Nick turned back to Hailey. She was putting the empty flask back in the backpack. Her eyes were red, and she was coughing a little—but most of the fumes had dissipated into the air. Her fingers trembled as she zipped the backpack closed, but when she looked up, her eyes still flashed.

There was no chance she was going to turn back now. The killer with the dark hair, the man in the suit, even the FBI agent—they’d all underestimated her. Nick wasn’t about to do the same.

“We need to keep moving,” Hailey said. There would be time to digest what they’d been through later, but for now she was right.

Nick started forward again, his mind already whirling ahead. In a moment, they’d be in position, right above the courtyard where the bell had been stashed. But that would be as far as Nick could take them.

The rest of the plan was out of his hands.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Six

I hope you’re happy, Charles, wherever you are…

Adrian muttered to himself as he stumbled down the brick sidewalk as fast as his current state allowed, one hand on the seat of his bicycle for balance and the other guiding the handlebars to keep the damn thing aiming straight. He would much rather have been riding, in the saddle, than walking the bike along the narrow street, bordered on both sides by three- and four-story town houses, but the Hill here was steep, and he wasn’t going very far. In fact, another yard, and he’d reached the corner of Mount Vernon and Joy—and a quick glance at his Tag Heuer sports watch, fit snugly beneath the wrist of his tight biking shirt, told him he was right on schedule.

He took quick stock of his surroundings. The intersection between the two streets—the much wider and more stately Mount Vernon, with its multimillion-dollar homes, private garages, and fenced greenery, and the more claustrophobic Joy, where the town houses seemed close enough to touch each other, were often split between multiple units, and the garages were nonexistent—was deserted and mostly bathed in shadows, save for the warm glow coming off a single, wrought-iron gas lamp jutting up from the closest curb.

In the grimness of predawn, staring up at the gaslit, two-centuries-old buildings, Adrian imagined the scenery looked very much as it would have at the turn of the nineteenth century when these houses had been built, and when the people who roamed these streets had names like Cabot and Lodge and Hancock and, yes, Revere.