Only the Good Spy Young (Gallagher Girls) (15 page)

PROS AND CONS OF HAVING REALLY CUTE BOYS SNEAK INTO YOUR SCHOOL TO SEE YOU

CON: It’s a little creepy.

PRO:When someone else sneaks in, you get a lot more sleep than when you have to sneak
out
.

CON: Impromptu visits by boys significantly increase the chance that they’ll see you in your least cute pajamas.

PRO: Almost everyone looks good in moonlight.

CON: Five hours of very deep sleep is almost guaranteed to do very unfortunate things to your hair.

PRO: Waking up in the middle of the night means...well...waking up.

CON: Eventually, whether you like it or not, your roommates are going to find out about it.

* * *

“Hello, Zachary,” Macey said, striding in. “You’re looking well.”

“Hey, Macey.” Zach turned to the shortest and blondest of us and tipped an imaginary hat. “Liz.” And then finally, he looked back at Bex. “Rebecca.”

If the use of Bex’s full name was supposed to make her angry, it was entirely too late. She stood by the door, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed. Someone who didn’t know her might have thought she was still tired, but I knew better. She was guarding the exit.

“We were talking about Mr. Solomon,” I said.

Macey raised her eyebrows. “Oh, is
that
what you were doing?”

Bex kept her eyes on Zach. “What have you heard?” she asked.

Zach shook his head. “Not much more than you have. The Circle broke him out. The CIA is saying it’s because he’s with the Circle, but really—”

“It’s because he’s
against
them,” Bex finished.

Zach nodded. “In almost two hundred years no one has come closer to bringing down the Circle than Mr. Solomon.” Zach cut his eyes at me. “And your dad.” He waited, as if I might burst into tears or something, but I didn’t. “The Circle needs to know what Joe knows, and what he’s told others.”

“Like me?” I guessed.

Zach nodded slowly. “I’m willing to bet they’re going to have a lot of questions about you.”

“Good,” Bex said. “That means they’ll keep him alive.”

I turned back to the window, stood staring out at the shadowy grounds.
They need him alive
.

“We’re going to get him back. We
have
to get him back.” I felt my roommates looking at me like I was crazy, but I turned to Zach. “Where would they take him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t lie to me, Zach. Don’t tell me you don’t know things, because you do. Now where would they take him?”

“I don’t know! Do you think I’d be
here
if I knew?”

I’ve seen Zach in a lot of lights, but in the early morning haze, I saw him as he really was: a scared, parentless boy with absolutely no place to turn.

“What about the man the CIA has in custody—the one who shot Abby?” Macey asked. “He might know.”

But Bex was shaking her head. “He’s compromised. No way the Circle’s still using anything he ever knew about.”

“So that’s just...it?” Liz asked. I could see it weighing on her. There were no databases to crack, no satellites to hack into. I thought about Mr. Solomon and his insistence that technology is a crutch, and a real spy should always be able to walk without it.

“Mr. Solomon would know,” I admitted softly. “I wish we could ask him.”

The room was quiet in the gray light of early morning. The school still slept. No one was jogging across the grounds. We were alone when Zach whispered, “Maybe we can.”

* * *

“What do you mean there is a second journal?” Bex asked ten minutes later. She was looking at Zach, and Zach was looking
afraid
.

“The one Mr. Solomon hid in Sublevel Two was your dad’s, Cammie. If anything ever happened . . . it was supposed to go to you. It was your dad’s, so now it’s
yours
. But Joe kept one too. It goes all the way back to his time with the Circle—all the way back to Blackthorne.”

Zach stood at the windows, squinting against the slowly rising sun.

“No one has ever known more about the Circle than Joe. He started writing everything down as soon as they recruited him. And then when he realized what they were, he kept writing because . . . well . . . he knew something like this would happen eventually. He said if I ever needed it, I should go get it.”

“Go where?” Macy asked.

Zach looked at the four of us for a long time before taking a deep breath. “Blackthorne.”

I know it will sound crazy. I know you won’t believe me. But in that split second I ran through every scenario I knew—calculated all the odds. It was an informed decision that made me say, “We’ll go get it—right now. Before everyone is up. We’ll—”

“We?” Bex cut me off. “You think
we
should ... what? Jump into Liz’s van, drive all night, break into a top secret facility, and, oh yeah, take you away from the safest place in the world?”

“Think about this, Cam,” Liz said. “We don’t have to go anywhere. All we have to do is tell your mom, and she’ll call the CIA and—”

“My mom’s not here, remember? And you read Dad’s reports—you know the Circle has people at every level of the CIA. Mr. Solomon knew he couldn’t trust just anyone with this, and neither can we.”

Bex shook her head. “No. It’s too risky.”

“It’s not
that
risky. We drive up, get the journal, and see if it has any clues about where Mr. Solomon is. It’s not like we’re going to break him out by ours—”

“What?”
Bex and I snapped at the exact same time, turning to stare at Zach, who was giving us the oddest look.

“Nothing.” He crossed his arms and shrugged. “I was just wondering when the two of you switched bodies is all.”

It was true. Bex was not supposed to be the cautious one, the careful one. But then again, a lot of things had changed on that bridge.

“I have to do this for him, Bex. I have to do
something
.”

The sun was coming up over Roseville. I’d never seen it from that window, but it was especially beautiful with the early morning rays reflected in Madame Dabney’s finest crystal. In that moment and that place, almost anything seemed to lie within our grasp. And maybe that’s why Bex smiled. “Well, I have always wanted to see Blackthorne.”

I looked at Liz. “I just tweaked the van to incorporate solar technology. It really needs a road test for statistical significance, you know.”

“Us versus Blackthorne?” Macey said with a smile. “Yeah, I’m all for that.”

I don’t know how to explain it, but right then, things seemed okay. Our mission was clear.

We could go to Blackthorne.

We could get the journal.

Then we could find a way to bring Joe Solomon home.

Yes, in that moment everything was okay. But, of course, that moment could not last.

I remember the sound of the door as it swung open, the shocked, surprised look that crossed each of my roommates’ faces as we turned to see the slim, dark silhouette that stood in the open doorway and said, “So when do we leave?”

My mother took two steps forward, then turned to stare at Zach. “Didn’t I tell you to stay in my office?”

THINGS THAT REALLY, REALLY SURPRISED ME ABOUT THAT PARTICULAR ROAD TRIP:

1. That it happened. At all.
   
2. That it happened
   with a boy
   .
   
3. That of all the people in the van, Bex spent the most time driving.
   
4. That after a whole day in a vehicle with nothing else to snack on, a person really can get sick of Peanut M&M’s.
   
5. That even while sleeping in a van, Macey McHenry’s hair never gets messed up.
   
6. That no one mentioned Mr. Solomon’s name, not
   even once.
   
7. That no one talked about where we were going.
   
8. That four Gallagher Girls were playing hooky
   and missing an entire day of class (even
   with
   our
   headmistress’s permission).
   
9. That, if you drive all night and only stop for
   essentials, the Blackthorne Institute for Boys is only
   ten hours away from the Gallagher Academy.
   

Somehow it had always felt much farther.

* * *

“Are you still mad at me?” Zach whispered as we crossed the Pennsylvania border. His leg was pressing against mine, but I didn’t think about how it felt, because my mother (
who is a spy
) was riding shotgun in the front seat, and my roommates (
who are future spies
) were surrounding us in the van. And besides, it doesn’t take a lot of training to know that leg-pressing can seriously divert a girl from little things, like trying not to die.

So I didn’t say a word.

“Ooh,” Zach whispered. “The silent treatment.”

“I’m not talking to you, Zach,” I whispered, whirling on him, “because I know you’re not going to really
say
anything anyway. Should I be asking you more questions you refuse to answer?”

As I turned and faced forward again, watched the yellow lines of the highway flying by, I expected more excuses. More lies. But instead, Zach just leaned across me and whispered to Liz, “She’s cute when she’s silent.”

I didn’t utter a single word.

Not when he ate the last of the M&M’s.

Not when he put his head on my shoulder and tried to take a nap.

Not when he and Liz thumb wrestled (despite the fact that I was sitting between them) for the better part of the state of Pennsylvania.

Not when Liz and Macey finally fell asleep and he leaned close to me and whispered, “Are you sure you wanna do this, Gallagher Girl?”

Nope. Not even then. I didn’t have anything else to say.

At dusk, the silence broke as I heard my mother say, “Pull over here.”

Bex pulled into the parking lot of an old gas station by the side of a narrow two-lane highway. Weeds grew up between abandoned pumps. Rusty machines bore the ancient logos of Coke and Pepsi.

We felt utterly alone, but in a split second, all that changed.

A dark car was approaching from the south, traveling way too fast. Tires screeched as it slid sideways into the gravel lot, coming to a stop three feet from the bumper of Liz’s van.

“Mom!” I shouted, bolting upright, blood pounding in my ears. But before I could fully process the worst-case scenario that was playing through my mind, my best friend sat up straighter too and yelled, “Mom?” A second later, Bex was throwing open the van door and running to her mother, who was climbing out of the other car.

“Hello, darling,” Mrs. Baxter said, throwing her arms around her daughter. But I noticed her gaze never left my mother’s eyes.

“Anything, Grace?” Mom asked, climbing out of the van.

Bex’s mother shook her head. “Nothing. You’re clear.”

At that moment a white pickup appeared on the deserted road, this time traveling from the north. It pulled into the abandoned station, and somehow I wasn’t surprised at all to see Bex’s father behind the wheel.

He hopped out of the truck. “All clear on my end, Rachel. You’re free.”

“Thanks, Abe.” She sounded relieved, and to tell you the truth, I didn’t like it. Because for there to be relief, there had to have been fear. And fear . . . well . . . I didn’t want to think about that.

Liz poked me. “These are Bex’s parents!”

I looked at my mother, who shrugged. “You didn’t expect me not to recruit at least a little grown-up backup, did you?”

Macey stood on my other side and exclaimed, “We’re going on a mission with Bex’s parents!” as if wondering whether or not we were ready for Baxters to the power of three.

But my mother was shaking her head. “Actually, girls, for unsanctioned ops, it’s best to minimize the exposure of official agents.”

It’s a rule as old as espionage itself: Don’t do yourself what you can get someone else to do for you. There are a million harmless reasons why a bunch of Gallagher Girls might break into Blackthorne (jokes, dares, pranks, etc.). For a bunch of grown-ups, not so much.

Bex knew all this—I know she did—and yet she was looking from my mother to hers, then back again. “So why are you . . .” she started, then trailed off.

“They’re not here to
help
us.” My voice was flat against the wind. “They’re here to
guard
me.” A look passed across my roommates’ faces as if no time at all had passed since November—as if we were all still standing on a dark street in D.C.

“Do you have the journal?” Grace asked.

“No.” Mom shook her head, then pointed to my roommates and me. “
They
beat me to it.”

And that was when things got really weird.

I mean,
my mom
had broken into Sublevel Two!

My mom had been after my dad’s journal.

My mom had been the person hot on our heels, creeping through the darkness in the depths of our school, which meant, I guess, that Agent Townsend hadn’t been.

I was still shaking my head, trying to wrap my mind around that—around everything—when another car appeared on the highway, and Macey cried, “Abby?”

It sounded almost like a question, and with one glance at my aunt I saw why. Her glossy hair had lost its shine. And when she walked toward us, the bounce that I had come to know in her step was gone.

“Hey, Squirt,” she said, but it sounded forced. “Playing hooky, I see.”

I shrugged. “Maybe this is a CoveOps field exercise?”

She raised an eyebrow. “I know Agent Townsend, Cams.”

“Oh,” Bex said.

“Which is why I am more than willing to take part in this little extracurricular assignment.” She looked at her sister. “Well . . . one of the reasons.”

My mom turned to Mr. Baxter. “What are our friends at Six saying, Abe?”

“Same story, different accent. No one has a bloody clue where they’ve taken him. No one seems to bloody care.”

“I care.”

Zach stood on the side of the dusty road, hands in pockets. When Mrs. Baxter saw him, she smiled a little too wide.

“Hello, Zachary,” she said. “It’s very nice to meet you. Rachel has told us . . . It’s very nice to meet you.”

Zach mumbled something that sounded like “You too.” (I guess Blackthorne doesn’t have a Madame Dabney.)

And then the time for pleasantries must have been over because Mrs. Baxter turned to my mom. “Ready?”

It seemed like the perfect question at the time. After all, I was getting ready to break into Blackthorne. I was out of the mansion. I was getting ready to go on a mission. A
real
mission. With Zach.

And my mom.

Words could not describe the nerves. Or the weirdness.

It occurred to me that I should have been taking notes, savoring every moment. But there was no time.

Mrs. Baxter started for the truck, climbing in beside her husband as she tossed my mother the keys to the sedan with the dark windows. Abby was already crawling into the SUV as Liz and Macey started for Liz’s van, but my mother waved them away.

“It stays here,” she said with a shake of her head. “We can’t take the risk that someone might trace it back to you and the school.”

When my mother turned to me and asked, “Do you have everything?” she sounded like she was dropping me off at school or a friend’s house. She sounded almost like a normal mom.

When I said, “Yeah, we’re ready,” I sounded almost like a normal girl.

But as I watched my bodyguards pull onto the highway to monitor the perimeter of the school, normal felt completely overrated.

A moment later, my mother left us in a cloud of dust in the middle of nowhere, beside a gas station that had no gas, a van we couldn’t drive, and a boy that some of the best spies in the world were hesitant to trust.

“And what are
we
supposed to do?” Macey asked.

Zach smiled. “We walk.”