Page 97

It was tempting to give in to the panic churning around inside her.

Instead, she grinned at Jonas. “Army Rangers lead the way,” she said, then set off into the terminal at a jog.

“All the way,” she heard him say from behind her, and then they were moving fast and hard into the heart of Grand Central Terminal.

Over their comm unit, Oz was dripping in statistics. The number of people who went through Grand Central at rush hour each day. That it was the second-biggest train station in the United States. How many trains went in and out of the station.

“Hey,” Bethan said as they made it to the main concourse, where there was already enough of a crowd to make her stomach twist. “Wikipedia. Put a lid on it.”

And she thought that if she died then and there, it would be worth it just to see Jonas look at her like that, then laugh. Not in that private way he’d done when the two of them were alone, but the way she’d heard only one other time before. Smack in the middle of another intense situation.

Whatever it was, was a gift, and it went out over their comm units, and she loved it.

“Let’s split up,” he said when they found a spot near theinformation desk and the famous clock. “What do you think? Is he going to go for a vantage point? Or blend into the middle of the crowd right here?”

“Who could possibly say?” Bethan asked. A touch sourly, she could admit.

She nodded at Jonas, and wasn’t surprised that the next time she glanced in his direction, he was gone.

Bethan stood where she was, with the famous giant clock counting down the minutes to certain doom, one way or another. She made herself breathe, slow and deep. She tried to make her usual senses do twice the normal work. She scanned the crowd around her, looking for anything and everything.

Anything that snagged her attention. Anything that felt like some kind of flag.

“I feel like we’re missing something,” she said into her comm unit, directly to Jonas. “Is this all a setup? Is he actually climbing the Empire State Building as we speak?”

“Anything is possible,” Jonas replied, unhelpfully. She didn’t look around to see if she could spot him. Even if she could, she knew that it would only be for a moment before he disappeared again. If there was one thing Jonas Crow was particularly good at, it was making himself scarce when he was right there in front of you. Even if she’d always found it far too easy to see him, wherever he was. “But I don’t buy it. This guy likes a show. Or we’d already be dead.”

“What’s the narrative here?” Bethan slowly, carefully turned in a circle as she stood there, never letting her eyes stop moving from this commuter to that. From tourists in their oversized backpacks to a group of schoolkids. “He bears a grudge. Here’s an opportunity to take us out and make it operatic. I’ll take that to mean I hit him pretty hard back in the desert.”

She could hear the sound of loud talking from whereverJonas was. “The kind of man he is, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume he’s not a big fan of women. Particularly women in combat roles, who made him look like a wuss. No wonder he changed his name. Hid himself away.”

“And no wonder his friends from his old outfit haven’t signed up with him in his new one,” Bethan agreed. “They must know who he is. Someone had to take him out of the desert that night.”

“Once again,” Jonas said. “I have to think he’s in this for the show.”

But another quarter of an hour dragged by, and the only show around them was a typical New York rush hour.

“Maybe he’s not focused on the commuters,” Bethan mused at one point. “There’s a whole food hall downstairs.”

“I’ll do a walk-through,” Jonas replied.

Five minutes passed. Ten.

“No sign,” Jonas reported back. “I’m going to keep doing laps. I have a feeling he’s here. Watching.”

“Watching paint dry,” Bethan muttered.

Another five minutes limped by.

Her comm unit buzzed in her ear, indicating the broader channel was in use.

“Sowande’s being transported to a secure medical facility,” Isaac said, a note in his voice that made Bethan’s bones feel unpleasantly hollow. “But I need to update you on the incubation period.”

“I’d really prefer that you didn’t,” Bethan replied.

“Forty-eight hours is a very generous, very unlikely estimate,” Isaac said anyway.

And Bethan adored him for many reasons, but chief among them was this. That matter-of-fact voice of his. As cool and devoid of emotion as it was possible for the human voice to be. She opened her mouth to ask him how long, then, but she found that her head was buzzing a little bit.