I didn't want to think about the kind of favors someone had had to call in to close down the entire station for the night (and come to think of it, an actual act of Congress might have been involved), so I just stood at the top of the steps with my best friends and a great statue of the angel Michael, who held a fallen soldier in his arms, his wings poised to take flight. Somehow, it felt like all four of us were on the lookout for Macey.
"Any sign?" I asked twenty minutes later as I walked through the crowd.
"Negative," Bex replied.
"Wow, did you guys know the Pennsylvania train system dates back to—"
"Liz!" Bex and I snapped in unison.
"It's Bookworm," Liz corrected, and I couldn't really complain.
"Bookworm, what did the official agenda say again?" I asked, needing to hear it.
"It said Macey will be making one public appearance today. She'll be arriving at seven thirty via the Back on Track Express—whatever that is."
"What time is it?" I said.
"You know what time it is," Bex reminded me, but I was hoping I was wrong, because the candidates and their families were…late.
Late meant mistakes.
Mistakes meant problems.
And problems…well, I really didn't want to think about what those meant.
Mr. Solomon's warning kept coming back to me as I surveyed the crowd, remembering that the bad guys could be anyone, that they could be anywhere—that they knew who we were. And they just had to get lucky…once.
Maybe it was my spy training; maybe it was a crazy, hyperactive imagination, but it seemed like everywhere I looked, people seemed suspicious.
There was a man with a red bow tie who bumped into me not once, not twice, but three times and was a little…handsy. My first instinct was to call out for Macey on the comms to see if he was flirting, but then I remembered that the one Gallagher Girl who was certain to have an answer to that question was the one Gallagher Girl I couldn't ask.
"Chameleon," Bex's voice rang in my ear. "Cammie, are you—"
"I'm here," I said.
"What's wrong?" her accent was heavy again.
"Nothing. I mean—" I was spinning, being about as uncovert as I could possibly be, but something was … wrong.
"Eyes," I said, citing an operative's ultimate resource— her instincts. "I feel eyes. Someone's…watching."
"Yeah," Bex said, her voice thick with a resounding duh. "You look hot."
Well, that explained one thing, because covert I'm good at. Invisible I'm good at. Hot I am totally not good at.
I pushed through the crowds again, knowing that it was getting later and later, and I couldn't help worrying more and more. Flashes of Boston went through my mind. I closed my eyes and shuddered, saw an almost identical crowd, felt that almost identical feeling.
"Bookworm, Duchess," I started, but then I stopped because I didn't have a clue how that sentence was supposed to end.
"Any sign of them?" I asked instead.
"No buses," Liz told me from her vantage point by the window.
"No sign at the east entrance. Wait," Bex said, stopping short.
The feeling of the crowd was changing. An energy so palpable was coursing through the old historic station that I looked out the massive windows at the cloudy sky, half expecting lightning.
"Oh my gosh," Liz exclaimed, echoing Bex's surprise.
"What?" I said out loud, not caring if anyone noticed. I spun, looking at the station's main entrance, but then I felt the crowd shift behind me. I turned slowly and realized there was no bus. There was no convoy.
Instead, a long, ancient-looking train with old-fashioned red, white, and blue bunting hanging from the caboose was slowly moving into the station.
In the next instant it didn't matter how great our comms units were, because the cry that came up from five hundred rabid voters was enough to drown out even the sound of my best friends' voices in my ear.
Governor Winters and Macey's dad stepped out onto the stage behind the caboose, and then their wives. Macey and Preston were one step behind them.
I waited for the fear in my stomach to subside. I told myself I was crazy. After all, Macey was smiling. She was waving. She was the perfect operative with the perfect cover. Aunt Abby was beside her. She was fine.
For a second a wave of relief like nothing I'd ever known swept over me. But then the crowd shifted, and for a split second my gaze fell on a man,
A man with crazy white hair and wild eyebrows.
A man I had seen before.
In Boston.
Chapter Eighteen
It didn't mean it was something. Odds were, it was probably nothing. After all, there were probably a lot of people who went to political conventions and political rallies. And the Secret Service was there—the Secret Service was good.
Still, I didn't know what was scarier, that I'd seen a man in the crowd who I'd literally bumped into on the very day my roommate had been attacked, or that—just that quickly—the familiar face had vanished.
"Duchess!" I practically shouted, but the crowd was too loud, the race too close, and the people who wanted the Winters-McHenry ticket to win on Election Day were too fired up as I called through our comms units for my friends. "Duchess, there was a guy … in a suit …" I climbed the main staircase to better scan the platform, and that's where I realized that I'd just described half of the clapping crowd. "A dark suit," I added. "Crazy-looking white hair.