Dont Judge a Girl by Her Cover

by Ally Carter

  I pulled at the drivers-side door, and for a second I thought it would fall off its hinges. I looked at the seat. Stuffing was bursting through its fraying seams. The steering wheel was being held together almost entirely by duct tape.

  "What kind of project?" I asked, almost afraid of the answer because something told me that pushing that van to Philadelphia wasn't really going to help our mission objectives.

  "Oh, give me those," Bex said, grabbing the keys from my hand. She jammed them into the ignition and turned and then…nothing.

  "Great!" I snapped. "It doesn't even work." But then I felt it. The car was running, but it was almost completely silent, almost completely still.

  "New technology," Liz said with a shrug. "Dr. Fibs has been helping me. We've got it up to 250 miles per gallon now," she said, with only the teeniest hint of a gloating smile. "But I think I'll have it doing 325 by Christmas."

  And who says Gallagher Girls on the research and operations track never get a chance to save the world?

  We spent the next few hours in silence. Well, if by silence you mean that Liz was rattling on nonstop like she does when she's nervous, and Bex was totally tuning her out like she does when she's nervous. And me? I just drove, listening to the rain that started as we crossed the Pennsylvania border. The windshield wipers must not have been as high-tech as the engine because they stuck and stalled, leaving streaks across the glass that caught the light of passing headlights, and by the time we made it to Philadelphia, everything was a blur.

  "Right turn," Liz said, navigating our way through narrow cobblestone streets. Buildings older than the Declaration of Independence rose into the rainy sky. Maybe I was expecting the noise of Ohio, the blockades and chaos of the convention, but instead we peered out the grimy windshield onto the slick black streets, and I couldn't help thinking that something felt…different.

  "Are you sure this is the right place?" I asked. Liz leaned between the two front seats, but before she could act too insulted, we turned and saw a great stone building that covered two city blocks. Massive columns spanned its front entrance, so that it looked more like a Roman temple than a train station. And there, in the center of the façade, was a banner fifty feet long that read WINTERS-McHENRY: PUTTING AMERICA BACK ON TRACK.

  The rain fell harder. Puddles collected on the sidewalks. And beside me, Bex said, "We're here."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Every mission is a lesson—in school and in life. And before we even reached the doors of the 30th Street station, I learned two very important things.

  1. Getting dressed with two other girls in the back of a Dodge minivan should totally be worth extra credit in P&E.

  2. Even if they are your best friends, you should never ever trust another operative to pack for you.

  "I cannot believe I am wearing this," I muttered as I tugged at the hem of the little black dress Bex had personally smuggled out of Sub level Two. But it didn't feel like a dress. It felt like…torture. Torture with a very low back and very high shoes.

  Stretch limousines were lined up outside the main stairs. Secret Service agents stood guard at every possible exit, but still Bex whispered, "The key to deception and disguise is to break with tendencies and norms."

  And right then I knew that having genius friends who are really good at memorizing textbooks can sometimes be a very bad thing, because Bex was right: nothing about that dress was norm.

  Still, I couldn't help saying, "Then you should be wearing it." But Bex just shrugged.

  "I'd love to," she said. "And that's the problem."

  Here's the thing you need to know about disguise: it's not about being unseen. It's not about being unnoticed. It's about being unrecognized—shedding your own skin. And right then I wasn't worried about the Secret Service or five hundred influential party donors. Right then our only concern was Aunt Abby: fooling her meant leaving our own identities in the van.

  I glanced at Liz, whose long blond hair was hidden beneath a dark brown wig. Bex was wearing a wig too, plus glasses and a padded bodysuit that changed the natural silhouette of her athletic frame. We had used every trick in the Gallagher Academy closet, and as we passed the darkened windows of the station, I caught a glimpse of three strangers before realizing that, amazingly, they were us. I didn't even recognize myself under the wig, colored contacts, and fake nose that changed my forgettable face into one that…wasn't.

  "Okay, gang," I said, "according to blueprints, there's an elevator access panel on the east side of the building. We may get a little dirty, but—"

  "I thought we'd just go through the doors," Liz said, flashing three beautifully engraved invitations and some wonderfully authentic fake IDs.

  The tickets were $20,000 each. The Secret Service had been vetting the guest list for weeks, so Bex and I stopped beneath a streetlamp and studied Liz.

  "Do I even want to know where you got those?" I asked.

  Liz seemed to ponder it, and then she said, "No."

  And just like that I remembered that Liz was probably the most dangerous one of us all.

  Stepping inside the station was like stepping inside another world. Beautiful carvings covered a ceiling that was at least fifty feet tall. A string quartet played from the second-story balcony, their music echoing off the stone floors, while five hundred men and women ate and drank and talked about the road to the White House.

  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.

  Wild eyebrows. Mustache," I rattled off identifying characteristics as quickly as I could think of them.

  The Operative realized that incredibly high heels made it very hard to pursue people quickly across very slick floors!

  The band played. People drank. And where the train stood at the end of the platform, I saw the face again. I recognized something in the way he moved, and my mind flashed back to the hotel lobby in Boston while the Texas delegation sang.

  And then I glanced at the train and saw Aunt Abby standing in the wings, ten feet from Macey and exactly where she was supposed to be. And the white-haired man moved closer.

  I didn't know how to describe him, and that was maybe the most notable thing of all. He was just moving through the crowd as if there were someplace else he had to be. Call me crazy, but I couldn't shake the feeling that no one pays $20,000 to leave in the middle of the main event.

  I hurried through the crowd as quickly as I dared without A) falling down, and B) attracting attention. And I was doing pretty well at both, until a waiter picked that moment to lose his grip on a tray of champagne. As the glasses fell, I sidestepped and spun.

  And ran right in to Preston Winters.

  "Oh, I'm so sorry!" he exclaimed, gripping me by the shoulders as if I were about to fall down. (Which I wasn't, but he probably didn't need to know that I've had entire sections of Protection and Enforcement class dedicated to helping an operative keep her balance.) "Are you okay? Can I get you some…punch … or something?"

  "I'm fine, thank you, though," I said as I ran through the mental checklist of things that were going wrong at that moment, forgetting the most troublesome thing of all.

  "Have we met before?" Preston asked, looking at me in a way that said that, despite the long black wig and tight black dress, there was something way too familiar about me.

  "No, I don't believe we have," I said in my best Southern accent. I tried to pull away. The man was easing down the length of the train and into the stone tunnel from which it had emerged, and I just stood there thinking about my options.

  The Operative regretted not packing Dr. Fibs's new Band- Aid-style Napotine patches. She also regretted not packing some regular Band-Aids, because her shoes really did hurt her feet.

  Preston's father stood on a makeshift stage behind the caboose of the old-fashioned train—a physical homage to better times—and told the crowd, "We're going to get America back on track!" The crowd cheered, but I was too busy listening to two voices. One belonged to the boy in front of me, who was asking, "I know, you were at the Atlanta rally, weren't you?" The other buzzed in my ear as

  Bex cried, "You guys are never going to believe who's here! Eyes," she said again. "I have eyes on—"

  But then there was nothing but static as my roommate's voice faded away. My first thought was to bring my hand to my ear and scream like a total amateur, but I didn't.

  "Now, I just know we've met before," Preston went on, oblivious to the panic I was feeling. "Come on. Help me out." I could have lied. I could have fought. But desperate times call for desperate measures, so I took a chance and called upon a Gallagher Girl's weapon of last resort. I flirted.

  "I'm sorry," I said, batting my false eyelashes. "I just get a little tongue-tied anytime I'm around such a handsome man."

  "Um…" Preston swallowed hard. "Handsome?" Instantly, I felt the tables turn.

  "Yes," I replied, reaching to grip his bicep. "I swear, you are even stronger than you look on TV."

  He swallowed again and somehow managed to mutter, "You know I lift…things."

  "Oh, I can tell." In my ear, Bex's voice was drowning in static, but my mission at that moment was to get away from Preston Winters without him realizing that the girl in the black dress was also the girl on the roof. "You know, this is my favorite of your suits. I also like the navy pinstripe, of course, but you were wearing that one in Boston, weren't you? So now this is my favorite. …" I started to chatter on about which of Preston's ties went better with his eyes, but before I could say a word, Preston was already pointing to his parents across the room.

  "Wait. Oh, you know, I think they need me for … stuff."

  "Oh, but—" I said as he started to walk away.

  "Thank you for your vote," he called, turning back.

  But I was already gone.

  "Duchess," I tried as I inched closer to the train tunnel. "Duchess," I tried again, with one glance back at the party, at Macey and Aunt Abby, and I knew I had two choices. One, I could wave down my aunt, which would result in reinforcements and the possibility that she would tell my mother what I was doing. Or two, I could follow a person of interest in a kidnapping attempt into a dark tunnel, without backup, without help.

  So I did the second one because, at the time, it was the least scary of my options.

  As I stepped inside the dim space, the sound of the crowd faded behind me while, in my ear, my comms unit began to crack and buzz.

  I strolled down the darkened tunnel, my (totally uncomfortable) shoes as quiet as a whisper against the cold concrete. But that was before a hand clasped over my mouth, an arm gripped me tightly ar
ound my waist, and someone pulled me out of my shoes.

  "Hey, Chameleon, how's it going?" Bex's voice sounded strong in my ear.

  My first thought was to struggle against the arms that were holding me. My second was, Hey, how can Bex be talking in my ear if my comms unit is out?

  But then the arms released me and I spun to face my best friend. "What are you doing in here?" I asked.

  She smiled. "Guess who else made the drive up from Roseville?" she asked, her eyes twinkling.

  "Bex, it's Saturday. I'd really rather not take a quiz if I can help it."

  Then she gripped my shoulders and turned me around. "Look."

  The first time I ever saw Joe Solomon, he was strolling into the Grand Hall during the welcome-back dinner of my sophmore year. None of us knew where he'd come from or why he was there. Standing in the shadows, it wasn't hard to remember how that had felt.

  "He's hot in a tuxedo," Bex said, and I started to snap because…well … it kind of went without saying, and also we had other things to worry about. Some seriously important other things. Because just then Mr. Solomon wasn't alone anymore.

  "Ooh, he has a hot tuxedoed friend," Bex teased. But I knew better—I'd seen that man and his wild white hair and crazy eyebrows before. I'd seen him. In Boston.

  The two men spoke for a moment, then Mr. Solomon turned and started to walk away, varying his pace in order to hear the footsteps of anyone who might be following in the dark tunnel, a textbook countersurveillance procedure if ever there was one. Bex winked at me, more than up for the challenge, then slipped into the tunnel a safe distance behind our teacher. But I just kept staring at

  the guy left in Joe Solomon's wake.

  Someone Mr. Solomon knew.

  Someone Mr. Solomon seemed to respect.

  Someone who had a knack for being where Macey—and I—happened to be.