United We Spy (Gallagher Girls) (10 page)

T
HINGS TO
E
XPECT
A
FTER A
S
ECURITY
B
REACH AT
M
AYBE THE
M
OST
S
ECURE
P
RISON ON THE
P
LANET
(A
LSO
, A
FTER
C
LIMBING
D
OWN A
M
OUNTAIN
):

(A list by Cameron Morgan)

• Hot chocolate. Seriously. The guards who find you are going to insist that you keep moving and change into warmer clothes, but the real medicine is hot chocolate. The hotter and the chocolatier the better.
  
• Turns out, if you escape from a high-level detention facility, really big, really macho guys stop looking at you like you’re cute and start looking at you like you’re awesome.
  
• After doing a climb like that with no gear and no help, nobody seems to think they need to drug you to get you OFF the mountain.
  
• The trip home takes A LOT longer when you’re fully conscious.
  
• Long trips are an excellent time to think.
  
• You may totally not like what you’re left to think about.
  

“Cammie!” Mom said as soon as I walked through the school’s front doors. She rushed across the foyer and threw her arms around me. Then, just as quickly, she pushed me away—held me at arm’s length—and examined me as if trying to make sure Agent Edwards was returning me in the same condition I’d been in when I’d left.

I wasn’t. And my mother, spy that she is, could see so.

“Are you okay?” she asked, and I nodded.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

But my mother just slid her gaze onto Agent Edwards. “Did they find out how the shooter got in?” she asked.

“Uh…yes.” He spoke the word too carefully. “The gunman was a guard at the facility. He’d been turned.”

“I see,” Mom told him. “Kiddo.” Mom smoothed my hair. Her hand cupped my face. “Why don’t you go upstairs? Go to bed. You need your rest.” Then Mom turned her full attention back to the man who’d brought me home. “I need to talk to Agent Edwards.”

There was a feeling coursing between them—two veteran operatives, powerful people, neither one used to backing down. I eased away, but I don’t think Agent Edwards or my mother even noticed that I was still standing there. They were too busy staring daggers at each other.

“You have a lot of nerve bringing her back like this.”

“Would you have rather she not come back at all?” the man asked.

“Don’t be coy with me. She was supposed to be safe with you.”

“I’m very sorry your daughter had to live through that,” Agent Edwards said.

“
Live
being the key word, of course.” Mom leveled a glare at him.

“What do you mean, Rachel?” Agent Edwards sounded tired and impatient and ever so slightly annoyed.

“I mean my daughter was flown to the far corner of this country only to see the ambassador killed and have the gunman turn on her.”

“
Former
ambassador,” Max Edwards corrected. “And as the head of the interagency task force, no one regrets his death more than I. He had information we needed, Rachel. After all, that’s why your daughter was there.”

Mom sidled closer. “And as soon as he started talking, he was killed? And the girl he was talking to was targeted?”

“It was regrettable.”

Mom shook her head slowly. “To say the very least.”

I watched my mother in that moment, the narrowing of her eyes, the straightening of her spine. She moved ever so slightly in front of me as if to block any more bullets that might be heading in my direction. And I knew what she didn’t say: that I wasn’t out of danger. Not by a long shot.

“It was an isolated incident,” Edwards told her.

“Was it?” Mom asked. “Was it really? I thought your
task
force
was impervious to moles.”

“No one is taking this breach more seriously than I am, Rachel.”

“Well, evidently you aren’t taking it seriously enough,” Mom said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means it’s hard to sail a leaking ship,” Mom told him. “Perhaps your mole-free, traitor-proof task force isn’t quite as safe as you thought.”

“Tell me, Rachel”—I watched the man shift, take a different tack—“where is Joe Solomon? Where is he right now?”

“Joe Solomon is dead.” Mom’s voice cracked. She’d spent enough time imagining what it would be like to lose him that it probably wasn’t hard at all for her to pretend that she had. “He was killed in an explosion at the Blackthorne Institute last spring. As the head of the task force, I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”

“Of course.” Edwards smiled. “How silly of me to forget.” He stepped toward the door but glanced back at my mother. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again soon.” He nodded in my direction. “Cammie,” he said, then opened the door.

He didn’t turn back again, didn’t falter. But even after he was gone, his presence lingered. I felt it in my bones, saw it in my mother’s eyes as she kept her gaze trained on the front windows, watching the headlights of Max Edwards’s car disappear.

“They know,” Mom said. She didn’t look at me. She just kept staring into the darkness, almost like she was waiting for black helicopters and SWAT teams to descend upon our grounds and swarm all over the mansion. “They know about Joe.”

“They
suspect
,” I tried to correct her; but Mom just shook her head.

“No, Cammie. They know. Or they think they know, and that is all they need.”

“So what does that mean?”

“Joe’s not safe here.” Mom looked numbly at the closed door.

“The task force isn’t going to work, is it?” I asked.

I waited for my mother to answer, but it was like I hadn’t spoken at all. The answer was the silence that stretched between us.

“So what does that mean? Do we go back to looking for the Circle leaders ourselves? I think we’ve got to. We should call the Baxters, right? Maybe—”

“You should go to bed, Cammie.”

At last, my mother looked at me, but it wasn’t the look I’d grown used to. She didn’t want to be alone. She looked at me like maybe it was the last time she’d ever see me—like that moment was precious and rare and fleeting. Only then did I realize just how close I’d come to never coming home again.

Mom hugged me and smoothed my hair. She kissed the top of my head just like she’d done when I was a little girl.

“You’re so grown-up, kiddo,” she said, and I felt myself blush a little. “When did you get so grown-up? You don’t even need me anymore.”

“Of course I need you.”

“No, Cammie.” She held me tighter, looked into my eyes. “You’ve already handled situations that agents twice your age would crumble under. You’re a tremendous operative. And you’re ready, sweetheart. When the time comes, I promise you, you’ll be ready.”

“Okay,” I said—because what else could I say? It was like my mother was talking in riddles, and I was far too exhausted to try to break the code.

“Now, go on. I’m sure it’s killing Zach and the girls not to have all the details. Just promise me you’ll try to get some sleep.”

“I promise,” I said.

“Cammie.” Mom’s voice stopped me. “I love you, sweetheart.”

“I love you too,” I told her, and then I walked away.

“So, Cammie,” Bex’s voice was cautious. It was a new approach for her, and it scared me. “How was it?”

“It was awful. They shot Ambassador Winters right in front of me. It was…awful,” I said again. I didn’t care how ridiculous I sounded.

“It’s okay, Cam.” Bex eased slowly closer. “Just tell us what you know.”

“They knocked me out to take me there. I don’t even remember leaving the mansion. And when I woke up I was groggy and sick. And then Agent Edwards realized I was awake and he took me inside the prison. I thought I was going to see Preston, but it was his dad instead. Preston’s dad asked for
me
. And then they killed him. They shot Ambassador Winters. They shot him and then they came for me.”

“Was Preston there?” Macey asked, but she didn’t face me.

“He was in a cell in the facility. I didn’t see him, though. I saw a video feed, and he was on it.”

“Was he hurt?”

“He looked fine, Macey. Just fine. I didn’t see him up close, but the ambassador was okay, so that tells me—”

“Until they killed him,” Macey cut me off.

“What?”

“The ambassador was okay until they killed him—that’s what you mean, right?”

“Don’t think about this, Macey.”

“Think about what? The truth? Because that is the truth, isn’t it? Someone didn’t want Winters talking, so they killed him. Because he knew something. And maybe Preston knows it too. Maybe now you know it. Maybe…”

“They’ll come after me again?” I finished her thought in spite of how much I hated it. I didn’t want to go back to being the girl the Circle of Cavan was chasing.

“What did Winters tell you, Cammie?” Bex was in front of me, staring into my eyes. If she could have reached into my head and pulled the truth out she would have, but all she could do was hold me perfectly still and say, “Think!”

“Cavan,” I said. “We talked about the Inner Circle and Preston and…” I trailed off, stunned by what I remembered.

“What?” Macey asked.

“Liz,” I whispered. “He talked about Liz.”

“
This
Liz?” Bex asked, pointing in our roommate’s direction.

“Yeah.” I shook my head, the whole thing coming back in bits and pieces. “He asked about you.” I looked at Liz, whose eyes were even bigger and bluer than usual. “He said how smart you are. It was almost like he was trying to tell me something.”

“About Liz?” Macey asked. “That’s ridiculous. I mean, no offense, you are smart. It’s just…” Macey’s voice trailed off as she turned to Liz, who had gone even paler. “I mean, it is ridiculous, isn’t it?”

Liz’s voice was so soft it trembled. “Maybe it’s not.”

L
iz looked at all of us, blue eyes darting, filling with grief and fear and tears.

“Liz, you’re scaring me,” I finally said when her silence became too much.

“I think it’s my fault,” she blurted, and the tears silently rolled down her face. Her pale cheeks burned crimson, and the words came in ragged stops and starts.

“I think it was me.”

“What’s you?” Bex asked.

“Do you guys remember the tests? Before we started school?” Liz asked.

Bex shook her head. “There were no tests, Liz. We’ve been on break. Remember?”

“No. Not now. When we were sixth graders? Before we started here at all? There were those tests. Remember those?”

“Sure. We took a few tests,” I said.

“Well, I took more,” Liz said. “I took dozens. Hundreds. Probably because my parents weren’t spies. I don’t know why. I just know that I was poked and prodded and questioned for months. Personality tests. IQ tests. Psych profiles.”

“What about them, Lizzie?” Bex asked.

“The butterfly effect.”
Again, Liz’s voice cracked. She brought her hands to her face.

“Sit down,” I told her, but she didn’t move. She just kept shaking her head back and forth, over and over, until I thought she might get dizzy.

“A butterfly flaps its wings over the ocean and there’s a hurricane in Asia.”

“We know what the butterfly effect is, Liz,” Bex said, but it was like Liz never even heard her.

“All things are connected,” Liz said. “Like dominoes. Like a house of cards. Like—”

“We’re going to need more facts and fewer similes, Lizzie,” I tried.

“It’s all my fault!” she shouted again.

“Liz, am I going to have to hit you?” Bex asked. “Because I’m totally willing to hit you.”

“I’m not hysterical, Rebecca.” I don’t know if it was the use of Bex’s full name or the tone of Liz’s voice but I knew right then that whatever Liz was worried about—it was real. And it was bad.

“Liz, calm down,” I tried. “Breathe. What is your fault?”

“Think about it,” Liz went on after a minute. “One of the tests I had to take was on abstract thinking. You know—big questions. Crazy theories. If the earth were in the path of a meteor made of cheese, how would you stop it? That kind of thing.”

“Your tests had cheese meteor questions?” Bex asked. I shushed her, and Liz talked on.

“Well, one of the questions was ‘How would you start World War Three?’ That was it. A hypothetical. A crazy notion.” Then her eyes got even bigger, her voice clearer. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t even know what the Gallagher Academy really was at the time. I just knew that it was really exclusive and I wanted to get in. I wanted to get in so badly.… So when they asked me how I’d start World War Three, I told them.”

The idea washed around the room, settling on us all slowly, like someone had left a window open and the fog was rolling in.

“I thought it was just a hypothetical. It was supposed to
be
a hypothetical
! But now…”

“What did you tell them?” I asked.

She looked up at me, absolute terror in her eyes. “I told them that World War Three would start with a tanker blowing up on the Iranian coast of the Caspian Sea and a bridge going out in Azerbaijan.”

We’d talked about those tragedies at the Welcome Back Dinner, and I thought back to that night—how quiet Liz had been. How worried. And I realized how long Liz had been carrying that weight.

“Liz, I’m sure it’s nothing,” Macey said. “It was just a ship. It wasn’t even a military ship. And that bridge was just—”

“A trade route,” Liz cut her off. “More importantly, that bridge and the ports along the Caspian coast are
Iranian
trade routes. And with every route that gets cut off, the Iranians have to start using other routes that go through more and more volatile territories. Like Turkey or Afghanistan or Caspia.”

Liz seemed exhausted, as if the sheer act of admitting it all out loud was about to be too much for her.

“I’ve been wondering about it for a while now. What if I was right? What are the odds of those things just randomly happening? And then…what if they
weren’t
random?” Liz trembled, the last bit of color draining from her face. “Remember what Knight told you in Cambridge? That the Circle is planning something terrible and it has
already begun
?”

“Liz,” I asked, “are you saying…”

“I think the Circle has my test. And I think they’re using it to start World War Three.”