Replica(26)

“I need to get Derrick’s bag and a Wi-Fi hot spot. I say we all meet at Penn Station in two hours.”

Lea gave me a pointed look and frowned. “No, we stick together from now on.”

I put a hand on my hip. “You don’t trust me?”

“I don’t trust the creatures you plan to use that stake on.”

She was lying—I could feel it as clearly as if she were in my head. She wanted to know where I’d gotten the stake, but I wasn’t ready to divulge yet. She was keeping secrets from me. I knew she’d encountered more than the usual mayhem and madness while she was gone.

She’d been evasive about finding a vampire to question, which made me wary. Was the man on the subway right? Should I be careful whom I trusted? Perhaps Lea considered this a temporary alliance. But we were both out to achieve the same goal—stop Stravinsky and the Asclepius Project. That had to be good enough for the moment.

“Fine. Derrick’s bag is in Penn Station, so I only have to find a twenty-four-hour diner with Internet to book our tickets and get in touch with our contact.”

“There’s Wi-Fi where I’m headed.” She looked past me to Ivan. “Can you meet us in two hours?”

“Of course. And I’ll grab your bag from my abandoned cab. Which is probably impounded.”

“Is that a problem?” Lea asked.

He grinned. “Not at all.”

I shot him a derisive look. “Remember, you need to book your own flight to London. With your alias. It’s United Flight 2980. Then onto Zimbabwe.”

He smirked. “Trying to ditch me?”

I shot him a sneer.

Lea sighed, clearly exasperated with our bickering. “Ivan, book your ticket. It’s better this way. Rachel, let’s go.”

We took the subway to Victor’s bunker. After acting as her benefactor for years, Victor had turned on her. It was hard to imagine Lea having a benefactor, but since killing vampires was her actual job, she had to be paid somehow.

Victor had been an interesting man. While his father had wanted to purge the world of vampires, Victor had wanted to become one—a gift Lea had repeatedly refused to give him. It had been his undoing in the end. After his death, Lea had taken over his secret bunker and all that was in it. Which included multiple specially-developed weapons to fight supernatural creatures.

“It’s a shame we can’t take these with us.”

I pulled my laptop out of my bag and booted it up. “I suppose we might have gotten away with hiding a few things in a checked bag, but our bags will go straight to Berlin…and we won’t. Too bad we can’t hire a private jet.”

Lea glanced up at me.

Did Victor have that much money lying around? “No, we need to stick to this plan. They know I’m going to do something to prove my story is true. If I just disappear without a trace, they’ll start actively looking for me in Iraq. We need to buy all the time we can get. But you could take a private jet.”

Some emotion flashed in her eyes. “No. We stick together.”

I nodded. I preferred it that way too. I wanted her in my sights as much as she wanted me in hers.

She grabbed a stack of cash from a safe and several passport books. “I have several nationalities to choose from when we fly into Turkey. My Spanish passport might serve us best.”

“Sounds good.” I bought the tickets separately, using Victor’s credit card. “I’ll purchase the tickets to Turkey on the train,” I said. “I don’t want them to be bought so closely together.”

“Good idea.”

We reached Penn Station with time to spare. Derrick’s bag was in a weekly rental locker. I grabbed his laptop and papers and stuffed them into my bag and slung it over my shoulder. “Let’s go.”

We purchased our train tickets separately too. Lea stood about twenty feet away while I took a seat in a plastic chair, my nerves a ball of unbridled energy. I’d never been good at sitting around, waiting for life to happen to me. And while I knew we were taking the offensive, I still had an uneasy feeling. The bearded stranger’s words hung in my head.

The train pulled in and the few passengers disembarked. I climbed aboard and took a seat by a window looking out on the platform. There was still no sign of Ivan, but Lea was standing in the same place. Though she was trying to look like she didn’t care, I could see worry in the slight curve of her shoulder. I watched her as she pretended to talk on her cell phone—or was it real? She hung up and waited another minute. When the overhead speaker announced the train was about to depart from the station, she climbed aboard the car behind mine without a sideways glance.