Dont Judge a Girl by Her Cover

by Ally Carter

  "There are some things you don't want to know."

  I know it sounds crazy, but I believed him. After all, I've lived my whole life on a need-to-know basis, and right then I was willing to take Zach's word for it. I was willing to believe.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw my roommates leave the hotel and step onto the street. I heard Macey call, "Cam!" But my gaze was locked with Zach's. Secrets and confetti lingered in the air around us until suddenly things grew dark and slow.

  Until not knowing stopped being an option for me ever again.

  Until I saw the van.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  I know it only lasted a few minutes. They've told me that. I've seen the surveillance video, what little there is. Still, the only thing I'm sure of is that one second we were standing in the shadows of the streetlamps, and the next, we were shrouded in black. Three city blocks were knocked out, and through the haze, only the Washington Monument kept shining.

  "Macey!" I yelled, knowing more in my heart than in my mind that something was seriously wrong.

  I started running down the street, away from Zach and toward my friend, just as headlights pierced the darkness, just as the barriers were crushed against the van that careened so quickly down the empty street that I actually stopped. I actually stared.

  Macey. Macey had wandered closer to me and farther from Bex and Liz. She was there, standing alone in the headlights' glare, twenty yards from help of any kind.

  "Run!" I yelled, rushing toward her, but it was too late. The van was too close. Its side door was sliding open. Masked figures were leaning out. Everything was so slow that I wasn't sure my yell would even reach her as she stood dumbfounded in the glare.

  And watched the van pass her by.

  We do these tests in CoveOps sometimes where Mr. Solomon asks us four or five different questions at once— some that make you process, some that make you recall, some that test your instincts, some that test your skill. And that's what it felt like. I know it sounds crazy. I know you won't believe me. But it really did feel like one of those tests as I stood in the light of the Washington Monument and memorized everything about the van; as I noted the type of wristwatch the driver was wearing, and whether or not the man jumping out the side door was likely to hit me first with his right hand or his left. As I thought about Boston; as I heard the words "get her" one more time; as I realized that Macey hadn't been the only Gallagher Girl on the roof that day.

  As I remembered that nothing is ever as it seems.

  Tires screeched across the pavement as the van skidded past me, turning ninety degrees, blocking off the path from which I'd come.

  "Cammie!" Zach's yell seemed far away, lost behind a mountain of rubber and steel.

  To my right, I saw my roommates running closer, but the world was in slow motion. Help felt light-years away as a big man jumped from the back of the van. But he was too big— too slow. I dodged his blows and hooked my foot around the back of his knee as I pushed and he stumbled, pinning a second man against the van's door for a split second, and I started to run.

  "Cammie!" Bex's voice rang through the night from the south.

  "Macey!" I yelled in response. "Save Macey!"

  But Macey didn't need saving. And I know now that that was the problem.

  I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know where Zach had gone. All I knew was that I had to keep running— faster and faster until strong arms caught me around the waist. Before my feet even left the ground there was a rag over my mouth—a sick smell. I tried not to breathe as my arms flailed and the world began to spin.

  And then falling.

  I remember falling.

  Through the eerie glow of the van's lights, I looked for Zach, but the figures were a blur as the pavement rushed up to meet me—too fast, too hard.

  My head was on fire. My body was crushed beneath my attacker's weight. Someone or something must have knocked us both to the ground, because the rag was gone—the haze was parting just enough for me to see my roommates battling two men twice their size. Liz clung to the big man's back while Bex parried away his blows. Macey fought against the second man, and I wanted to yell for her to run, but my head throbbed as if there were simply too many facts—too many questions—for my mind to contain, and the words didn't come.

  And then the crushing weight was gone. Clean air rushed into my lungs. But before I could push myself up, the rag was on my face again. The arms were gripping me tighter and the cloud over my eyes was growing thicker, so I summoned my last ounce of strength and crashed my head into my attacker's skull.

  I heard a crack, felt the blood of a broken nose pouring over me as I stumbled to my feet. But the world was spinning too fast, my legs were too heavy. The arms found me again. I felt the van coming closer as my heels dragged against the pavement, and I searched the blurry darkness for help—for hope. And that's when I saw Macey.

  She was running toward me. So strong. So fast. So beautiful.

  "She's safe," I whispered, but no one heard the words— the lie.

  I sensed the motion stop too late. I felt the right side of my body sinking, but I didn't fight to stand. Instead, I watched my roommate run faster, heard her call my name louder, but the one thought that filled my muddled mind was that the girl by the lake was no match for the girl in front of me then.

  "No!" I heard the word but I didn't remember screaming. I saw the flash—heard the blast—but I hadn't seen the gun.

  I lunged forward, but was too late. Not even the Gallagher Academy can teach someone to turn back time.

  Yells filled the air. Panic spread on the wind as the gunshot echoed down the dark street and out into the night. And that's when I knew the voice I'd heard wasn't mine. Someone else was screaming. Someone else was running through the black. Someone else was lunging through the air in front of Macey and then falling too hard to the dark ground.

  The hand with the gun tried to pull me back, but I spun and kicked, heard a sickening snap, and watched the masked figure fall.

  I stepped, but my legs failed me. I fell to the ground and tried to crawl, but couldn't. Maybe it was the drugs from the rag, maybe it was the blow to my head, or maybe it was the sight of my roommate screaming over my aunt's broken body, but for some reason my arms forgot how to move.

  "Get her out of here!" Mr. Solomon appeared as if from nowhere.

  "Now!" My mother's voice echoed on the wind.

  A hand grabbed my arm again, but this time I lashed out with more rage than I had ever felt, climbing to my knees, spinning, kicking, yelling, "Get…"

  It was the eyes that made me stop. And the hands that were suddenly held toward me. And the words, "Gallagher Girl"

  I wanted to sink to the pavement, to rest. To sleep. But

  Zach's hand found mine again. He pulled me to my feet as my head swam and my throat burned and the world went on crumbling all around me.

  "Run," he said, dragging me back the way we'd come— north, toward the door of the hotel. Away from the van. Away from the fight. Away from the gunshot that still echoed through the darkest parts of my mind.

  In the distance a siren wailed. Someone yelled, "United States Secret Service!" And forty feet away my aunt lay on the ground. Not moving.

  Macey leaned over her. Zach's jacket had fallen from my shoulders, and Macey held it to the wound in Abby's chest, trying to stop the blood that spilled onto the dark asphalt, staining all it touched.

  "Abby," I whispered, but Zach didn't let me pull away.

  I heard the van come to life behind us. Secret Service agents yelled. More shots rang out, and yet I felt Zach stop. I ran into his shoulder, too busy looking behind me to see the man who stood between us and the door.

  I saw the gun. I sensed the van as it rushed forward, seconds away and coming faster. I heard the screams of the fight behind us. But nothing that night was louder than the masked man's astonished whisper as he looked at the boy who stood beside me and said, "You?"

 
We have theories about what happened next—but no reasons. No why. Maybe it was the sirens or the Secret Service, but the man ran instead of fought. He fled into the darkness while my mother cried my name, but her voice was too high. Her momentum was too strong as she hurled her body against mine, driving me deep into the shadows.

  A wall of bodies went up around me—Secret Service agents, police officers, the women who had escorted us from the van and into the hotel. The women who had been waiting … on me.

  I tried to get up, but strong hands pushed me down, back against the building, safe underneath the walls of my sisterhood, which had been transported somehow from Roseville and were standing guard around me.

  "Abby!" I cried as one of the women shifted. I could see through their legs to where my aunt lay on the ground, blood soaking her blouse, not moving. "Aunt Abby!" I yelled again.

  My mind flashed back to Philadelphia. I saw an angel holding a fallen soldier, flying from the fires of war. "No!" I started to crawl like a child, weak and helpless, thinking about my father, who had died in a way I'll never know, in a place I'll never see, wondering in that terrible moment what was worse—not knowing, or watching the life seep out of someone you love before your very eyes.

  My mother was screaming. She was falling to her knees at Abby's side. So I fought harder.

  "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.

  Before we lost a lot of things.

  "What happens now?" I heard my voice crack and knew that I was almost crying, almost pleading. My anger was gone, and in its wake rushed a wave of grief and terror so powerful that I could hardly breathe. I thought of Abby bleeding. I thought of Macey and Preston. And finally, I saw Zach as he hovered over me, as my mind whirled down a laundry chute, plummeting in a free fall that I feared might never end. "It's just…Mom…why?"

  My mother held me. My headmistress smoothed my hair. And the greatest spy I've ever known whispered, "We'll find out. I promise we will find out."

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Classes should have ended, but they didn't. Finals week should have been over, but it was still weeks away. And yet every girl at my school knew that my roommates and I had already been tested. I thought about Aunt Abby, and I knew we'd barely passed.

  It took three weeks for it to happen, for Mr. Solomon to knock on the door of Madame Dabney's tearoom, for my roommates and me to get called downstairs.

  Following our teacher through the hall that day, I didn't let my mind wander—I knew too many dark places where it might go, so I kept my focus on the footsteps,
on the stairs and on the walls. Until Mr. Solomon opened my mother's office door—

  And someone said, "Hey, squirt."

  "Abby!" Bex and Liz called at the same time, rushing toward her, throwing their arms around her.

  "Girls," my mother said, as if to remind them that (at

  least in Bex's case) they don't know their own strength.

  My aunt was paler than I remembered. And thinner, almost frail. Her right arm was held in a sling. But her eyes were the same—so that's where I looked as I stepped closer.

  "How are you?" I asked, almost afraid of the answer, but asking the question anyway.

  My aunt smiled. "Never better." I wondered if she might be lying—or if I would be a good enough operative to know. "Evidently, Langley needs someone with a recent gunshot wound to impersonate a known arms dealer in…well…somewhere." She looked up at the sky and cocked her hip, then held her sling out for us to see. "Is this the ultimate cover or what?"

  But, amazingly, the four of us didn't agree.

  "Do you really have to go?" Liz glanced at Abby's suitcase. "You could stay here, couldn't you? You could teach?"

  "Awesome!" Bex exclaimed, but Abby was already shaking her head, pulling her bag onto her good shoulder. But that didn't stop Bex from saying, "Ooh, you could come home with me for Christmas. Cam's coming. Mom and Dad would love to see you."

  "Thanks, Bex," Aunt Abby said, "but I'm afraid I have some…other things I've got to do."

  For about the millionth time in the past month I thought about what was happening outside our walls, but then I remembered not to ask the questions that I didn't want answered.