Read Online THE LONG GAME by Lynn Barnes - Free Book Online

Vivvie said, looking at the pictures on my phone.Each of us was slumped against the wall, our positions mimicking Emilia’s in the picture almost exactly. The sign propped up against my chest read,
DOUBLE STANDARD.
    I scrolled from my picture to Vivvie’s. Her sign said simply,
I STAND WITH EMILIA.
    “You’re sure you want to do this?” I asked Vivvie. She looked nearly unconscious in her picture—and just as wasted as Emilia.
    Vivvie thrust out herchin. “I’m sure.”
    So was I. Five minutes later, the pictures were uploaded. Ten minutes after that, the others started trickling in.
    “Vivvie?” an accented voice called out.
    “In here,” Vivvie called back. She tried to look like she wasn’t up to anything and failed miserably.
    Her aunt appeared in the doorway. The woman did not ask what her niece and I were doing in Vivvie’s bathroom. “I seewe have a guest,” she said instead. Her accent sounded British—and very posh. Like Vivvie, she had brown skin and black hair, though hers had a bit more natural curl. “Hello, Tess.”
    “Hey, Ms. Bharani,” I said.
    “Priya,” she corrected. “Please.”
    “Priya.”
    “I am assuming that Ivy and Bodie know you are here?” Priya asked me.
    I nodded. Priya’s gaze lingered on my face for a moment. She wasn’tthe type of woman who missed much.
    “I hope you’ll stay for dinner,” she said finally.
    I got the sense that wasn’t a request.
    By the time takeout arrived a few hours later, my picture and Vivvie’s had been joined by more than thirty others. It had started with Anna, Lindsay, and Meredith and spread from there. Their friends. Their friends’ friends.
    All Hardwicke students. All girls.
    I STANDWITH EMILIA.
    “What did you girls do today?” Vivvie’s aunt asked.
    Vivvie and I looked at each other. “Nothing,” we chimed in unison.
    Priya arched an eyebrow. “I find I doubt that very much.” She tilted her head to the side. “Vivvie, I noticed that Jacques is on duty downstairs. Since it appears we will have leftovers, perhaps you could bring him a plate?”
    Vivvie’s eyes sparkled. She whisperedsomething to me about her aunt and the night guard having a surplus of sexual tension before bounding off to deliver the food. Once the front door clicked behind her, Vivvie’s aunt turned her attention to me.
    “Ivy has been trying to get in touch with me.”
    That wasn’t what I’d been expecting her to say, but the second the words left her mouth, I realized that she’d sent Vivvie out of the roomfor a reason.
    “I cannot give Ivy the information she seeks,” Priya continued. “You may tell her that it would not behoove either of us for certain parties to realize that she’d been making inquiries. I certainly cannot be seen answering them.”
    When I’d asked Vivvie what her aunt did for a living, all Vivvie had been able to tell me was that her aunt had worked overseas. Taking in the measuredtone in Priya Bharani’s voice and the pleasant smile on her face, I doubted suddenly that she’d been working in an art gallery over there.
    Priya put her hand over mine and lowered her voice. “I am grateful,” she said, “for what Ivy has done for my niece. But I cannot tell her that the group she is looking for is known by Interpol as Senza Nome. The Nameless,” Priya translated. “I cannot,” shecontinued quietly, “tell her that they’ve been on various watch lists since the 1980s, or that they seem to operate primarily through infiltration—of other terrorist organizations, as well as world governments.
    “I cannot speak of this—not to your sister, not to her friends at the Pentagon, not to anyone.”
    Except for me.
I was a teenager. Even a cursory check would show that Vivvie and I werefriends. Vivvie’s aunt couldn’t take Ivy’s call. She couldn’t be seen talking to her, or to Adam.
    But she could whisper in my ear, and I could whisper in Ivy’s.
    The front door slammed, and Priya began clearing away the