air. She needed fresh air. She slipped out of the atrium into a brick-walled space with a low industrial ceiling. Where was the damn tunnel to the square? Icy fingers from an invisible draft brushed her cheeks. Her camel coat was so thick it could stand up by itself, but the dry cold rushed into her lungs, chilling her from the inside.
Behind her, a man shouted. Indecipherable but panicked. She straightened, her spine prickling. Border guards, coming for her? More shouts. A clunk. Clattering. Hissing. Ahead, people began turning. People began running.
She swiveled, wheezing. Blue smoke gushed and fizzed from dozens of tin cans rolling along the floor. This was no arrest. It was an ambush. Urgent beeping bounced around the room. The smoke billowed, boiling across the low ceiling and pouring back down like a dozen waterfalls, lit by a strobing white emergency light. Screams, shouts. Shadowy figures darted through the thickening mist. Someone slammed into her arm, knocking her sideways. Her shoulder struck the floor first, then the side of her skull. The champagne bag swung out and smashed behind her. Coughing, she pushed to her feet. Bitter chemicals stung the back of her throat. Tear gas? She stumbled across the floor, her feet swallowed by a blue snowdrift. An alarm wailed. Dark smudges shunted her like a pin in a bowling alley.
“Attention, please.” A male voice, over a loudspeaker. “Due to a reported emergency, would all passengers leave the station immediately?”
Sure—if she could figure out where the exit was. She staggered like a zombie, one arm flailing in front of her. Wasn’t tear gas supposed to burn? Her hand scraped something rough. A brick wall. She swiveled and leaned back on it. She had to return to the atrium. If she just walked straight...or was it left...?
But if the smoke was cover for Hyland’s people to capture her, wouldn’t they be waiting for her to stumble out? Should she head for the Tube, try her luck in the maze of tunnels?
Yes. She pulled up her scarf, breathing into it as she inched along the wall, panic clamping her chest. Her arm fell through space. A doorway? Smoke cocooned her. Her head spun like she’d been spit from a carousel. A clonk, nearby, and a man’s head and shoulders loomed out of the fog, a green-and-yellow jacket zipped to his chin, his face hidden under a gas mask and beanie. She sidestepped but he caught her arms, kicked her legs out from under her and lifted.
She bucked but he was too strong, too solid. Her backpack was snatched away. Her spine hit something soft and flat—a gurney? A second man, in matching jacket and gas mask, leaned over the other side. A white patch was stamped on his chest pocket: AMBULANCE.
Her lungs pinched. She wrenched away but the first guy trapped her upper arms. Something yanked her stomach into the gurney. A strap. One by one her wrists and ankles were pinned, too. A creature from the deep catching her in its tentacles. The trolley began to roll. The first guy shoved a hat over her beanie and a mask over her face. They were sedating her? She lashed her head side to side but he pushed the mask’s straps on. A few tugs and her head was locked down like the rest of her, the arms of her sunglasses digging into her temples. She resisted inhaling until her chest rebelled and sucked in a desperate breath. It came out again as a Darth Vader wheeze. The world narrowed to the visor in front of her eyes—blue smoke, the men’s bent heads. The first guy laid a hand on her belly. A warning.
She didn’t flake out—it wasn’t a sedation mask; it was a gas mask like those the men wore. The blue haze dissolved into white light. Columns, brickwork and glinting glass sheets flashed by. Back in the atrium. The alarm sharpened, the dome swelling the panicked uproar. Anxious faces rushed past, people swerved out of the speeding gurney’s path.
Samira shouted for help but the mask muffled her. She was being kidnapped in front of hundreds of people and all she could do was squeak.
SAMIRA JAMMED HER fingernails into her palms—about the only body part she could move. Would they kill her straightaway or interrogate her first? She wouldn’t give up Charlotte or further incriminate Tess, if that was what they were after. She’d be as fearless as Latif was. You hear me, Samira? Fearless.
The gurney spun ninety degrees. The wheels on one side lifted, lurching her stomach into weightlessness. Shops and cafés rushed by. Her kidnappers kept their heads bowed as they plowed through the panicked foot traffic and rattled under an arch into a cloudy gray world. A redbrick facade rose up, curving in the visor’s distortion. They were taking her out a side entrance? A firefighter flashed past, in a yellow helmet. She cried out. He didn’t even slow. The gurney rattled and bumped over rougher ground, jolting her vision. Beside her, blue lights flashed against a red blur—a fire truck. Her breath hissed in fast pants, the mask heating. The sharp scent of warming rubber curled up her nose, itching the back of her throat. A siren screamed and waned, screamed and waned, louder and louder. Voices faded. The world took a dive.
The gurney slowed and the second paramedic—or whatever he really was—jogged out of her field of vision. She strained her head as far as the restraints and mask allowed. Where had he gone? Diagonal red and yellow stripes, flashing blue lights—the rear double doors of an ambulance, its number plate coated in mud, though the chassis gleamed.
This was well planned. Who would stop two paramedics loading a prone woman into an ambulance? She shouted but it came out a whimper. The double doors swung open. The men lifted the gurney and it clattered into the back of the vehicle, the first guy jumping in alongside. A bump, and the rear doors slammed, one by one. The driver’s door opened and shut, and beneath her the ambulance shuddered and rumbled. Her breath rasped like an asthmatic’s. Her arms tingled. Black spots dotted her vision.
No. Fight it off. Or let it go. Or whatever the hell she was supposed to do. The solution always seemed so logical when she wasn’t having an attack.
A siren bleeped and the ambulance moved. The guy guarding her fiddled with something beside her ear, his head angled to look out the rear window. Pressure lifted from her forehead, leaving a floating sensation.
“Bravo Victor Control, Bravo Victor Control, Bravo Victor niner-one, over.” The driver, speaking into a radio, in a northern English accent. Wait—was this a real ambulance? Tess had warned her that Hyland’s conspiracy had sucked people in from everywhere—but the London Ambulance Service?
As the ambulance rolled out, the guy guarding her drew away her mask, knocking her sunglasses off with it. She gasped cold air and went to scream. His hand clamped over her mouth, rough and dry.
On the radio, a reply crackled back. “Bravo Victor niner-one, Bravo Victor Control. Go ahead. Over.”
Her lungs caved. No need for torture—she was suffocating herself. She retched, her body shaking against the bonds like she was having a fit. Bravery? Who was she kidding? With his free hand, her assailant pulled his mask and beanie off and drew in a breath. Close-cropped brown hair glistened with sweat.
Jamie.
The blue strobe illuminated uneasy cobalt eyes as he bent over her, releasing her mouth and sweeping his hand down her arm to push up her coat sleeve.
Jamie.
He encircled her wrist with his fingers for a few moments, then deftly released her hands from the bonds. “Samira, you’re having a panic attack. We’ll get through it together, okay? Just like before.”
Before. Yes, last year, when they were escaping from Ethiopia.
“You want nitroglycerin?” the driver called. “I have tablets.”
“No need,” Jamie replied, his gaze pinning hers. He laid a hand on her upper chest, and another on her belly, over her coat. “Breathe out, Samira, every last puff of air.”
She widened her eyes. She didn’t have any air—that was the problem.
He patted her belly. “Okay, now let this fill, nice and slow.” He patted her upper chest. “Keep this still.”
Sure. Like breathing was that easy. She scraped in a breath,