“I am not a kid,” I say with confidence.
I’ve studied this case for months. I might have my own ideas of how to work my way into the inner circle—Archer Crone specifically. But I don’t need to tell my dad and uncle that.
Uncle doesn’t blink. “You are. For this sort of job, you are.”
“Dad was eighteen when he applied to join the SEALs.” So was Uncle, seven years my father’s junior.
“That was physical training. Yours is a whole different scenario.”
“I learned a lot in Thailand.”
Uncle’s gaze darkens, and Dad’s eyes dart up to meet mine in the rearview mirror. He guns the engine—the movement that gives away his momentary bitterness at my words.
Shit, I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
“You might have,” Uncle says with coldness. “And you got too close to something that would’ve traumatized you for life.”
Yeah, three years in Bangkok with my dad taught me a lot. But what he’s referring to was the one night when I thought I was the shit, despite being barely sixteen, and let others put me in danger.
We don’t talk about that night in Bangkok when things went horribly wrong.
I got this. This time, I won’t get in trouble.
Aleksei Tsariuk, who goes by Tsar, is not to mess with. The most powerful man in the Russian underworld believes his daughter, Milena Tsariuk, twenty-three, who disappeared before the Change, is on Zion Island of all places. He believes she went there under an alias during Spring Break. He might be right, even though he contacted the Secretary of Defense and sent a request to Archer Crone, who replied negatively. But even geniuses make mistakes.
I will have to get to know every single resident of the Ayana resort to try to locate Tsariuk’s daughter, the girl who went to an American high school, speaks English with no accent, and—that’s the sketchiest thing—doesn’t want to be found.
And then…
Australia is the queen of the world now. If I manage to locate Milena Tsariuk, her father will get us visas and the money to buy the biggest luxury these days—the right to immigrate to the ‘safe’ world.
Our truck pulls up to the checkpoint of the warehouse where I am being dropped off. Dad rolls down the window and passes our papers to a security guard, who checks the passports and the medical cards, thoroughly studies the radiation report, then motions to park in the line of cars. “Only the girl is allowed beyond the parking area.”
My tank top is spotted with sweat. I am nervous though it will be three days in the Transfer Center before we are even transported to the quarantined coastal area in Georgia and take the boat to Zion.
I push the file away, already wishing I could keep the picture of the Chancellor, swing my backpack over my shoulder, and jump out of the truck.
Dad and Uncle are a head taller than me. My looks and build are from my mom, who was Ukrainian. My hair and skin are definitely from my Ortiz, Puerto Rican heritage. I look tiny compared to Dad and Uncle. But at least now, as they slowly get out of the truck and make their way to stand in front of me, I know they take me seriously. Two former military men sending a nineteen-year-old on a mission—who would’ve known…
“It might take a month or three or half a year to find out what we are looking for. But you are better off there than in this shithole.” Uncle sucks his teeth and squints, looking around at the chain fence and barbed wire, which is a usual sight at major businesses these days.
Dad studies me calmly but clenches his jaw. “Come here.”
He pulls me into a hug and holds me tightly. It’s the first time in a while that he does so, not letting me go for longer than it takes my chest to tighten. The longest since… yeah, that night in Bangkok we don’t talk about.
“I’ll be fine, Dad,” I murmur into his chest.
“Your mom would’ve been proud of you, Kit-Kat.”
Shit.
Now my eyes burn. That’s what Mom used to call me.
And he is wrong.
Mom would’ve never let me go. Mom would’ve cursed him out in Russian or Ukrainian for the mere idea and made his six-foot muscled body slump under her intimidating dark gaze, aimed at him from her five-foot-two. If Mom was around, Thailand would’ve never happened, and neither would Dad’s year of depression, or three years in Pennsylvania.
Too many things.