Adrenaline

“Tell me about Novem Soles.”

“I have a contact. He got me my money, but I’ve never met him.” She finished her sandwich. “I don’t even know how they got their name. But I found an old legend about nine suns on the Internet. Chinese. It says that there were once ten suns, but they wouldn’t come out just one at a time during the day. All ten would come and their heat and power would incinerate the world.” Her voice had grown very soft. “The emperor asked the father of the ten suns, Di Jun, to ask the suns to appear just one at a time, so the earth would not be remade in heat and flame. But the suns refused. So Di Jun sent an archer named Yi, with a magical bow and arrow, to frighten the suns, to make them obey. Instead Yi shot nine of them, so only one sun would remain.” She risked a smile. “Because the nine suns, returning, would destroy the world, a

“Is Edward one of the nine? Or is he a flunky?”

“I don’t know.”

“These fifty people. What’s special about them?”

“I said I don’t know.”

“That’s a lie.”

“No, it’s not.” Lucy drew her knees up to her chin. She peered at me above them. “When you asked me to marry you, I almost said no. Not because I didn’t want to marry you. I did. But I felt like you wouldn’t be enough. I wanted a lot from life. I wanted money. I wanted respect. I wanted to work hard for ten years and then have enough to live on. Not work my fingers to the bone clawing up some male-run bureaucracy, not putting my life in danger for a bunch of ideals.” She slid her legs out in front of her and for a moment we were back in London, drinking lager in our apartment, talking about our future. “I knew you didn’t care about that. And for a time I thought I could live without the money. I couldn’t.”

I didn’t say anything. She was quiet for nearly forty minutes and I thought she’d fallen asleep. Then she said, “I think I will tell you a little bit about who I work for.”

“Why the change of heart?”

“Because do you think the Company’s really going to welcome you back? Even if you help them? Maybe they’ll give you a pardon. Maybe. But they’ll never, ever, let you work for them again. They won’t trust you. They won’t think you can follow orders. Orders trump all.”

“Are you telling me this to offer me a job?”

She stretched out a leg. “Consider it a lifeline. I think the Company will simply kill both of us when they’re done.”

“No.”

“Oh, not them officially. But there are rogue groups ru

I looked hard at her. Could I have been so wrong for so long? The thought was a fist in my chest, in my brain. “I wasn’t enough for you. Marrying me wasn’t enough,” I said.

“Marrying you was… Marrying you was the right thing to do. I loved you. It was an act of optimism.”

“I don’t believe you loved me.”

She raised an arm, slid up the sleeve, and I saw a trio of round, brutal burns on her upper arm. “That was the price of making that phone call that got you out of the office. Edward thought I’d betrayed them, leaving you alive. A dead patsy is more valuable than a live one who can deny and possibly disprove the frame.”

“But you did frame me.”

“You were alive. I knew they might let you go, that there was a chance. Better prison than a grave.”

“Why wasn’t I enough? Wasn’t I a good husband?”

“You ca

I started to answer and she raised a hand. “No, you don’t care about me. I see through all this talk. This is about the baby.” She smiled and then the smile went away. “My trump card.”

“Don’t talk about Daniel that way.”

“I know. He’s a person. Who grew inside me for nine months.” She wiped a hand against her lip. “When we found out I was pregnant, do you remember…” It was a sign of her psychosis, I thought, that she even had to ask.

“I remember.” It had been right after di

“Well, I thought, that’s that. I won’t work for Novem Soles any-more. I will walk away. I will cover my tracks and I will stop and no one will ever know that I ever sold bits and pieces of information. I will have this baby and I will love Sam and that will be my real life.” She rubbed at her lip and she dropped her gaze from mine. “But they don’t let you walk away. You don’t submit a letter of resignation. They told me they would kill you.”

I closed my eyes and felt a corner of my heart die. I could never know the truth of anything Lucy said. She had saved me in London; but why, I could never know. Maybe even she didn’t know. Love? Guilt? A more selfish reason, to use me in the future? It didn’t matter. She lied like other people breathed, so that when she told the truth you had no way to recognize it.

I said nothing.

“So. My choices were let you die and then be faced with a life I didn’t want, with a child, or to keep working for them and figure out a way to cut loose and to set you free.”

“You could have come and told us that you were in trouble. Cooperated with us. You’ve used me, you’ve used our kid.”

“I couldn’t come back after the bomb. I couldn’t do prison.”

“There are worse things than prison.”

“Is that a threat? You won’t hurt me.” A half smile played on her face. “You won’t. You’re the good guy. I’m the mother of your child.”

“Where did you have the baby?” I said. “You owe me this, Lucy. Tell me.”

“I owe you nothing. I saved your life. We’re square.”

“There is a Company airfield in Maine, near Damariscotta. If I tell the pilots to land there, they will.”

“I thought we were going to New York.”

“No. I think I should give you back to the Company.”

“Sam, we had a deal. You stop Edward, I walk.”

“But you don’t know where he is, you say. I’ll bet you’ll tell the Company. I bet they’ll make you talk.”

“But the guns—”

“My son takes precedence. Maybe these people haven’t even fixed their targets yet. Maybe the fifty people are just to see if they can encode a chip; they may not be targets at all, just DNA samples that they stole somehow.” I crossed my arms. “I can’t wait to see what Howell does when he gets his hands on you. Oh, I was just the warm-up, sweetheart. You’re the main course. You made him look very bad. Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat screwed.”

“He’ll kill you, too.”

“No, I’ll get forgiven. He’ll say he authorized me in secret or some bull. He’ll be clean. He’ll have his traitor in his pocket.”

“The Company won’t let you land at their airfield,” she said.

I stood up. “I can be talking with Howell in five minutes. I’ll have clearance.”

“You weren’t always so stubborn.”

“Where did you have the baby? Tell me and we’ll keep going on to New York.”

She decided to believe me. “Strasbourg. A private clinic called Les Saintes. On the tenth of January. He was given the name of Julien Daniel Besson.”

“Who took him?”

“A woman.” I’d been told the broker was a woman.

“Who does Daniel look like?”

“Babies all look like Winston Churchill at first. But he has your eyes, Sam.”

“What is this baby broker’s name?”

“Edward didn’t tell me. I don’t know. That’s how they kept me in their pocket. It was insurance.”

“And they gave you money for my son?”

“Our—”

“You just lost the right to call him yours, Lucy. Don’t you ever call him yours again.”

“No, don’t say that.”

“You let them take him to sell him. Jesus.”