Meredith McCardle - The Eighth Guardian

“I’m not dragging you into it.”

“I’m already in it!”

“Not like this.” And then he lowers the gun. He’s still staring at me, and for once I see the glimpse of a different man. A man who’s regretful. A man who knows he’s defeated. I hold out my hand for the gun. He waits—staring, reflecting—and then he starts to hand it to me.

“What the hell are you doing, Julian?”

The door opens behind me, and Alpha retracts his hand and jumps back. I whip my head around to see Headmaster Vaughn walk in. His silver eyebrows rise when he sees me. “Hello, Amanda.”

He’s a man I used to admire, someone I used to want to emulate. He fought in Korea. He was a spy during the Cold War (well, this is unconfirmed but highly rumored). He was a close adviser to two presidents. He treated his students with dignity and respect. He listened to us. Counseled us.

But all along he was buying the past, and now he’s standing here before me, not even trying to deny it.

“Hello, Cresty,” I say.

Vaughn’s mouth creeps up into an amused smile. “Amanda, dear, I know we’ve trained you better than that. I’ve seen your transcript.”

“What, don’t antagonize the enemy?”

“No, don’t be stupid in captivity. It could get you killed.”

With those words, everything fades away. The truth floats through the air and settles in my lungs. Vaughn is a bad man. A very bad man, and this situation is very real and very dangerous.

“Sit down,” Vaughn tells me.

“Don’t sit down,” Alpha says, the gun hanging to his side. He turns to Vaughn. “It’s over. Can’t you see that?”

“Nothing is over,” Vaughn says coolly. “You’re in this until the end. You knew the terms when you took the deal.”

“I want out,” Alpha says.

“Do you now?”

The two men stare at each other with such ferocity that I forget to breathe. This is a standoff to see who’s going to blink first. Vaughn does.

“Very well. Have it your way.”

And then I know what’s going to happen. I open my mouth to scream, but before a sound can form on my lips, Vaughn has reached into his shoulder holster, and there’s a Glock and a shot and Alpha crumples to the floor. Vaughn kicks Alpha’s gun out of his hand and sends it spiraling across the floor. It bangs against a trash can.

A scream is out of my lips before I can think. He was going to surrender; I know he was! I sway to the side and slam into the table. Vaughn grips his gun with his right hand and yanks my shoulder with his left.

“Shut up!” he says as he pushes me into a stool. “I told you to sit down.”

I lower onto the seat and look at the table. Not at the floor. But I can still see Alpha lying there in a puddle of red out of the corner of my eyes, so I close them.

“Start talking,” Vaughn orders. “I want to know everything you know. And please don’t insult me by lying. I spent thirty years training intelligence officers and then students to lie. I’m going to know.”

He’s right. I’m so dead.

Vaughn gives me a pointed look. “Talk!”

“I found Alpha’s mission ledger. I figured out how to decode it.”

He nods. “Mmm-hmm, very good. Now where is it?”

“It’s in a safe place.” That’s not exactly a lie.

“We’re not playing games right now,” Vaughn says. “You are going to tell me where that ledger is, and I am going to go get it.”

“And then what?”

“One step at a time.” Vaughn sets down the gun and places both hands flat on the table.

I slide my hands into my lap and then up on the underside of the table. I’m feeling for anything I can use as a weapon. A metal joint. A loose screw. Hell, even a sharpened pencil would be better than nothing. My hands feel something. A valve. And a tube. This is the advanced chemistry lab. And I mean advanced . So that means—

“Hands on the table,” Vaughn says. Dammit. Of course he would notice. I yank out the tube without moving more than a millimeter, then I place my hands flat on the table and touch the valve with my knee. I shift in my seat a tiny bit to see if it will turn. It does.

“Where is the ledger?” Vaughn repeats. “You have thirty seconds to tell me.”

I don’t ask “or what?”; I shift again and turn the valve on full blast. This is either the most genius idea I’ve ever had or the decision that is sure to send me to an early grave.

“I’ll tell you where the ledger is if you tell me one thing.” My voice shakes. Dammit. I take a quick breath.

Vaughn raises an eyebrow but doesn’t respond.

“Why did you have Kennedy killed?”

Vaughn’s mouth creeps into a smile. “Not the question I thought you were going to ask. I thought you were going to ask if I ordered that your dad be killed on the mission, and for the record, the answer to that question is yes.” I don’t blink. He’s trying to throw me off guard. He is. My insides collapse into a puddle of anguish, and I feel vomit rise in my throat.

“Answer the question!”

Vaughn clucks. “You’re in no position to be making demands, Amanda.”

“I think I am. You want to know where the ledger is, and I’m willing to tell you. You just need to—”

“Because!” Vaughn yells. “Because Kennedy needed to be taken out if we were going to go into Vietnam. Kennedy negotiated a withdrawal in 1964. We needed Johnson to rush us into the Gulf of Tonkin and escalate the conflict. I knew Eagle could make a fortune off a war, so I studied the conflict, read the necessary classified documents, and made an educated guess.”

I blow out a breath. “You killed a president on a guess?”

“An educated guess,” Vaughn says. “Which turned out to be correct.”

I’m dizzy. I sway to the side and fall off the stool. My hands are on the floor, just inches from where a pool of blood begins. Vaughn just told me everything. He has no intention of letting me escape here alive.

But then a loud roar of voices erupts in the courtyard below. Vaughn is over at the window in a flash. I know that he sees them. The backups. The men from the helicopter. They must be storming the building as we speak. But I don’t have time to wait for them. Vaughn aims his gun at me and cocks the trigger.

“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” I say as I push up. “You see, I turned on the hydrogen valve, so the gas is slowly seeping into the room. You do remember what happens if you mix hydrogen, oxygen, and fire, right?”

Vaughn looks at me with disbelieving eyes, and he’s at my side in a second. He bends under the desk to check, and I don’t think. I raise my elbow and bring it back down onto his neck.

Vaughn falls to the floor, and my training tells me to make sure he stays down, but my instinct has me scrambling to the door. Vaughn hops up and yanks me back. I swing. I connect with flesh. My hands and knees hit the ground. The ledger falls out of my back pocket. I gasp. Vaughn gasps. He pushes me out of the way and lunges for it. I grab on to his head and push him back. But his arms are longer. His fingers close around it. And then he pushes me to the ground as he rises.

I fly across the room to the trash can. Alpha’s gun is sitting on the floor next to it. I grab it, cock it, and aim it at the hydrogen valve.

“Drop it!” I order.

“You shoot that, you kill us both.”

“Don’t think I won’t do it.”

“That’s exactly what I think.”

A door bangs open down the hall. The backups! Vaughn rushes to the window. He’s going to jump! He’s going to escape.

I don’t think. I squeeze the trigger, and the room erupts in a burst of flames. My body is picked up and hurled back. I slam into the door, which opens, and I drop to the ground in the hallway. Black boots rush toward me. The world spins overhead. A voice I recognize. Abe. Abe is here. He’s over me, screaming and touching my face, and that’s the last thing I remember.