CHAPTER 1
Another knock at the door—I seal my grip tighter around the pistol.
I haven’t slept all night, haven’t closed my eyes. Through the window I’ve watched darkness fade into a cold gray morning. I’ve listened to the quiet stillness surrounding me and felt the softness of the sheets beneath me, constantly repeating to myself it’s over. I don’t have to be afraid anymore.
Because I am here now, finally. I am safe.
Safe.
The word echoes inside my skull, ringing until I shake my head to make it stop. I remove the gun’s magazine, check the rounds, and then snap it back in.
There is another knock, two sequential taps, then the knob turns and she steps inside. I sit with my legs off the bed and wipe damp hair from my face.
My head is pounding. Lack of sleep and many hours of flying make it feel like a hammer is banging inside my forehead. It takes all my concentration to look at her, pretending I’ve just woken.
Walking toward me, she frowns. I wish she would stop staring at me this way, like I am a fragile glass object about to break at any moment. Because I’m not. Anything weaker than me would have already shattered.
It’s the same apprehensive way that colonel looked at me when he arrived fifty-two minutes after it happened, surrounded by four marines carrying M16s—locked, loaded, and aimed at me.
She sits down. “I see you’re not quite ready.” My mother starts to straighten the blanket, then, deciding otherwise, leaves it in a heap at the foot of the bed. “Your father will take you.”
I look down at the gun in my hand, acutely aware of the cold metal against my clammy skin. I know I’m no longer supposed to need it, yet my hand is clamped so tightly around the pistol grip my knuckles are white.
For the fifth time, I check to make sure a round is chambered and the magazine is full.
When I finish, my mother rests her warm hand on the back of mine.
Gently, she takes the pistol from me, checks the safety, and places it back under my pillow. “Leave it, Sophia.” She brushes my hair behind my shoulder. “You won’t need it here.”
CHAPTER 2
My mother cooks pancakes and bacon. “It’s what everyone eats for breakfast here,” she explains.
I’m not hungry; I can barely swallow the orange juice she sets in front of me. After shoving a piece of bacon in my mouth to satisfy her, I gather my things and follow my father out the front door.
A shiny SUV is in the driveway.
“From Andrews,” the man told us at the West Glacier Airport last night when he gave my father the keys.
I’ve never met Andrews. I only know he’s important—important enough to send my father all over the world. And to give us a silver all-terrain Denali.
Dropping my Swedish backpack at my feet in the passenger seat, I force my breathing to steady. Four minutes. Four minutes until this feels real, right?
I look out over the high-altitude valley. Perched deep in the mountains against a backdrop of wilderness and cedar-hemlock forest, this new town is quaint, charming even. Apart from the pickup trucks in every driveway, Waterford looks more like a Tyrolean village than how I’d imagined an American town in Montana would look.
My parents described it on the Black Hawk last night. You can enjoy your new life now, Sophia, they said, promising that Waterford would finally be home.
But as they said this, the soldiers on board watched me—stealing glances with their heads leaned back against the fuselage wall, their Kevlar helmets lodged between their boots. Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t speak to us, couldn’t strike up a conversation to ease the boredom of the eleven-hour trip. We were cargo.
Now, I watch my father’s face while he drives—the soft lines around his hooded eyes, his permanently crooked nose, sun-damaged to a burnt-orange color. I lower my eyes to the Heckler & Koch holstered at his waist, to his left ankle where he straps a spare magazine, and then to his right ankle, where he keeps the Kabar he taught me to use when I was ten.
His eyes dart from the road to the mountainside to me and back again. He isn’t nervous, it’s simply how he drives—constantly assessing the vicinity as if we might need an escape route at any moment.
After two decades in the navy, his diplomatic duties have taken us around the world too many times to count. Of the last six weeks alone, we’ve spent two in Tashkent, one in Doha, two in Sarajevo, and then the past seven days in Tunis.
Shivering, I let go of my necklace, a delicate gold chain with a pendant that rests at my collarbone, and fold my arms across my chest.
Tunis.
I glance down at my shins. I’m wearing a pleated wool skirt and black opaque tights, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing it—the way my bare skin looked with his blood spattered all over. Like someone dipped a brush into a can of crimson paint and flicked it at me.
It wasn’t until we arrived in Waterford last night that I scrubbed it off completely. I used a toothbrush, scouring the pores of my skin until the bristles went limp.
The drive is short. Moments later, we enter a circular driveway in front of a symmetrical brick building, two stories high. Stone-engraved words arch over the front entrance amid neatly trimmed ivy: Waterford High School, est. 1954.
My father stops at the curb. “Bearings?” he asks.
I wave my hand flat in the direction of the sharp granite peaks. “North,” I answer. We both stare ahead at the majestic range.
“Mountains make it too easy.” He smiles. “Now, go straight through the main doors.” He hands me a schedule with a map stapled behind it. “We’ll see you this afternoon. Unless …”
“I don’t want to wait until Monday,” I insist.
“Sophia, a few more days won’t make a difference. Who starts school on a Friday?”
I open my door. “I do.” Slinging my backpack onto my shoulder, I get out of the car.
“We’re good?” my father asks.
I study the map and pass it back to him. “We’re good,” I say.
As soon as I close the door, he drives away. This is his way of encouraging me. Expressing confidence in me.
It doesn’t work.
As he turns the corner, my thoughts spiral.
It’s all happening too fast. It’s been eighteen months since I last attended school. Now I’m supposed to step beneath an ivy-covered plaque and be a student again—an American one—just another teenager in high school.
But how do I pretend that forty-two hours ago I wasn’t alone inside that sweltering safe house? Pretend I hadn’t heard his footsteps? Hadn’t wondered why they left me alone if they knew he would come?
Listening to the empty street, I stand in front of this enormous brick building and check that my ironed, white-collared shirt is tucked in.
A crisp autumn wind whistles past my ear and chills the backs of my legs.
This is just school. School.
I’ve done this dozens of times. There is no reason to be nervous. No reason to be afraid.
Except there is.
Because this new American life I’m expected to live? It terrifies me. Now, I’m expected to belong. To fit in. To accept that for the first time in my life, we plan to stay.
I can’t do this.
CHAPTER 3
I can do this—all I have to do is blend in.