The Gambit (67 page)

“It’s that door right there,” he said, pointing to the far corner.

She stood up without thanking him.

“I would love a glass of lemonade if you don’t mind,” Viktor added with a smile. I glanced over at him with an annoyed expression. Why were they being so rude?

Lucas nodded with a halfhearted smile and headed for the stairs.

“Sure, I’ll be right back,” he said.

The moment he was almost up the stairs, Viktor stood and walked away. I turned around, confused as to where he was going. He opened the door opposite to the bathroom Natasha was in. I saw a light turn on and heard his footsteps growing fainter. Within about ten seconds, he returned, turning off the light and closing the door behind him.

“The exit is through there,” he breathed heavily as if he had ran throughout the rest of the basement. “I unlocked it.” Natasha sat down just a moment after him. “I found these in one of the drawers,” she announced, holding up a silver pair of cuticle scissors.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I gasped in shock.

Natasha glared back at me with the most serious expression I had ever seen on her face. Her black eyes were empty.

“Viktor and I didn’t make it two years on the run by trusting strangers.”

I swallowed hard, and her words hit me in the gut. The way hers and Viktor’s minds worked was not crafted by chance—it was by practice.
This
was their reality, and it had been for two years. They were always prepared for the worst, even in seemingly innocuous situations.

Lucas’s footsteps sounded as he descended the staircase. I saw Natasha clutch the scissors within her palm to conceal them. He rounded the corner with a glass of lemonade, and I could hear the pieces of ice clinging around inside. He walked over and handed it to Viktor.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re very welcome.”

But
were
we welcome? We were sitting defenseless in the enemy’s home. I was staring at the face of a man who worked with the same people that had been chasing me and Owen across the eastern seaboard for the past two weeks. Doubt and suspicion darted around my mind.

“So, Rachel,” Lucas began, sitting on the oversized ottoman in the middle of us. “I was told by your godfather that you might be in need of my assistance.”

“Yes,” I answered, nodding nervously. “He told me you worked for the CIA.”

“I do.” His voice was solemn. “I have been there for almost ten years.”

“That’s a long time,” Viktor said. I turned to him to see the same stern face he had when he first sat down. He was distrusting of him. Lucas seemed to take notice, and his eyes squinted from being scrutinized by Viktor.

“It is,” he responded calmly. “The past year, though, has felt longer than the first nine combined.”

“Was that because of Veronica? Or because you couldn’t handle the guilt of knowing you were helping destroy this country?” Viktor jeered. I turned to him with my mouth agape. How brash he was being. Lucas snorted and nodded his head slowly with pressed lips.

“A little bit of both, actually,” he admitted. “I am ashamed that I sat on the sidelines while all of this went on, but you wouldn’t understand how trapped we were. If we defected, we would be dead men—”

“Better to die with some integrity,” Viktor interjected, “instead of just letting them use innocent civilians as pawns.”

I saw pain in Lucas’s eyes. Viktor was testing his will, and it was visibly hurting him.

“That is
exactly
why I contacted Ian,” he said. His tone rose in frustration. “I served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, all for what? To watch the people that sent me there attempt to dissolve our freedom?”

“That was a pointless war built on
lies
,” Viktor sneered.

“Viktor,” Grey scolded. “Stop this.”

Lucas’s face contorted. He was becoming angry.

“That’s not the point!” he yelled, and then tried to suppress his voice. “I didn’t create the lies, did I? I thought I was doing something good. I thought I was protecting our freedom from terrorists, and then after some time in the CIA I realized it was all for profit. You don’t have a clue what I have been through. I have watched my brothers die beside me in battle, and many of my friends and I suffer from PTSD. Do you know what it’s like not to be able to take pictures with your family? I can’t handle seeing a camera flash anymore.”

Viktor’s face softened from hearing his statement.

“The point is, I took an oath to protect the constitution of the United States from
all
enemies, foreign
and
domestic. The terrorists are a stone’s throw away from us. Do you know how
badly
I wanted to just kill her myself? Could you imagine sitting twenty feet away from her in a control room for three months straight?”

“No,” Viktor said. “I could never.”

Lucas calmed down, and his heavy breathing subsided.

“If only you knew how much I am risking by having her in my house,” he said to Viktor, nodding in my direction. “I am risking the safety of my wife and kids by agreeing to help you all, but I have to. I despise Veronica with every cell in my body.”

“So do I,” I spoke up.

“Me too,” Viktor added.

Lucas nodded and looked around at all of us.

“I can tell you both do,” he said, turning to look at me. “I was told by Ian that someone you were with had a massive piece to the puzzle, as he referred to it. Do you have it here with you?”

I glanced over at Viktor, and Viktor turned to Lucas.

“Yes, I do,” he responded. He slid off his backpack and unzipped the laptop slit. He pulled it out and turned it on. A moment later, he put the flash drive in a USB port. I saw the images open. He stood up and handed Lucas the laptop.

“Hit the right arrow key to go through them all,” he instructed.

I watched Lucas’s eyes flicker as he clicked through the images of the shipping containers, and with each passing second his face scrunched up more.

“The timestamp…” Lucas muttered. “It says January 2
nd
, 2015…are these…shipping containers?”

“Yes,” Viktor answered.

“Where did you get access to these?”

Viktor didn’t answer, but Lucas continued clicking through the photos. Suddenly, he glanced up at Viktor with wide eyes and looked him up and down.

“There’s no way. There’s no way you are who I think you are.”

“I am who you think I am,” Viktor said with a smile tugging at his lips.

“Viktor Ivankov?”

His voice sounded so dazed. Viktor nodded in response.

“I can’t believe this,” he muttered. “You, the most elusive person in the country, are sitting right here across from me in my own house.”

“Believe it,” Viktor said. Lucas handed him back the laptop.

“How did you meet Rachel?”

“We kidnapped her and Owen,” Natasha answered flatly.

I began to laugh, as did everyone else.

“Natasha and I saw them in traffic and followed them to the hotel they were staying at. We watched Grey and Briana leave, and we decided to be patient to see if Rachel and Owen would come out of their hotel room. Luckily for us, they walked around the corner to a hot dog stand. We snatched them at the back entrance of the hotel.”

“Thanks for letting me finish my hot dog, by the way,” I teased him sarcastically.

“Sorry you didn’t devour it like Owen did.”

Owen
…hearing his name made me want to burst into tears. Speaking of the night before his death brought back so many memories. It was too fresh in my mind, and it was so difficult to accept the truth—that he wasn’t coming back.

“Oh. I’m sorry, Rachel.”

I turned to Viktor, wiping my eyes as they started glistening.

“It’s fine. I—I’m fine,” I stammered.

What a flat out lie. I wasn’t fine. I wasn’t anything close to being fine. Every passing moment I felt like I was falling apart, but externally, I was trying to hold the pieces together.

“We didn’t even know you had these files…” Lucas mumbled.

Viktor’s eyebrows quirked. “I find that kind of hard to believe. Veronica wouldn’t have wanted to catch me so badly if she didn’t know I had proof.”

“You would be surprised at how much we
don’t
know,” he countered. “We are their worker bees. We do as we are told and collect the Intel. There are things that we aren’t told, believe it or not. I was just beginning to piece together Veronica’s involvement when the bombs went off at the debate. After that, it all became clear to me. Veronica wasn’t the only one behind this. She was given temporary control over the entire CIA by the Commander in Chief himself. Obama is in on this plan, too.”

Oh, how his words made the world seem so bleak. How could we possibly stop their army with an article? I didn’t know for certain, but my dad instilled in me how invaluable the truth was, and I would also keep my promise to Owen—write the story.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Natasha huffed.

“I walked into work every day feeling like I was drowning,” he said. “I left feeling the exact same way. My hands were tied behind my back. I couldn’t tell my wife, nor my children. I couldn’t tell anyone. The day Owen was arrested in Miami, I stood up to her in front of the control room. I can still hear the clacking of her heels as she walked over to me and then whispered threats into my ear. She threatened my family.”

“She killed the only family I had left,” I spoke up. The words felt like glass as they left my mouth. It was excruciating to say it out loud.

“I know,” Lucas replied with a somber expression. “I’m assuming that’s half the reason you are here.”

I nodded. “The other half is Owen.”

His green eyes locked with my own, and in that moment, I felt the same sensation as when I talked to him on the phone earlier today. He
understood
. The volatile mix of pain and hatred, he felt it too. I took a deep breath to steady the surge of emotions coursing through me.

“Lucas,” I began slowly. “The most important question I have for you is, how can you get us close enough to Veronica Hall to take her out?”

“Well, that is a very good question. When you and Owen were still on the run, her schedule was regimented. Now, from what a few of my coworkers are saying, she is just popping in here and there. That could be a problem for us.

“Why?” Grey asked. Lucas shot a confused glance back at him.

“Because, that means we would have to follow her outside of the CIA and risk being spotted. Wherever we end up deciding to do this, most likely we will need an ID to get in. My CIA clearance can get me in just about anywhere, but the problem is everything is palm or iris scanner nowadays.”

We stayed quiet. No one responded. He glanced around at all of us as if we were crazy.

“What?”

“Do you think that makes it difficult or something?” Viktor questioned.

“Uh, yeah!” he exclaimed. “One wrong move in a system as sensitive as that and you could get yourself screwed. How you could possibly fool an iris scanner is beyond me.”

“There are ways,” Natasha said with a cocky smirk.

His forehead was still scrunched up in disbelief.

“Do you guys
really
think you are capable of pulling this off?”

“Of course,” Viktor answered. “I am the muscle. I’m not afraid to do what I have to do.”

I decided to chime in. “You are looking at the best of the best, Lucas. We have two hackers.” I nodded in the direction of Natasha and Grey. “Briana makes fake IDs and documents that can fool even the keenest eye. That is how we have gotten this far unscathed.”

Lucas’s eyes met my own, and there was a seriousness about his demeanor.

“And what about you?”

My jaw clenched as he asked the question, and the answer came to me instantly.

“I’m the one that’s going to pull the trigger.”

“Truth is treason in an empire of lies.”