Enzo was the one to shake his head this time. “Security guards don’t answer any non-work-related calls during their shift.”
“It’s a boring job,” Charity said. “I bet they do. I especially bet they would if Callum made it look like a hospital was calling. You could do that?” she asked Callum.
“Yes,” he said with forced patience, “but I need to figure out if I can actually do the difficult part before you add more requests.”
They let him work, silently watching him as the minutes added up. Twenty went by, then thirty.
Enzo grew restless. What was Schmitt doing right now? Would he go to the trouble to contact Shreeve’s unit and ask when they’d left? Was it possible Callum had double-crossed them, alerted the authorities to their plan, and was just stalling until the police showed up?
Finally, Enzo said, “It’s been almost an hour.”
“I know,” Callum said. “You’re lucky I’m incredibly fast. Ben is in cell three-fourteen.” He moved away from the screen to show Enzo’s file sitting on the screen, complete with the classified information. “So here’s the problem. Enzo is already in the system, yes, but he’s listed as missing and presumed dead. I can’t give a dead man’s face any credentials.”
Disbelief ran through him. “I talked to Schmitt at six this morning. He hasn’t fixed that?”
“Nope,” Callum said. “You’re not undead yet. Either he’s busy or doesn’t completely trust you. Even if I gave you someone else’s name, the first time somebody ran a facial scan on you, you’d be caught.” Callum pressed a few buttons, and Charity’s picture came up. “I was checking to see if I could give Charity the right credentials since she has the advantage of being alive.”
“No,” Enzo said. “She can’t go anywhere near the prison.”
At almost the same time, Charity said, “Can you?”
Callum’s gaze shifted between the two. “Yes. I can switch out her face for one of the guard’s. She’ll become Clova Jackson.”
Enzo fixed Charity with a stare. “Absolutely not. You’re the last person who should go there.” He motioned in Callum’s direction. “It would be better to switch his face for some guard’s. They won’t torture and threaten to kill him if he’s caught.”
Callum snorted. “Even if I wanted to do that, and incidentally I don’t, a teenager wearing a medical collar wouldn’t pass for a prison employee.”
True, but that didn’t change the outcome. Enzo wasn’t about to let Charity throw away her life. He stood up. “Then we can’t go. I’m sorry.”
He raised his voice to stop the protests already springing from her mouth. “Your parents wanted me to keep you safe. You know that. We’ve got to leave the city. We’ll go to New Salem if you want.” He was even willing to live in her poor, flower-lined city if it would appease her. He just couldn’t watch her die.
Charity stayed sitting on the couch. “My father wouldn’t have given me the code for his cell or told Milo to switch vehicles with us if our rescue mission ended up killing me. I’ll be all right. You have to believe that.”
Enzo stared at her, at those blue eyes that had become so familiar, and felt the press of the walls caving in on him. What she said made partial sense. Ben wouldn’t tell her to do something fatal. And yet, Enzo had little faith in such wispy instructions. “A number and a vehicle switch—those could be for a lot of reasons not related to you breaking your father out of prison.”
“You don’t have to come with me,” she said. “If I fail, you can tell Schmitt I escaped and acted on my own. If this doesn’t work, you can return to your old life.”
She was wrong about that. He could never return to his old life. “I’ll go with you.”
He didn’t point out that the visions probably weren’t working to ensurehissafety. Enzo was an expendable player. Charity had married him because the visions knew he would protect her—in the same way that Ben had instructed his children to bring Callum home with them because Callum could one day help break him out of prison.
Callum was fulfilling his part. Enzo would do the same. He would go with Charity, and if necessary, lay down his life to protect her.
30
Callum gave Charity and Enzo some of his parents’ dress clothes so they’d appear to be professionals. Charity had never seen herself this way—dressed in a blue ruffled shirt, black blazer, and skirt. She looked like a city woman off to an important job.
It was an odd transformation, one that reminded her of all the movies she’d watched where heroines sat in big desks with views of crisp city buildings in their windows. This was a version of who she might have been if her father hadn’t been a psychic.
At another time, she would’ve enjoyed dressing up. Now she wondered what would become of the outfit after today. Would this shirt become a happy souvenir of rescuing her father, or would she be wearing it in her mugshot?
She smoothed out the ruffles. This would work. Had to work. And the shirt would become her new favorite.
Enzo put on two pairs of pants and two shirts so that when they reached her father, he’d be able to ditch his prison jumpsuit and wear Enzo’s extra pair of clothes. Charity carried a pair of shoes for her father in an oversized purse.
The plan was for her to pretend to be an off-duty guard taking a friend in for a job interview. She was coming along to put in a good word for him.
That explanation should be enough to get them past the security guard who let vehicles into the compound and the receptionist at the front desk. When they reached the restricted third floor, things would become trickier. Callum would phone the security guard stationed by the cameras to distract him, and Enzo would pull his gun on the guard stationed on the floor and tell him to drop his weapon. Once he did that, Charity would shoot him with the tranquilizer gun.