"Isn't it a tad early in the semester for hiding, darling?" Bex tried to tease. I tried to smile.
"What gave me away?" I asked.
"Irregular dust patterns outside the entrance," Bex said. "You're getting sloppy." And then she stopped. Strong Bex, brave Bex, seemed to recoil when she realized what she'd said- "I didn't mean…"
"It's okay, Bex," I told her.
"You weren't sloppy!" Bex blurted again.
Then Liz jumped in. "Everyone's talking about how great you were—about how, if you hadn't been there …" But she didn't finish, which was just as well. No one wanted to think about how that sentence had to end.
Bex eased onto one of the overturned crates and boxes that filled the room. "Have you seen her?"
"Not since the day after. They brought us to Mr. Solomon's lake house, but then they took her back to her parents."
"She is coming back," Liz asked. "Isn't she?"
"I don't know," I said with a shrug.
"I mean … they wouldn't want her to stay with them all the time, would they? They'd want her here, where she's safe?"
"I don't know, Liz," I said, sharper than I'd meant. "I mean … I don't know if she's coming," I said, more softly. "I don't know who tried to do this or why or … I just don't know," I whispered again, then turned to look out the tiny circular window.
"She invited me." Bex's voice cut through the silence. "Before the convention, she called our flat and asked me to come, but my mum and dad were home, and I…" Bex trailed off, not knowing, I guess, that wanting to be with your parents isn't actually a sign of weakness. "I should have been there." She didn't sound envious about missing out on a good fight. Instead, she sounded guilty.
"Me too," Liz said, sinking to the dusty floor. "When she called, my mom said I could go, but I only had a few days left with my parents, so I said no."
I nodded. We all thought we'd have the better part of a year to spend together, hut in any life—especially a spy's life—tomorrow is never guaranteed.
And there you have it—the most important thing any of us had learned over our summer vacation.
"Tina Walters says Macey's parents have hired an ex- Navy SEAL to pose as a Sherpa and hide Macey out in the Himalayas until the election is over," Liz offered.
"Yeah, well Tina Walters says a lot of things. Tina Walters is usually wrong," Bex replied. But I thought about how close Tina had been with her campaign button theory; I remembered that Tina had been saying for years that there was an elite boys' school for spies, and we'd all thought that was a crazy rumor until last semester when a delegation from the Blackthorne Institute had moved into the East Wing, just a few feet from where we now sat.
So I looked around the empty dusty space and said, "Not always."
Last spring, finding out who those boys were and whether or not they could be trusted had seemed like the most important mission of our lives. Charts of surveillance summaries and patterns of behaviors still lined the walls of our former operation headquarters, but the tape was starting to lose its hold. The wires still ran to the East Wing, a reminder of the days when boys from the Blackthorne Institute had seemed like a mission—back when missions had been about getting us ready for the real world; before the real world cornered us on a rooftop in Massachusetts.
Liz must have followed my gaze and read my mind, because I heard her say, "Have you heard from…you know…Zach?"
I thought back to the swirling images that had filled my mind before I'd blacked out, and almost asked, "Do hallucinations after a head injury count?" But I didn't because A) I may very well have been going crazy. And B) for a Gallagher Girl, "Boy crazy" might be the most dangerous kind of crazy there is.
So instead I turned to look out the window and watched the long line of limousines winding down Highway 10, carrying my classmates back to the safety of our walls.
It was the same scene I'd witnessed for years—the same cars, the same girls. But in the next instant the scene totally changed. Vans—dozens of them—sped down the highway, skidding into ditches on the side of the road. People bolted out and started adjusting satellite dishes and equipment. Helicopters swarmed around the school.
"Oh. My. Gosh," I mumbled, still staring, feeling Bex and Liz crowd around the window on either side of me. I looked at my best friends as sirens began screeching through the still, quiet air: "CODE RED CODE RED CODE RED."
"What does it mean?" Liz screamed. Bex and I just smiled.
"Macey's coming home."
Chapter Six
It doesn't take a genius to know that the whole world can change in an instant, and as soon as I hurried out of the secret passageway and into the second-floor corridor I could see and hear and feel the difference. For days the halls had felt like a tomb. But now, instead of stone silence, the whole school was on fire (without actually burning, of course).
Red lights flashed and blurred. To my right, a poster advertising the chance to spend a semester in Paris slid down over a display of secret writing techniques used through the ages (which wasn't entirely necessary since, this month, it was featuring invisible ink).
As we ran past the Encryption and Encoding department, I saw the plaque on the door flipping over to read Ivy League Liaison Office.