Page 8 of The Valiant (Spy Girl 4)
Lorenzo wraps his arms around Lizzie, pulling her into an embrace. "I am deeply touched that you would even consider going through with this. You are a strong, independent, and beautiful woman. Montrovia would be lucky to call you its queen."
"And what about you, Lorenzo?"
"I would be lucky as well."
"That settles it. If Huntley doesn't agree to marry you within the allotted time frame, I will." She laughs. "Unless you can use your power to change the law your father set forth."
"Unfortunately, I doubt Parliament would allow it. They believe an heir is the key to our country's stability."
"Here," Terrance says, taking a bottle of whiskey out of his desk drawer and pouring me a stiff drink. "Ellis brought us down some reinforcements last night."
I take a small sip, appreciating the gesture but doubting its effectiveness. I was planning to slip away by saying I needed to get ready, but Ari hands me the photo that was in the safety deposit box in Zurich and looks expectantly at me.
"When my mother took that photo, she told me she hoped I would always remember my visit to the Palacio de la Vallenta."
"Any idea why?"
"Because we had fun, I assume. I remember running around outside, playing in that spot, but I don't know where it is. When we got to Montrovia, literally the first thing I did was buy a ticket to tour the castle. I know you thought it was because I wanted to meet Lorenzo, but maybe it didn't have anything to do with the prince and more to do with my brain wanting to go because I had been there before."
"You were at the castle when the gunfire broke out. Wouldn't you have remembered something then?"
"Yeah, but nothing Lorenzo showed me is included in the public tour and, more importantly, I didn't see this wall. Not then, not at the Queen's Garden Party, and not at the Queen's Ball."
"Okay, so maybe we should move on from that," Terrance says. "Let's talk about the stamp on Kelley and Huntley Bond's passports when they arrived in Baghdad on May seventeenth."
"Baghdad?" I ask as a memory flashes in my head--of us going through customs.
"Tell anyone who asks here that your name is Lee," Mom told me just before we got off the plane. "Let's pretend we're on a secret treasure hunt and don't want anyone to know, so we're using false identities."
"That sounds so exciting," I replied. "Do you think we will find some treasure?"
"I don't know," she said, "but I'm hoping we'll at least find some answers."
"I remember, when we landed, she told me that, if anyone asked, my name was Lee. It wasn't that odd of an request since that was what she always called me."
Ari shows me a photo of a girl wearing an abaya with a hijab, standing near what looks like the TerraSphere in a desert location. There must have been a strong breeze that day because the headscarf is coming undone, revealing my smiling face.
"Bet you can't catch me," the girl said, running ahead.
We just met but became fast friends. Her hair was blonde, like mine. Well, like mine used to be. Mom dyed it a dark brown before we came here.
I easily caught her even though she is two years older than me.
"I'm sick of the sand," she said, plopping down into it and running it through her hands. "I miss home."
"Where is home?" I asked.
"Denmark. It's the most beautiful place in the world. But my mother died, and my dad brought us here for his job."
"What does he do?" I drew a tic-tac-toe board in the sand and put an O in one of the spaces to start a game.
"He's a scientist and sort of like a superhero. He fights germs with the vaccines he makes. Only he works underground, and I can't go see him during the day because it's too dangerous."
"So, you just play in the sand?"
"I wish. I have to go to school. I only got to take the day off since my dad wanted me to babysit you."
"I don't need a babysitter," I scoffed.
Then, I see my mother's eyes.
"It's just not coming back to me," I say.
"Why are you crying?" Ari asks.
I touch my face, feeling cool tears. "Because, with every picture you show me, I can hear her voice and see a few fleeting scenes, but as soon as I try to recall the details, I see my mother--our mother--getting shot. It's awful, Ari," I say, now sobbing. "It's why I couldn't kill The Priest. It's why I took his son. It's why I didn't kill him, even when he tried to blow us all up. I couldn't do that to Chauncey. Blackwood Academy failed. I'm not the hardened killer they wanted me to be."
Ari wraps me in a hug and pats my back. "What you did to rescue Enzo and me was nothing short of spectacular."
"It's what makes you special," Terrance adds, handing me a tissue. "You have a conscience."
"And I'm in love with Lorenzo."
"Now, that we all know," Ari teases. "I know it's hard, but we're not done with the photos. Try to remember this time without closing your eyes."
I nod in response, so he takes my hand again, giving it a squeeze. "After you left Baghdad on the nineteenth, you must have flown to Orlando because your passport is stamped there on May twentieth. In this photo, you're standing next to a silly-looking alligator."
"That's the crocodile from Peter Pan. I'm at Disney World. There was a flower festival, and Peter was on top of a building in London. I ate fish and chips." I pause. "We'd been somewhere first though. Mom told me, if I didn't complain about the drive, she'd take me to Disney." I pause, thinking. "Terrance, pull up the conspiracy theories that were on the locket. No, wait, it was in Clarice's journal. She mentioned that Viktor had donated to the Terra Project in Florida. And we looked it up when the word terra came up in the chatter. I think maybe we were there. But what do any of those places have to do with Ares? We couldn't find any ties from the Terra Project to his TerraSphere. Wait, I remember a man. Living in the swamp. He had a beard. He showed us his garden."
"This man?" Terrance asks, whipping his computer in front of me.
"Jules Raphael," I say without thinking.
Ari studies my face and smiles. "You just remembered that on your own. The next picture is from the Coke museum in Atlanta. Do you remember going there?"
"Yes, we flew to Atlanta. I remember Mom telling me it was one of the busiest airports. But we drove somewhere out in the middle of nowhere and saw this thing that looked like Stonehenge."
"The Georgia Guidestones?" Terrance asks. "It's near Atlanta, and it is in the conspiracy theory papers on the disk."
"Maybe," I answer. "The next day, we went to the Coke museum. Mom met a friend there. They talked the whole time we were on the tour. I thought it was annoying."
"Do you remember anything that was said?"
"They were talking about food--no, wait, they were talking about seeds. Seeds in a bank, which made me laugh because you're supposed to put money in banks, not seeds."
Terrance rushes over to a pile of papers. "This was also on the disk. The World Seed Vault. It's on an island off Norway near the Arctic. Conspiracy theorists say it's really a doomsday vault. A way to replenish the earth after a nuclear Armageddon."
"Does that mean someone's going to take control of Montrovia, cause a nuclear Armageddon, and then start over with Montrovia in control of whatever's left?" I shake my head. "I mean, really, I like the new Atlanta football stadium theory--where it will open up like a Transformer to reveal a weapon of mass destruction and save us when the aliens attack--better than that."
Ari laughs. Terrance doesn't. He nods like he agrees.
"Here's what I suggest," Ari says. "You go get ready for your date. Tomorrow, we'll go see what's in the Montrovian safety deposit box."
"And go on the castle tour," Terrance adds, placing two tickets in my hand. "Hopefully, being there in person will help you remember, like it did at the lab."
"And then we leave for Rome," Ari says. "Enzo and I have our first Society meeting there, which means you can visit the museum."
"What about Marquis Dupree? Our mission is to deal with him."
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"The search for a way to get to him is taking place over at our secret headquarters," Terrance says.
"What are you talking about?"
"I told you about the safe house here?"
"Yeah."
"Some friends are there, working together. It's a motley, multinational crew. Let's see, we have Intrepid from Britain, Josh from America, an admiral from Montrovia, an Israeli spy, the assassin known as The Priest, the old hacker known as The Bartender, and of course, we can't forget Olivia the Plague."
I can't help but smile and feel happy that I'm not doing this completely on my own. But the words both the dean and The Priest told me keep playing through my head.
Trust no one.
And I wonder if I should heed their warnings.
