The Ends of the World (The Conspiracy of Us #3)(28)

He pulled away. "Get yourself together," he said roughly. "At least until we get across the border. Keep up those breaths and it shouldn't get worse."

The door to the guard shack banged open and I jumped. Inside, the red screen was still up on the computer. My chest started to tighten again and I breathed, out out out in. I shot a glance at Elodie, and she gave the barest shrug and frantically pushed buttons on her phone.

"When did you say you came into the country?" the official said. The question sounded innocuous enough, but the three more guards with machine guns behind him made it look less so.

"Only just yesterday," Elodie said in her fake, heavy British accent. Breathe into my stomach, then out. Elodie glanced at her phone again, and her face relaxed. "Try one more time?" she asked. "I'd feel so bad about holding up the bus when I'm sure we're in there. Please?" The rest of the line behind us shifted impatiently.

The official's eyes narrowed. "Step out of line," he said, but he left someone else to deal with the rest of the group while he took our passports back into the booth one more time. This time, mercifully, the screen popped up green.

We all let out a heavy breath at once.

Elodie turned to me as we were making our way back to the bus. "Are you all right?"

I glanced up at Stellan. "Yeah. Sorry. I'm-sorry. Let's get on the bus before they change their minds."





CHAPTER 9



I woke up just as the bus pulled into the station in Alexandria. The kink in my neck suggested I hadn't moved for too long. I was shocked I'd fallen asleep at all, but the panic attack at the border had left me more exhausted than I already was. Jack and Elodie were blinking awake across the aisle, and Stellan was hunched against the window next to me, his bloodshot eyes suggesting he hadn't slept at all. We were all still bleary when we climbed off the bus, and Stellan immediately took Jack's phone to call his sister again.

"Coffee," groaned Elodie. "What time is it?"

"About noon."

We wandered out of the bus station and into a grassy plaza filled with palm trees. Across the street was a semicircular bay, and a dock filled with bobbing blue and yellow boats. A lone fisherman in stained robes and a white turban came strolling up the dock, followed by half a dozen hungry-eyed and dirty-faced cats. As he reached the shore, the fisherman stopped and pulled an entire fish out of his bag, tossing it down on the rocks. The cats descended like little furry vultures.

Elodie flopped onto the grass. "Can we just get a hotel for the night?" she said dully.

"We don't know how much time we have until this catches up to us. Our pictures might be everywhere on the Internet already." Right before we'd tried to steal Napoleon's bracelet from the Cannes Film Festival, the Saxons had wanted to capture me, so they'd named me a person of interest in an assassination. "Our pictures might be on the news already. Have you seen anything?"



       
         
       
        

Jack shook his head. "We're not implicated anywhere. I've been watching. That's almost worse. It means the Circle really thinks we did it and they don't want the rest of the world involved."

Elodie let out a hacking cough. And another, so hard that she sat up and buried her face in her hands. "Must have gotten something in my throat on that bus. I told you I'm allergic to public transportation."

I kept staring at her. That was a weird cough. Not that we actually had to worry about the virus, but . . . No. She was fine.

"Where's the clue?" I said. Elodie pulled it out of her bag. "My followers will watch over us, at the thirteenth at the center of the twelve. Where Olympias's followers could watch over her. That's what we're looking for. Elodie, you had someone researching whether there was an Order headquarters here in Olympias's time, right?"

She nodded. "I'll call and see what they've found."

I ran a hand over the scrubby grass as seagulls called overhead. "Can we stop somewhere and get us phones? And a toothbrush? And something besides this tiny knife? Can you even buy guns here?" I added, remembering once again that we no longer had Circle privileges.

"Black market," Stellan said shortly. I'd noticed how quiet and tense he'd been since Jerusalem, but it had only gotten worse since my panic attack at the border. He'd barely said a word to anyone the past few hours.

"We should get a taxi," I said just as I realized it was weird to have to say that. We'd spent time in Alexandria before. Usually in an area this touristy, there would be dozens of drivers trying to convince us that their air-conditioning was better than the next guy's. People really must be nervous if even taxi drivers were hiding.