United We Spy (Gallagher Girls)

by Ally Carter

  “Go!” I yelled.

  Through the comms unit, I heard Liz say one final time, “Fire in the hole!”

  And then the explosion happened. Small at first. It wasn’t the size of the charge that mattered, Dr. Fibs had taught us. It was the placement. And Liz had placed that third round perfectly.

  Looking back I saw the white plumes of snow fly up on the hillside. The men didn’t even really notice until the rumble began, a low moan that came too long after the charge itself to be a part of the initial blast.

  No. This was something different. Not man-made. This was Mother Nature’s way of keeping people off her mountains.

  At first, the snow shifted slowly, settling into place. But then it started to grow faster and faster, stronger and stronger, like a tide that swept between us and the men giving chase. Within moments, the mountain was moving—sliding. The avalanche grew and grew, opening like an abyss, cutting us off from the men who had no choice but to turn back. But the tide kept growing faster, threatening to overtake us too.

  “Hold on,” Zach yelled. He stood, sending the snowmobile up a narrow, ramp-like rock, shooting us into the blowing snow and raging storm, catapulting us into the dark.

  The jump didn’t kill us. At least, my first thought was that we hadn’t died. But I didn’t let myself get too cocky about the situation. After all, we might have been off the mountain, but we were anything but out of the woods.

  Covert Operations Report

  The Operatives utilized a highly controversial, yet effective, exit strategy dubbed “the blow stuff up and run approach” by Operative Baxter.

  Operative Sutton was quick to point out that blowing stuff up is perhaps her greatest gift.

  Once they reached the bottom of the mountain the Operatives were able to make contact with their Emergency Extraction Team.

  What the Operatives didn’t know was exactly who the Emergency Extraction Team might be.

  “Are we sure about this?” I asked Zach, low and under my breath.

  “I’m sure,” he said.

  I’d never seen a night so black (much less at seven o’clock). But so far north in the middle of winter, the clear sky was like a blanket that couldn’t keep us warm. A crescent moon hung overhead, and I cursed its light beneath my breath. At that particular moment, darkness was our friend.

  Bex leaned against a tree, her head listing to one side. I expected her to be up and pacing, securing our perimeter, cursing the ticking clock. But she sat perfectly still on the cold ground, waiting.

  “Bex?” I asked. “You okay?”

  “Right as rain, Chameleon.” She flashed me her trademark grin. “Just enjoying the scenery.”

  Macey had her arm around Liz, who was shivering. Preston didn’t ask about his father again. Instead, he stared, wide-eyed, across the frozen waters of the lake, almost like we’d pulled him from a dream and he was tempted to go back to sleep. But Zach kept his eyes on the night sky, watching.

  “What if we’re at the wrong rendezvous point?” I asked.

  “We aren’t.”

  “But—”

  He pointed into the distance, and then I heard it: a low rumbling hum. It looked almost like a bird was flying low over the tree line, but it was too big for a bird.

  The lights were off. The pilot was going on instruments and moonlight and sheer force of will as the small plane touched down on the snow-covered ice, gliding on skis toward us.

  Zach turned to the group. “Let’s go.”

  We hunched low and ran across the ice. Liz slid and fell, and Macey reached for her, half-carried her toward the plane.

  “Okay, Zach,” I said as we got closer, “are you sure that we can trust this guy?”

  “I don’t know,” a boy said, throwing open the plane’s side door and looking down. “Can you?”

  “Grant?” I asked. He must have heard the uncertainty in my voice. It had been almost two years since I’d seen him, after all. I thought back to the semester when a small contingency of students from the Blackthorne Institute came to our school. It seemed like another lifetime, and I stood for a moment, paralyzed wondering exactly how we had gotten so far away from school dances and spying on boys.

  Someone opened the copilot’s window. “Come on, Cammie.”

  “Jonas?” Liz cried.

  The boy winked. “We’re here to rescue you.”

  The plane was small, but we all fit—even if just barely.

  “Hang on,” Grant told us as he turned the plane on the ice and started building up steam. We bounced and rocked. The wind shifted, and it felt like we were going to topple over before we even took flight.

  “It’s going to be close!” Jonas yelled when we finally left the ground and headed for the trees.

  I could hear the skis scraping against the icy branches. The engines whined and the plane shook, but we kept climbing, rising steadily into the night.

  And then the silence came.

  We were officially off the grid and in the middle of nowhere. Avalanche or not, the prison guards were going to have a hard time finding us there, and I finally felt myself exhale.

  “It’s good to see you, buddy.” Grant held out a hand, and Zach took it.

  “Thanks for coming,” Zach told him. He slapped Jonas on the back. And I felt like I’d fallen into an alternate universe. One where Zach had…friends.

  Neither Grant nor Jonas asked why we were in the middle of nowhere, desperate for a ride. They didn’t inquire as to why we had to fly low across the mountains, out of radar range. This was need-to-know at its finest. We weren’t going to lie to Grant and Jonas, and they weren’t going to lie to us; and we were all perfectly fine with that arrangement.

  “Grant?” Bex asked after the plane leveled off. “Does this thing come with a first aid kit?” Her voice was softer than it should have been. Her eyes were glassy, and her skin was sallow.

  “Why?” I looked at Bex just as she unzipped her heavy down jacket. Blood stained her shirt, spreading across her shoulder and dripping down her side.

  “Sorry, Cam,” my best friend whispered. And then her eyelids fluttered and closed, and I felt my whole world descend into black.

  You never know how you’re going to react to something. To anything. Tragedy, joy, heartache. They affect us all in different ways in different times and different places. There, a thousand feet in the air, I squinted against the dark stain that was spreading across my best friend’s body. I felt the sticky dampness of the blood and watched the way she crumpled, sliding off the plane’s narrow seat and onto the floor.

  I think I might have yelled.

  I think I might have screamed.

  I think I might have cried.

  But to tell you the truth, I’m not exactly sure what I did. I remember ripping off her shirt and staring at the blood.

  “Light!” someone yelled, and soon there was a flashlight shining down on the small hole in Bex’s shoulder.

  “Bex!” Zach yelled and dove for her. He held her head. “Wake up, Bex. Wake up. Wake up. Wake—”

  Someone was crying. It might have been Liz. Or it might have been me. All I know is that Macey was beside me, a first aid kit in her hands. And I was reaching around Bex’s back, feeling the gooey wetness. A gaping hole.

  “Exit wound,” I said. Zach pulled Bex into his arms and turned her around and I saw blood. So much blood. “That’s good. Isn’t that good?” I asked but no one really answered.

  “We’ve got to stop the bleeding,” Liz was saying, rattling off facts. “Stop the bleeding. Clean the wound.”

  I’d heard the words in every lecture on emergency medical procedures that the school doctor and Mr. Solomon had ever given, and yet, I didn’t really think about them. My hands were flying, moving, absent from my mind as I took the alcohol from Macey’s hand and poured it onto Bex’s shoulder. I was glad she was unconscious and didn’t have to feel the pain.

  The gauze bandages were too small—nothing more than glorified Band-Aids�
��so I stuck them to the entry and exit wounds and unwound my scarf from around my neck, wrapping her body over and over.

  “Don’t die, Bex,” Liz was chanting. “Don’t die. Don’t die.”

  “She’s not going to die,” I said. “Bex won’t die,” I snapped, knowing that Bex herself would never allow it.

  “Bex, wake up!” Zach yelled one more time.

  “We’ve got to get her on the ground,” Liz said.

  “We’ve got to get her to a hospital,” Preston countered.

  Then Bex’s eyes fluttered open. She grabbed my hand, held it tighter than I thought possible.

  “No,” she gasped. “No hospitals.”

  “But—”

  “They’ll find me. Find us,” Bex said, and I nodded, knowing she was right. I pressed against Bex’s wounds.

  “I won’t let them find you,” I promised, and then my best friend drifted away again, her blood still wet and warm on my hands.

  Grant and Jonas didn’t ask how I knew where the lake was. No one debated how much longer we should fly. We stayed in the air as long as we possibly could, and when the sun began to creep over the horizon I pointed to the waters below and told them, “There.”

  So we landed. Once we were on the ground, Grant insisted on carrying Bex inside, and my friends and I walked toward the cabin, knee-deep in snow in the predawn light.

  “What is this place?” Zach asked.

  “It’s safe,” I told him.

  “Cam…” Zach said, his voice a warning.

  “It’s a ranch. Grandpa buys his bulls here. The owners only use this cabin for hunting, though. And nothing is in season now. No one is looking for us here. It’s safe,” I said again, this time the words only for myself.

  Liz and Macey and I stood together in a big crude kitchen with canned goods and a propane-powered cookstove. There was a fireplace and a small bathroom with a shower but no tub, and two bedrooms. One had a set of bunk beds. The other looked like it belonged in an old motel. In every room there were cheap curtains on the windows and no locks on the doors.

  Liz was already unpacking computers and unwinding cords. She looked at me. “Power?”

  “There’s a generator out back,” I said but I didn’t move.

  “Good,” Liz said with a nod. “I still have a backdoor into the NSA satellite system, so I can get that up and running. I need to check on the model, see if there are any headlines. And—”

  “Liz.” I tried to stop her, but she just turned on me, a raw kind of desperation in her eyes.

  It was neither panic nor grief but rather a very grown-up sense of urgency as she told me, “I’m going to find the next domino, Cammie. This thing, I know it’s not my fault. Not really. I know I didn’t sink that tanker or blow up that bridge, but if someone is doing this based on an idea I had—based on my ideas”—she said again, and I knew that that was the hardest part. For someone like Liz, ideas were sacred—“then I’ve got to stop it.” She stood up a little taller. “Then I will stop it.”

  And I knew right then she would.

  When Zach emerged from one of the bedrooms, Macey said, “How is she?”

  Zach looked down at the ground. “She’s still out. I thought she might wake when we moved her, but…”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “There’s no sign of fever and her pulse is strong. She is strong. She’ll be fine.”

  “She’ll be fine,” Zach repeated. Then he shook his head and leaned against the cold stove.

  Outside, the sun was rising higher, and, gradually, the cabin filled with an almost iridescent glow, like it was coming back to life. But then a voice cut through the haze, asking, “Is he here?”

  Preston.

  I know it sounds crazy, but I’d almost forgotten about Preston until he looked around the cold cabin, then back at me. “Is my father here, or are we meeting him somewhere else?”

  I didn’t rush to answer. The truth was just a series of lies I couldn’t bring myself to tell: That he shouldn’t worry. That things would be okay. That his father didn’t suffer. But I didn’t want to say any of those things because, for years, I hadn’t wanted to hear them.

  “He’s not coming, is he?” Preston said at last.

  “No,” Macey admitted.

  “Is he…” Preston started but trailed off. I couldn’t blame him. We were all trained spies, and even we didn’t have the strength to finish that particular sentence. “Why isn’t he coming? Macey?” He looked at her, but she couldn’t face him. “Someone tell me something! Cammie?”

  “I’m so sorry, Preston,” I said, coming toward him. I took his hands. “I’m so sorry.”

  I was maybe the only person in the room who knew what he was feeling, but the emotions were too raw for me. When he pushed away, I didn’t protest—didn’t follow. My own wounds were too sore. But I also knew that I was the only one who’d been there. I was the only one who had found my way out.

  “My father is dead,” Preston said slowly, almost like he was admitting something he was ashamed of. “Of course he’s dead. Wasn’t that what you were trying to tell me in Rome—that people like my dad were dying?”

  “Preston,” Macey started, but he was only looking at me.

  “How did he die?” Preston struggled to keep his voice from cracking. He was still slightly frozen and totally numb, and he was trying to hold it all together, trying not to break down and be the weak link as he looked at me. “Do you know how he died?”

  I wasn’t aware I was biting my lip until I tasted the blood. I nodded slowly. “He was shot. In custody. A few days ago.”

  “In custody?” Preston asked like he was trying to wrap his mind around the facts, put them all in perspective. “In that place?”

  He pointed at the mountain that was, by then, a thousand miles away.

  “Yes,” I said. “He was there.”

  “So he died,” Preston said again, like he was still trying the words on for size, trying to make them fit. “Was it your mom?” he asked Zach.

  “We don’t know,” Zach admitted as if the question wasn’t offensive at all. And I guess when your mom is a psychotic terrorist it isn’t. “Cammie was there but she didn’t get a good look at the gunman. He could have been acting on Catherine’s orders. Or maybe the other members of the Inner Circle wanted to eliminate him before he could talk. We aren’t sure which.”

  Preston whirled on me. “You saw it happen? You were there?”

  “It was dark. I was in the other room, but…yes. I was there.”

  “What were you doing there?” Preston asked.

  “He asked to see me. I thought I was going to see you, but it was him instead. He told them I was the only person he would talk to.”

  “Why?” Preston asked.

  I shook my head. “He said he wanted to talk to me…about the Circle. And he asked me to keep you safe. But when I saw what happened to him, I knew you were never going to be safe in there.”

  “And I’m supposed to be safe out here?” Preston yelled. The shock was wearing off, taking its toll. All that was left was fear and grief and terror. “Why did they arrest me?”

  “The Circle,” Macey said. “It’s kind of a family business. It’s your family business.”

  But Preston didn’t take the time to process this. He fired back, “Do you think I’m one of the bad guys?”

  “No!” Macey reached for him, but Preston pulled away.

  “Maybe I am.” A darkness filled his face. The truth about his father was seeping in, bleeding through his outer layers. “I could kill someone.”

  “No,” Macey said. “You couldn’t.”

  Preston pulled a chair out from the table and sank into it. It was like he no longer had the strength to stand.

  “Where is my mother?”

  “We don’t know exactly,” I told him. I wanted to keep the facts plain and straight and simple. He’d already heard too much to process any more. “We think she’s safe.”

  “Are you sure?”
Preston asked.

  “The Circle is kind of a ‘by blood’ situation,” Zach explained. “It’s not the kind of thing you marry into.”

  The wind blew and the cabin moaned, and the look in Preston’s eyes made my stomach churn. I thought I might throw up.

  “I’m not surprised about my father.” Preston was tracing circles on the table. I doubt he even realized he was doing it, but he kept doing it again and again. “He was a member of the Circle,” he said as if trying the words on for size. “Should I be surprised?”

  He looked at Macey, who shrugged. “Our dads are politicians, Preston. Of course we grew up thinking they might be evil.”

  “Preston.” I risked moving a little closer, sat down at the table and reached for his hand. “When I saw your dad, he told me the Circle leaders are planning something. We think…we think they are trying to start World War Three. And he told me you can help stop it.”

  “How?” Preston sounded genuinely confused. “How am I supposed to know how to stop World War Three? That’s ridiculous.”

  “I know how it sounds. It’s just…have you heard anything? Seen anything? Did your dad give you something for safekeeping or—”

  “I don’t know anything, Cammie.”

  “You have to. He told me you did. He—it was his dying breath, Preston. Now, think!”

  “Cam.” Zach’s hand was on my shoulder, but I pushed on.

  “You know something!”

  “No.” Preston was rising, shaking his head. “No. No. Just…no.”

  Even though the sun was growing higher, none of us had slept the night before. Stress and fear mixed with exhaustion, and I could sense Preston starting to crack.

  Zach must have seen it too, because before I could press again, Zach took his arm. “Come on, Preston. Let’s get you some sleep.”

  I thought I was alone on the porch. Right up until the moment when I felt Zach’s arms go around me. There are many advantages to being romantically involved with a spy, and totally spontaneous and unexpected hugging has to be one of them. I leaned against him, felt the warmth of his body against mine.