Gallagher Girls 5 - Out of Sight, Out of Time (2 page)

“Mary,” I said, gripping the sink tighter and leaning into the light, “there’s someone I need to call.”

I
can’t say for certain, but I’ve got to admit that if this whole spy thing doesn’t work out, I might seriously consider joining a convent. Really, when you think about it, it’s not that different from life at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women.

You’ve got old stone walls and an ancient sisterhood, a collection of women who feel the same calling and are all working toward a higher purpose. Oh, and neither place gives you a whole lot of say on your wardrobe.

At noon the next day, the Mother Superior said that I could have a pair of shoes, and the sisters lent me a coat. The clothes Mary laid on my bed were clean and neatly mended, but they seemed entirely too small.

“I’m sorry but…I don’t think these will fit.”

“They ought to,” Mary said with a giggle. “They’re yours.”

Mine.

I fingered the soft cotton pants and old sweatshirt I would have sworn I’d never seen before. The clothes were worn, lived in, and I didn’t let myself think about all the living I could no longer remember doing.

“There,” Mary said, watching me tie the drawstring on the pants that fit my new body perfectly. “I bet you feel just like your old self, now, don’t ya?”

“Yes,” I said, and Mary smiled at me so sweetly that I almost felt guilty for the lie.

They told me I should rest, that I needed my strength and my sleep, but I didn’t want to wake up again and find it was past Christmas, New Year’s, that my eighteenth birthday had come and gone without my knowledge; so instead I went outside.

As I stepped onto the small path that led to the convent door, I knew it was October, but I was unprepared to feel the chill. Snow covered everything. The branches of the trees were heavy overhead, snapping under the weight of the wet white clumps, crashing through the forest. They made a noise that was too loud—like rifle shots in the cold, thin air. I jumped at every sound and shadow, and I honestly didn’t know which was worse—that I couldn’t remember the last four months, or that for the first time in my life I had absolutely no idea which way was north. I kept the convent safely in my sight, terrified of going too far, not knowing how much more lost I could possibly be.

“We found you there.” Mary must have followed me, because when I turned, she was behind me. Her strawberry hair was blowing free from her habit as she stood there, staring at a river that raged at the bottom of a rocky, steep ravine. She pointed to the bank. “On the big rock near that fallen tree.”

“Was I awake?” I asked.

“Barely.” Mary shoved her hands into her pockets and shivered. “When we found you, you were mumbling. Talking crazy.”

“What did I say?” I asked. Mary started shaking her head, but something about me must have told her that I wasn’t going to rest until I knew, because she took a deep breath.

“‘It’s true,’” the girl said, and shivered again in a way that I knew had nothing to do with the chill. “You said,
It’s true
. And then you passed out in my arms.”

There is something especially cruel about irony. I could recite a thousand random facts about the Alps. I could tell you the average precipitation and identify a half dozen edible plants. I knew so many things about those mountains in that moment—everything but how I’d reached them.

Mary studied the river below and then turned her gaze to me. “You must be a strong swimmer.”

“I am,” I said, but, skinny and weak as I was, Mary seemed to doubt it. She nodded slowly and turned back to the banks.

“The river is highest in the spring. That’s when the snow melts, and the water is so fast—it’s like the river’s angry. It scares me. I won’t go near it. In the winter, everything freezes, and the water’s barely a trickle, all rocks and ice.” She looked at me and nodded. “You’re lucky you fell when you did. Any other time of year and you would have died for sure.”

“Lucky,” I repeated to myself.

I didn’t know if it was altitude, or fatigue, or the sight of the mountains that loomed around us, but it was harder than it should have been to breathe.

“How far is the nearest town?”

“There’s a small village at the base of that ridge.” Mary turned and pointed, but her voice was not much more than a whisper when she said, “It’s a long way down the mountain.”

Maybe it was the way she stared into the distance, but for the first time, I realized I probably wasn’t the only one who had run away from someone. Something. In my professional opinion, the Alps are an excellent place for hiding.

I turned back to the river, scanned the rocky shore and the waters that ran to the valleys below. “Where did I come from?” I whispered.

Mary shook her head and said, “God?”

It was as good a guess as any.

Standing there among the trees and mountains, the river and snow, I knew that I’d climbed almost to the top of the earth. The bruises and blood, however, told me I’d had a long, long fall.

“Who are you, Cammie?” Mary asked me. “Who are you really?”

And then I said maybe the most honest thing I’d ever uttered. “I’m just a girl who’s ready to go home.”

No sooner had I spoken the words than a dull sound rang through the air, drowning out the rushing of the river below. It was a rhythmic, pulsing noise, and Mary asked, “What is that?”

I looked up through the swirling snow to the black shadow in the cloudless sky.

“That’s my ride.”

I
know most girls think their mothers are the most beautiful women in the world. Most girls
think
that, but I’m the only one who’s right. And yet there was something different about the woman who ran toward me, crouching beneath the chopper’s spinning blades. Snow swirled, and the Alps seemed to shudder, but Rachel Morgan wasn’t just my mom in that moment. She wasn’t just my headmistress. She was a spy on a mission, and that mission…was me.

She didn’t hesitate or slow; she just threw her arms around me and said, “You’re alive.” She squeezed tighter. “Thank God, you’re alive.” Her hands were strong and warm, and it felt like I might never leave her grasp again. “Cammie, what happened?”

“I left,” I said, despite how obvious and silly it must have sounded.

Mary was gone, standing with the rest of the sisters, watching the chopper and the reunion from afar. My mother and I were alone as I explained, “People were getting hurt because of me, so I left to find out what the Circle wants from me. I had to find out what happened to Dad—what he knew. What they think
I
know. So I left.” I gripped my mother’s arms tighter, searched her eyes.

“Yesterday I woke up here.”

Mom’s hands were wrapped around the back of my neck—her fingers tangled in my hair—holding me steady.

“I know, sweetheart. I know. But now I need you to tell me everything you remember.”

The chopper blades were spinning, but the whole world was standing still as I told her,
“I just did.”

Number of hours I slept on the trip back to Virginia: 7


Number of hours the trip actually took: 9


Number of croissants my mother tried to get me to eat: 6


Number of croissants I actually ate: 2 (The rest I wrapped in a napkin and saved for later.)


Number of questions anyone asked me: 1 Number of dirty looks my mother gave to prevent the question-asking: 37*


*estimated number, due to the aforementioned sleepiness


 

“Cam.” My mother shook my shoulder, and I felt myself sinking lower in the sky. “We’re here.”

I would have known that sight anywhere—the black asphalt of Highway 10, the huge stone building on the horizon, surrounded by the high walls and electrified gates that served to shield my sisterhood from prying eyes. I knew that place and those things better than anything else in the world, and yet something felt strange as the helicopter flew across the forest. The trees were ablaze with bright reds and vivid yellows—colors that had no place at the beginning of summer.

“What is it, kiddo?”

“Nothing.” I forced a smile. “It’s nothing.”

Of course, if you’re reading this, you probably already know a lot about the Gallagher Academy; but there’s a fact about my sisterhood that never makes it into the briefings. The truth of the matter is that, yes, we have been training covert operatives since 1865, but the thing that no one realizes until they’ve seen our school for themselves is this: we are a school for
girls
.

Seriously. In so many ways, we are just girls. We laugh with our friends and worry about our hair and wonder what boys are thinking. Sure, we do some of that wondering in Portuguese, but we’re still girls just the same. In that way, the people in the town of Roseville understand us better than almost all the people at the CIA.

And believe me, it wasn’t the spies-in-training I was nervous to see—it was the girls. But as the chopper landed and my mother opened the door, I knew it wasn’t possible to avoid them.

Most of the freshman class stood halfway between the side doors and the Protection and Enforcement barn. An entire class of girls I’d never seen before stood huddled around Madame Dabney, who, I could have sworn, wiped a tear from an eye when I stepped onto the lawn. For a second, it felt as if my entire sisterhood were there, watching. And then the crowd parted to reveal a narrow path and three faces I knew better than my own.

“Oh my gosh!” Liz screamed, running toward me. She seemed even smaller than usual, her hair even blonder and straighter. I threw my arms around her, knowing I was home.

Then I felt a hand reach out to touch my hair. “That dye job is going to give you split ends, you know.”

I did know. And I didn’t care. But no sooner had I reached for Macey McHenry than she pushed away, held me at arm’s length.

“What did you do to yourself?” she said, looking me up and down. “You look like death.”

Which was exactly how I felt, but it didn’t seem like the right time to say so. Everyone was watching, staring, waiting for…something. I wasn’t sure what. So I just said, “It’s good to see you, Macey.” I smiled, but then something occurred to me. “Of course, it feels like I just saw you, but…”

I trailed off. I didn’t want to talk about how my head was way more broken than my body, so I turned to my third and final roommate.

“Bex!” I yelled at the girl who stood a little apart from the others, arms crossed. She wasn’t crying (like Liz) or cringing at my appearance (like Macey). She didn’t even push closer, trying to get some kind of scoop (like Tina Walters). Rebecca Baxter just stood looking at me as if she wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about seeing me in my current condition. Or maybe, I had to admit, about seeing me at all.

“Bex,” I said, hobbling closer. “I’m back. Sorry I didn’t bring you anything.” I forced a laugh. “I must have lost my wallet.”

I wanted it to be funny—I needed it to be funny because I couldn’t shake the feeling that if she didn’t laugh then I might cry.

“Bex, I—” I started, but Bex just turned to my mother.

“Welcome back, headmistress.” She gave my mom a nod, and a look I didn’t recognize passed between them. “They’re waiting.”

“Who’s waiting?” The words echoed in the empty foyer as I followed my mother across the threshold of our school. For the first time in days, I had my bearings, and yet I still felt totally out of my depth. My internal clock must have reset itself somewhere over the Atlantic, because even before the crowd of girls began rushing through the door and down the halls, I knew that it was time to get back to class, to lab. To life. But I had absolutely no idea where that walk would lead me.

“Where are we going?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

Liz walked beside me, but it was Macey who shrugged her shoulders and said, “Haven’t you heard, Cam? You’re an international incident.”

But neither my mother nor Bex said a thing. A moment later, Mr. Smith (or someone I assumed was Mr. Smith since he always gets massive plastic surgery over the summer) fell into step beside us. “How was it, Rachel?” he asked.

Mom nodded. “Like we thought.” She took a piece of Evapopaper from him, scanned the contents, and dropped it into a small fountain, where it instantly dissolved. “The team’s on the ground?”

“Yes,” Professor Buckingham said, walking down the Grand Staircase and joining us. “They’ve scanned the area around the convent, but as soon as Cameron escaped, the Circle would have abandoned the—”

“Keep looking. Somebody had to see something.”

“Rachel.” Buckingham’s voice was no louder than a whisper, and yet it stopped my mother in her tracks. “The area is incredibly remote. We don’t even know that she was being held
on
the mountain. She could have escaped from a transport or…Rachel, they’re gone.”

I expected Mom to climb the stairs, to walk through the Hall of History and to her office, but she turned instead and started for the small hallway behind the Grand Stairs, Buckingham and Mr. Smith at her side.

“What else?” Mom asked.

“Well,” Mr. Smith said cautiously, “we think she should begin with a full battery of neurological tests.”

“After we debrief her,” Mom said.

“She’ll need a full physical workup as well,” Mr. Smith added. “We can’t expect her to return to class if she’s not—”

“
She
is right here!”

I hadn’t meant to yell—I really hadn’t. They were the last people in the world I would ever want to disrespect, but I couldn’t stand hearing them talk about me like I was still lost on the other side of the world.

“I’m here,” I said, softer.

“Of course you are.” Professor Buckingham patted my arm and turned to stare into a mirror that hung in the narrow hallway. A thin red line spread across her face, and in the reflection, I saw the eyes of the painting behind us flash green. A split second later the mirror was sliding aside, revealing a small elevator, which I knew would take us to Sublevel One.

“We’re very glad to have you home, Cameron,” Buckingham said with another pat. She stepped inside, along with Mr. Smith. Bex started to follow, but Mom blocked the way.

“You girls can go to class now. Cammie will catch up with you after she’s been debriefed and examined.”

“But…” Bex started.

“Go to class,” Mom said. But they didn’t really trust me to leave their sight again, I could tell; and Mom must have known it, because she moved inside the car without me.

“Cammie, I’ll see you downstairs in a minute,” she said, and the doors slid closed.

For the first time in months, my three best friends and I were alone. How many hours had we spent walking those halls together in the early morning or middle of the night? Sneaking. Planning. Testing our limits and ourselves. But standing there, we were all a little too straight—our posture a little too perfect. It was as if we were strangers trying to make a good impression.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I told them when it finally became too much.

“Like how?” Liz asked.

“Like you didn’t think you’d ever see me again,” I said.

“Cam, we—” Liz started, but Bex cut her off.

“You don’t get it, do you?” Her voice was more hiss than whisper. “Until forty-eight hours ago, we didn’t.”