"Keep her down!" The voice was Mr. Solomon's. The tone was one I'd never heard before and I never hope to hear again. "They could come back!" The circle around me tightened. "They won't stop coming until they get her."
Get her.
All of my fight left me then. I fell against the wall while the sirens wailed and numbness came and the words echoed in the night. Get me.
Chapter Twenty-eight
2300 hours
"She's hysterical!" one of the paramedics said. The lights and sirens were too much for me. I yelled. I fought. I had to be heard.
"Give her something," a woman said. "But—" the paramedic started. "I'm her mother! Do it!"
0200 hours
"Doctors have no comment about the condition of the Secret Service agent who was shot last night in a reported drive-by shooting in downtown Washington, D.C. The agent had been assigned to Macey McHenry's personal detail, but reports indicate that, given the outcome of last night's election, Ms. McHenry will have no more need for
protection from the Secret Service, that life for Macey McHenry can and will return to normal." I heard the TV click off.
I stirred and blinked and recognized the room around me—the leather sofa, the shelves of books. But the drugs were too strong. Or maybe I was too weak. I slept again.
0445 hours
"You girls should be in bed."
"No thank you, professor," Bex said. "Rebecca, your mother and father have personally asked me to watch out for you, and I would like you to go to bed."
"I'm fine where I am, professor. Thank you."
"I had a feeling you might say that. At least let Ms. Sutton get some sleep."
0520 hours
I knew I wasn't alone. Bex's whispers were soft outside the door. Liz was mumbling something, half-asleep. Then a shadow cut across the room, and I saw Mr. Solomon standing in the moonlight, staring out across the grounds.
But it must have been the drugs—I must have still been sleeping—because it looked like his shoulders were shaking. I could have sworn his hand wiped across his face. It wasn't real.
I was asleep.
Joe Solomon does not cry.
0625 hours
"Cammie." My mother's voice was high and scratchy, and I knew that she'd been crying. If you want to know the truth, that scared me most of all. I thought that maybe I was dead. I wondered if I was looking up from a coffin and not a leather couch. And then I thought about Aunt Abby.
"She's out of surgery," my mother said, answering my unasked question, reading my mind. She drew a deep breath. "She's out of surgery."
I pushed myself upright and a blanket fell from my lap to the floor. There were bandages on my head and arm. It was far too familiar to be anything but a very bad dream.
"Did you sleep, sweetheart?"
I thought it was an obvious question—a stupid waste of time. But all good interrogators know to start with the things the subject knows for sure. So I nodded my head. My mother said, "Good."
She was sitting on the coffee table in front of me—the very place where every Sunday night she laid out trays of veggies and bowls of dip. But that morning she just sat there with her hands in her lap. Was she a mother or a spy then? I'm not sure. But I knew the one I needed.
"Tell me," I demanded, not caring who heard—how far our voices carried. I saw Mr. Solomon by her desk, knew why he was there. "Both of you, start talking," I said, but Mom was easing toward me.
"Sweetheart, this is not something—"
"I have the right to know!"
She grew harder, still the boss of me and not about to let me forget it. "Cameron, there is a time and a place for—"
"They weren't after Macey," I said. "They were never after Macey. And…you knew."
"Cameron, this—" But Mom didn't get the chance to finish, because Mr. Solomon was easing onto the corner of her desk, crossing his arms as he said, "We didn't know anything more than you, Ms. Morgan. Not for a long time."
"But…" I started, my mind spinning, "Philadelphia." I thought about the closed door of my mother's office that next day, my aunt's newfound terror on the train. A chill like none I'd ever felt ran through me as I said, "What did Zach tell you in that tunnel, Mr. Solomon?"
My teacher nodded. He almost smiled. "He'd heard Macey wasn't the target. That was a possibility all along—we knew that, but Zach has sources—"
"What kind of sources? Who are they? Where are they? What—"
"That's all you get, Cammie," Joe Solomon said, and I hated him a little. But then he shrugged, defeated. "Because that's pretty much all there is."
Mr. Solomon is a good liar—the best. And I hated him for that too.
"Joe," my mom said calmly, as if I weren't ranting and bruised. As if everything in my life weren't suddenly different. And over. "Could you give us a minute?"
A moment later, I heard the door open and close. I knew we were alone.
"Sweetheart, don't…" She trailed off, unable to finish, until the Gallagher Girl in her overruled the mother, and she found the strength to carry on. "You're going to be okay, Cammie. The Gallagher trustees have been notified. The full strength of the school and The Agency are behind us. You're going to be okay."
I love my mother's office. It's the closest thing to home I've had in years. I sat there for a long time that morning looking at the pictures that used to sit on her dresser in our apartment in Arlington. Before she was a headmistress. Before I was a Gallagher Girl. Before we lost Dad.