Liliana stepped out from behind Farooq-Lane, her face gentle and unsurprised, and Farooq-Lane realized that Liliana had known this was how it was going to happen. She’d seen this in her vision. This moment. Not Farooq-Lane slicing through Bryde. She’d let Farooq-Lane climb into that freezing water, knowing that she would fail to stop Bryde when she sprang out. She’d known it was a ridiculous plan and had let it play through for this moment. Not killing Bryde, but acquiring this Zed, one more Zed than any other plan had ever managed.

Would it have all worked the same way if Farooq-Lane had been in on it from the beginning?

Trust was a hard thing.

“It’s all right,” Liliana told Hennessy. She walked straight up to her as if she wasn’t one of the three most dangerous Zeds in the country, and she clasped one of Hennessy’s hands with such warmth that the Zed stared at her. “We all finally found each other.”

Chapter 33

Match heads flaring. Plastic melting. Paper twisting. Gasoline smoking. Anything can burn if you hit it hard enough to jam oxygen atoms into its core. Ronan’s heart incinerated.

I’m driving, Bryde had said. You’re unfit.

He was right.

As the Boston skyline got smaller in the invisible car’s rearview mirror, Ronan kept blinking as if things would get clear, and they never got clear. Or maybe they were too clear. Every streetlight, every skeleton tree, every billboard etched itself in his vision, every detail perfectly visible so that he couldn’t concentrate on any one part of it. He sat bolt upright in the passenger seat, his leg jiggling. If he were driving, he’d mash that gas pedal down and see how much speed he’d really dreamt into this thing. If he were driving, he’d smash this whole car into something so it could burn too.

His phone had been ringing continuously for the past ten minutes.

Furiously, he chucked it onto the dash. It pinged off the windshield and slid across the dash, then slipped down by Bryde’s footwell.

Only one person had known where they were going to be.

Only one person.

Declan.

Bryde wordlessly leaned to get the little phone without looking, then dropped it in Ronan’s palm.

How many minutes had Declan waited before betraying Ronan to the Moderators? Maybe he had already done it before he got in touch with Ronan at the Aldana-Leons’. While Ronan was meeting the little dreamers whose lives he’d saved, Declan was making plans with the Mods. Casually bringing Ronan in for them. Knowing Ronan always came when called.

“Either talk to him or silence it,” Bryde said. “Make a decision.”

Ronan clipped the phone to his ear and answered it. “What.”

“Thank God,” Declan said. “Where are you?”