“There is our cue,” Roma Montagov said, already striding for the entrance.
Heart pounding, Kathleen made to follow, goose bumps rising at the back of her neck. She was always on edge when she had to perform tasks that could get her in trouble, and breaking into their own Scarlet labs was certainly more troublesome than going undercover at Communist meetings.
“Best to hurry,” Kathleen warned. “There’s no telling how long Juliette can hold Tyler’s attention away for.”
They descended into the lab quickly. It was pitch-dark. Kathleen squinted in haste to avoid colliding with a worktable, her hands groping about to find her way. Roma did not seem to have the same problem, pulling a small burlap sack from his coat and using the thinnest stream of moonlight coming from the windows to light his way. He made fast work of taking samples from the mountain in the center of the lab. The texture was as malleable as clay, as light as dust.
“Miss Lang, where are the papers?”
Kathleen wrinkled her nose, still squinting without much success. “They made almost a dozen copies, so they’re all around us. Just make sure you find a complete set, not duplicates of the same page.”
Roma set down the burlap sack and dug into his pocket again, coming out with a small box in his hand. Kathleen didn’t register what he was doing until there was a whoosh! sound and a flame burst to life between his fingers, eating up the matchstick.
“Are you mad?” Kathleen hissed. “Put that out! The vaccine is flammable.”
With a grimace, Roma pinched the match out. “No fuss,” he said. He reached for a stack of papers right beside him. “I think I’ve got it.”
Kathleen huffed, wiping a thin sheen of sweat from her forehead. She had had one job—to watch him—and this place had almost gone up in flames.
Above them, there came the rumbling of more footsteps. The sound of glass shattering again echoed inside the building, and then, almost scaring the life out of Kathleen, a fast tapping came on the windows to the lab. When her gaze whipped to the moonlight, she found Juliette gesturing frantically for them to hurry.
“You have everything?” Kathleen asked Roma.
Roma gestured to the materials in his hand. “Thank you for aiding a White Flower breakin, Miss Lang.”
Juliette waited outside impatiently, half thinking that it would be Tyler emerging before Kathleen and Roma did. The timing could ruin this whole scheme. All it would take was Tyler freeing himself from the bonds that she had secured over him, bonds that she had secured rather hastily after attacking him from behind with a bag over his head. Time had been of the essence: it was more important for her to get out than it was to keep him tied down all night.
At last Kathleen and Roma emerged from the restaurant, stepping back into the busyness of Chenghuangmiao. At the same moment, there was a shout from above, loud because of the broken window. A few late-night strollers glanced up but did not pause, paying no heed to the strange events that occurred in these places.
A bang. Tyler had freed himself.
“I’ll try to keep him distracted,” Kathleen said, already moving back in the direction of the restaurant. “Both of you, go!”
They didn’t need more prompting. Side by side, Roma and Juliette kept a steady, nonsuspicious pace until Tyler burst out from the building, bellowing into the night and asking for the intruder to show himself. By then enough time had passed that they had faded into the crowd and could pick up speed. Though there weren’t as many people here in the night as in the day, it was enough cover to blend in and step into an alleyway out of Tyler’s sight utterly.
“Come on,” Juliette whispered, forging ahead. The alley walls loomed alongside them, tall and foreboding. “Remember your bargain, Roma. Find me the Frenchman.”
“I will work as fast as I can,” Roma said from behind her. “I promise that—oomph!”
Juliette whirled around with a gasp, alarmed by Roma’s muffled shout. For a startling moment, she did not even think to draw a weapon. She could only wonder how Tyler had found them when she thought she’d lost him. She thought that he wouldn’t have been able to move through the crowds at such speed.
Then her vision focused, and she realized Roma was not being attacked; whoever had ahold of him was pressing a cloth to his face, and when Roma dropped to the ground, falling unconscious, the figure set him down without malice.
It was not Tyler who had found them.
It was Benedikt Montagov, who stood to his full height, pushing back the hood of his coat and walking toward her.