Other windows, the ones with lights still on inside, displayed signs that read things like
Stand strong against dissident terror
and
They can’t scare us away
—and, in one tasteless instance,
50% off RUNNING SHOES: You’ll need them when the DISSIDENTS come for you!

Two Enforcers stood at one end of the food court, checking IDs at the outer entrance and glaring at anyone who had dared to come out shopping. Most of the tables were as empty as the stores, but at a few, people sat talking in muted tones, murmuring words like
dissident
and
bombing
and
breakout
.
And in the corner, a girl a few years younger than Becca hunched over her plate as if trying to avoid the gaze of the Enforcers.

A girl whose face Becca already knew from the surveillance photos.

Ryann.

Had Becca looked that young when she had joined the resistance? No wonder they had seen her as a kid.

Becca jerked her head in Ryann’s direction. Kara nodded. Together, they strode to the table, where they each took a seat—Becca across from Ryann, Kara beside her.

Ryann’s eyes widened in alarm. She tensed, like she was getting ready to run.

Kara started to open her mouth. Becca spoke before she could. “It’s all right,” she told Ryann in a low voice. “We’re friends.”

Ryann looked from Becca to Kara. “Where’s Liam?”

Her contact. “Don’t give out his name so easily,” Becca admonished. “You have no way of knowing who we really are.”

A flush spread across Ryann’s face. “Sorry.”

“Liam told us about you,” Becca lied. “He said you have potential.” She paused just long enough to let the praise sink in. “We’re considering you for a special assignment.”

The memory of the last time she had said those words shoved its way into her mind. The tiny table, the crowded café, the eager-eyed girl across from her. She pushed the images away. “If you’re successful, it could lead to a position of greater responsibility inside the…” She glanced across the court at the Enforcers. She had to be careful about how much she said. “Inside our organization. You’d have your own network of informants reporting to you—and, most likely, direct contact with the inner circle.”

Ryann’s eyes went wide again, but not with fear this time.

“Are you interested?” asked Becca.

Ryann nodded too hard. “Yes.” Her voice came out as a whispery squeak. She tried again. “Yes. I’m… yes. Just tell me what I have to do.”

The yearning in Ryann’s eyes was almost too strong, so intense it hurt to look at.
Because she sees a chance to betray us?
But Becca could still remember her early days in the resistance—how desperate she had been for a chance to do something that mattered. If Jameson had made her the offer she had just made Ryann, she would have given him the same look.

“We can’t share any details yet,” Becca answered. “Right now we need to determine whether you’re the right person for this job.”

“Ask me anything,” Ryann urged in her quiet voice. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

Becca settled into her evaluation posture—leaning forward slightly, expression on the pleasant side of neutral, hands clasped in front of her on the table. “First we’d like to know a little more about your background.” In an evaluation, she always started with the simple things. Facts. History. Questions the subject could answer automatically. People revealed a lot more when they didn’t have to think too hard about their answers. She smiled at Ryann, the same smile she used in her evaluation room half a dozen times a day. “Tell us about how you came to join us.”

“My parents work in Surveillance.” Ryann whispered the words to the table. “I came downstairs one night after they thought I had gone to bed, and I heard them talking about Sophie. She was my best friend back then, besides my dad. My parents were saying Sophie was… that she was going to be… They had evidence against her. They were trying to figure out how to tell me.”

She gripped the edges of the table with both hands. “I knew what could happen to me if I warned her. But…” She forced her eyes to Becca’s. “But she was my best friend,” she said, her voice filled with the same determination that Becca had heard in herself every time she had spoken to Jameson, every time she had tried to convince him to let her do more. “I had to protect her.”

Becca’s mind jolted back to a night five years ago. Standing outside 117, preparing to step through those doors for the first time. Knowing what Internal could do to her just for crossing that threshold, but driven by one single overriding thought.
Heather is in there.

She blinked, and the image disappeared.
Focus.

When she looked at Ryann again, it was with an evaluator’s eyes.

And she saw… nothing. No telltale indicators of dishonesty. Anxiety, yes. Ryann was terrified—of her, of Kara, of losing this opportunity. But anyone could have seen that. And while it could be a sign of guilt, it could just as easily be an ordinary reaction.

“Sophie belonged to the… she was one of you.” Ryann dropped her gaze to the table again. “I didn’t know until that night. She introduced me to Liam. Sorry—I mean her contact.” Her cheeks threatened another blush. “Anyway. That’s how I joined.” She cringed back a little, as if afraid she had given them the wrong answer.

“It’s okay,” Kara reassured her. “We’re on your side here.” She placed a hand on Ryann’s shoulder.

Ryann jerked back, nearly falling out of her chair. Her blush spread. “Sorry. Sorry. You startled me.”

“I’ve been told you’ve given us some useful information over the past few months,” said Becca. Maybe praise would work better to relax the girl than Kara’s gesture had.

A little of the tension drained from Ryann’s shoulders. She shot Becca a shy smile before looking away again. “I’ve done what I can. I’d like to do more.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” said Becca. “What happened when the Enforcers came for you?”

A shudder—real, not faked—ran through Ryann. “I almost slept through it. I didn’t hear them come in. I woke up when they started banging on my parents’ bedroom door. I didn’t know what was going on at first, until I heard them ask where I was. I managed to make it out the window while my parents tried to convince them I wasn’t home.”

Something thick and heavy lodged itself in Becca’s stomach.

Ryann was lying.

She was doing it well. Well enough that no one but a trained evaluator would have picked up on it. But that was worse, in a way, because unless she was a naturally skilled liar—and the girl in front of her looked like anything but—it meant someone had taught her.

She didn’t allow her feelings to show on her face. “How did you stay in hiding for so long without your contact’s help?”

“I used to go through my parents’ files, to try and figure out which places Surveillance wasn’t watching. In case I ever needed to run.” A faint flicker of a wistful smile. “Sophie used to say I was paranoid.”

Becca waited for Ryann to continue, feeling sicker by the second.

After a moment, Ryann kept going. “There’s this place downtown. Mostly full of squatters. Someone reported it as a dissident hideout once, so Surveillance put in cameras, even sent in undercover agents, but they never found a single dissident. After a couple of years, someone complained about all the money they were wasting, so they took the cameras down and the agents out, and the building hasn’t been watched since. I stayed there until I thought it was safe to let Liam know I was okay.”

She sounded convincing. Anyone else would have believed her.

But she was still lying.

Ryann stole a nervous glance at Becca, then at Kara. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

Becca nodded. “You’re doing fine.”

A little of the anxiety left Ryann’s face. Good thing she couldn’t see through Becca’s lies the way Becca could see through hers.

Kara gave Becca a questioning look. Becca ignored her.
Not yet.
She would finish the evaluation. She would let Ryann have these few minutes, this last chance.

Give me something,
she urged, as if Ryann could hear her unspoken words.
Give me a way to save you.

Her voice remained even, revealing nothing. “Why did you start working with us?” Motivation—the next step in an evaluation, after getting the easy questions out of the way.

Give me something.

Ryann hung her head, letting her hair fall into her face. “I wasn’t going to at first,” she admitted. “I was going to join Internal like my parents. But after I saved Sophie, she showed me things. Evidence. I never would have planned to work for them if I had known what they…” She gave a quick shrug, hunching her shoulders even further as she did. “So I started passing Li— my contact bits of information from my parents’ files.”

“You could have walked away,” Becca pointed out.

Ryann shook her head emphatically. “People were dying. Innocent people. I couldn’t walk away from that. I saved Sophie, but more people like her were being arrested all the time, for no good reason, and my parents were
helping…
” Pain crossed her face. “My parents—my dad—always taught me that everyone has a responsibility to make the world a better place. It’s why he joined Internal. I guess I…” She hesitated, biting her lip. “Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but I guess I started helping you because I still wanted to be like him.”

All the traces of dishonesty had vanished from Ryann’s voice. She meant every word of what she had said. Becca had no doubt of it.

But something still wasn’t right. There was something
off,
something that didn’t quite… For a moment, Becca searched for words, then gave up. She didn’t know how to describe it, not even to herself. Inwardly, she frowned, calling to mind memories of past evaluations, seeing if she could remember anything similar. She couldn’t.

“Do you have—” she began.

But Kara spoke over her. “What’s the real reason?”

Becca shot Kara a sharp glare. Evaluations required subtlety—this one more than most. If Kara gave any hint to Ryann that they suspected her, this would all be over.

Ignoring Becca’s look, Kara smiled at Ryann. The smile looked…
wrong
.
It reminded Becca of the way Jake had looked at her when he had confronted her in the halls of the reeducation center. When he had told her he wanted to help her the way Internal had helped him.

With the unnatural smile still spread across her face, Kara placed her hand over Ryann’s. Another comforting gesture. But when Ryann tried to pull away, Kara didn’t let her.

“I’m sure that’s the story you tell yourself,” she said as she locked eyes with Ryann. “But it’s not the actual reason, is it? Tell me why you really became a dissident.” She said the word
dissident
the way someone from Internal might have.

Ryann sat frozen, staring down at Kara’s hand on top of hers. “I… I…”

“Tell me.” Kara’s voice dripped with artificial kindness. “Let me help you.”

“I
told
you!” Ryann shrieked the words as she leapt from her seat.

The food court went silent as all eyes shot to them.

Ryann wrapped her arms around herself, oblivious to the attention she had attracted. Oblivious to everything but Kara. “Don’t,” she whimpered. “Please don’t. I told you. I told you.”

Kara didn’t take her eyes from Ryann. She gripped the table as hard as Ryann had a moment ago. Her jaw was clenched, her breathing ragged. She didn’t say anything else.

And then Becca understood what Kara had done.

She had baited Ryann. Everything she had said, everything she had done, had been calculated to get a response from someone who had gone through reeducation.

And it had worked.

Finally, Ryann seemed to notice the silence that filled the room. The tables of people watching her with their forks halfway to their mouths. The Enforcers, hands on their weapons as they evaluated the potential threat.

She sagged back into her chair, shaking so hard the table rattled. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

From across the table, Kara gave Becca a grim nod. Her eyes asked a silent question.

Becca answered with a nod of her own. She had seen enough.

Ryann had been in reeducation.

Ryann was working with Internal.

Ryann’s stammered apologies turned into excuses. “It’s been hard, these past few weeks. Living on the run. Never sure when they’re going to find me. I… I get nervous.” She raised her head to give Becca an imploring look. “But I can still do what you need me to do.”

Don’t think about it. Just get it done.

“It’s okay,” Becca said gently. “We’ve heard enough. We believe you’re the right person for this assignment.” Her stomach roiled.
Don’t think about it.
“But we shouldn’t talk about the rest here. Come with us—we can discuss the details in private.” She offered Ryann her hand.

Ryann looked at Becca’s outstretched hand. She didn’t take it. The hope in her eyes winked out, leaving her face a bleak mask of fear and resignation.

“You can stop pretending now,” she said in a small voice. She didn’t look at Becca. “I know why you’re here.”

Becca barely kept herself from reacting. Next to Ryann, Kara stiffened.

“I know you came here to figure out whether I’ve been spying for Internal,” Ryann continued. “And I know you’re about to take me someplace to k-kill me.”

“We’re not—” Becca began.

“I was in reeducation.”

The quiet admission froze the words on Becca’s tongue.

“Internal sent me back to spy on you. And I… I did it. I said I’d give them whatever they wanted. I told them about Liam. I told them about…” A strangled whimper. “I told them about Sophie.” She shook harder. “And I’m not the only one. There are others.”

With effort, Becca kept her voice neutral. “Why are you telling us this?”