Page 16 of The Dauntless (Spy Girl 5)
I glance at his mom, who momentarily narrows her eyes at me, but then she beams at her son. “You know all we’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy.”
Daniel takes my hand in his, brings it to his lips, and sweetly kisses it. And I know exactly what he’s doing—setting up his own family, so no one will be shocked when we get engaged.
MISSION:DAY SEVEN
I wake up to a call from a London phone number that I don’t recognize. But I do recognize the adorable sound of Chauncey’s voice.
“Lorenzo calls and talks to me almost every day. You never do.” I can picture his cute little face with his bottom lip puffed out. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. I’ve just been busy with work. How is school?”
“We get out for the summer on Thursday. You need to visit me.”
“I’ll be in London for work soon. I promise I will.”
“Yay!” he yells into the phone. “She’s coming to visit! She’s coming to visit.”
“Who are you talking to?”
“Cookie!”
“You’re talking to a cookie? Aren’t you supposed to eat them?” I tease.
“No, silly. That’s what I call Lorenzo’s chef because she makes me cookies every day after school.”
“Sounds like you’re getting spoiled.”
“She does it because she knows I’m sad, and I miss my daddy.” He lets out a little sniffle, and I want to reach through the phone and hug him. “Huntley, I’m sad because of something else. Something I saw on the telly.”
“What did you see?” I ask him, praying it’s nothing about The Priest.
“Lorenzo is going to marry someone named Elizabeth. And I don’t like her.”
“Have you ever met her?”
“No,” he says.
“How do you know you don’t like her then?”
“Because you are supposed to marry Lorenzo and be my family in case my daddy doesn’t come home. His job is dangerous. I’m scared he’s not coming home. Ever.”
What he said breaks my heart.
“I promise I will come visit you.”
“Can we go on holiday together? To the beach?”
“I’ll do my best,” I promise.
It’s not until I hang up that I realize I have tears flowing down my face.
“Who was that?” Daniel asks, rolling over in his bed to face me.
“Just a friend in London.”
“And why are you crying?” he asks, leaping on my bed and gently wiping my tears away.
“Because he asked why I wasn’t the one marrying Lorenzo.”
“What kind of ring do you want?” he asks, causing me to immediately visualize the one Lorenzo slipped on my finger and remember the beautiful words he spoke.
“I don’t know about getting engaged, Daniel. I don’t think your plan will work, and I don’t think I could go through with it. Please don’t ask me. And certainly don’t ask me in public. I don’t want to embarrass either one of us.”
“Guess I’ll have to surprise you then.” He hops out of bed, grabs his backpack, rummages around the bottom of it, and then tosses me a velvet box.
“What is this?”
“The ring I bought for Lizzie.”
“You were going to propose?”
He drops his head down and nods. “Yeah. Here at the Trials.”
I wrap my arm around him in a hug, understanding all too well the freshness of his pain, and then open the lid.
“This is beautiful, Daniel. And it looks like a ring Lizzie would have loved.” I gaze at the simple platinum setting that enhances the beauty of an emerald-cut diamond solitaire.
“It’s classic, right? And classy. Like her. ‘Big enough but not too big,’ is what she told me her ideal ring was. It’s smaller than what Lorenzo gave her. If nothing else, I take comfort in the fact that I know she hates the nine-carat ring she has to wear.”
“Don’t buy me a ring, Daniel. Seriously. I just feel like this is a bad idea.”
“Trust me,” Daniel says, carefully putting the ring away.
The skybox is a lively place today with Daniel’s family all in attendance as well as numerous other guests. We had food catered in all week, but today’s spread is much more extravagant with carved beef tenderloin and a particularly delicious mashed potato bar.
Daniel’s only heat today is the all-important-to-him hundred butterfly final since he is the current world record holder and is hoping to best it today. Although he is still sad about Lizzie, he seems to be doing better and is most definitely performing better in the pool. It’s hard to believe that, just a few days ago, he almost didn’t qualify for one of his best events.
When he does exactly what he set out to do and breaks the record by two-tenths of a second, the crowd goes crazy, and when he rushes over to give me a hug, I tell him I’m taking him to the Bahamas tonight to celebrate.
“This is crazy,” he says as we board my plane.
“You don’t want to go to the beach for one night of just letting loose?”
“Just how loose are we talking, Huntley?” he fires back with a smirk, followed by a pained grimace. His flirting comes so naturally, sometimes he forgets how sad he is. “Would you be upset if we just went back to DC? I’m not trying to be a party pooper, but I’m exhausted.”
“And probably hungry,” I tease. “DC it is. Your place or mine?”
“Yours,” he says, suddenly looking very tired. “It will be way quieter than the White House, and I can’t face my townhouse alone. Last time I was there was when Lizzie visited.”
I let the pilot know the change in destination and then collapse onto the sofa next to him. He lies down with his head on my lap and immediately falls to sleep, leaving me with some time to think about my next move.
I’ve been trying to determine who’s been watching me. The logical choice is the CIA, but they aren’t technically supposed to operate on our homeland. That’s the FBI’s job. They could follow me though, if I were suspected of terrorism or if they thought I was spying for a foreign country. Since Mike Burnes tried to recruit me, I don’t think that’s the case. It could be British intelligence, ordered by Intrepid, but I believe he would only do that if he thought I was in danger—or if he didn’t trust me. Neither of which I think is true.
That leaves the bad guys or Black X.
MISSION:DAY EIGHT
Daniel spent the night here last night but was up and out the door early to meet his trainer at the White House pool. You’d think, after successfully qualifying, he might get a day off, but the Olympics are quickly approaching, and he needs to be in top form.
And I know that I do, too.
I’m going to search every square inch of Ares Von Allister’s home. I need more than speculation. If something is going to start in Montrovia, at the Olympics—which has to do with seeds or maybe food, as it seems my mother suspected—I need solid proof. A six-year-old coded note with a few words on it isn’t going to cut it. You’d think, if Mom had figured it all out, she would have had actual proof and left it in one of the safety deposit boxes. But maybe that’s why she called her handler, saying she’d discovered a plot to end the world. Maybe she only knew enough, like I do now. But she didn’t know how. Maybe she was going to bring it to the CIA to get help in figuring it out.
I run through what I do know.
—Ares Von Allister used quantum technology to create the TerraSphere and was in a research-based financial partnership with the United States government. That contract is expiring, and its extension will be voted on at the Von Allister board meeting.
— Before an extinction event occurred, Ares wanted to create the perfect world for humanity by living in harmony with our planet.
—A group started by Lorenzo the Magnificent is still in existence and wants to create Ares’s Arcadia, a worldwide Montrovia full of wealth, beauty, and power.
—Montrovia will be the capital of Arcadia.
—The group designed the Georgia
Guidestones.
