Gallagher Girls 5 - Out of Sight, Out of Time (14 page)

A
bby must have been the one who found the safe house, because Townsend didn’t like it.

“The building across the street is under construction,” he snarled as soon as we’d carried our bags inside.

“The elevator has key card access, and I’ve hacked into the surveillance cameras from every system on the block,” Abby argued. “We have a three-hundred-sixty-degree visual.”

“Excellent.” Townsend dropped his bag. “Now the Circle can see us from every angle.”

“Don’t mind Agent Townsend, girls,” Abby told us. “He’s a glass-half-empty kind of spy.”

“Also known as the good kind,” he countered. Abby huffed.

“That’s a matter of opinion,” she said, but Townsend either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He just went to check the windows of the small apartment, mumbling about inferior locks and closed-circuit TVs as he went.

There were only four rooms in the flat, a living room with galley kitchen, two bedrooms, and one bath. Abby pointed to the door that led to the largest bedroom in the back. “You’re in there. It’s time for you three to get some sleep.”

“But I’m not sleepy,” Bex said.

“Doesn’t matter. We lost six hours in flight, and now it’s bedtime.” Abby cocked a hip. “Jet lag—it’s killed more spies than anthrax. Now, go. Townsend and I will take shifts. We need the three of you rested.” Abby grabbed a duffel and headed down the narrow hall. “Meanwhile, I’m going to call in.”

I didn’t follow. I just stayed in the dim living room, listening to my aunt’s voice, soft and low, coming from the other room. Somewhere in the apartment, water was running. I could imagine Macey washing her face, Bex brushing her teeth. The smart thing would have been to do exactly as my aunt had told me and at least try to rest, but I was both too wired and too exhausted to sleep. Rome was right outside our window, and through the glass, the city called to me. It felt like we were playing a very strange, very high-stakes game of hide-and-seek, and I didn’t have a clue where Summer Me might have been hiding.

“It’s probably best not to stand next to the window, Ms. Morgan.”

“I know,” I said, the words coming out harder than I’d intended. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. I guess—”

“It’s okay, Cammie. I know that you know. Your aunt hasn’t ruined you entirely. Yet.”

And then, in the reflection in the glass, I could have sworn I saw Agent Townsend smile. It was the closest thing to a compliment I’d ever heard him give. And even though it wasn’t much of one, I was willing to take it.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked, the question taking me by surprise. “Why are you…helping me?”

“You assume that helping you is why I’m here.” The man leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “Perhaps I have ulterior motives.”

“Oh,” I said, and then I couldn’t help it: the words of MI6 and the CIA, the trustees, and even my own mother were coming back to me in a flood. “Is it because I’m dangerous?”

“It is.” He didn’t try to soften the words, cushion the blow. He just pushed away from the wall and added, “But not in the way you think you are.”

When Townsend pulled aside the heavy curtain, the glow of the streetlights sliced across his face, highlighting dark stubble and striking blue eyes.

“Whatever is in your mind, Ms. Morgan, the Circle has devoted a great many resources to getting it—and now to making sure no one else can have it. That makes it something I would very much like to have. And that makes
you
someone I would very much like to protect.”

He had the quiet, confident gaze of a truly great operative, and it felt a little like I was looking at Zach…in the future. I remembered why, once upon a time, for about a second and a half, I’d thought Agent Townsend was dreamy.

“You can have it.” I couldn’t help myself; I smiled. “If we figure out what it is, I’ll totally give it to you.”

He smiled back. “Deal.”

I could hear Abby on the phone, her voice floating toward us from the other room.

“Now go to sleep, Ms. Morgan. That aunt of yours is difficult enough when things go according to plan.”

Someone had boarded up the windows of the bedroom and brought in three small mattresses. Macey and Bex were each sitting on one, and Abby paced between them, a satellite phone to her ear.

“She’s right here, Rachel,” Abby said. She rolled her eyes, then nodded. “Yes, I’m looking at her. Ha-ha.”

She sounded like a kid sister, and for about the zillionth time in my life, I regretted being an only child. But then Macey threw a pillow at Bex, and I realized that maybe “only child” was just a technicality.

“You want to talk to her?” Abby asked me, but of all the things I wanted to say to my mother, none of them would help, so I shook my head and sank onto an empty mattress.

“She’s in bed,” Abby told her sister. “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “Uh-huh. Of course. Yeah, well you can tell Townsend—Why is everyone forgetting about Buenos Aires?!” She threw her hand in the air, and my friends and I had to bite back a laugh. “Yeah,” Abby said, after a long time. “Don’t worry. She isn’t leaving our sight.”

Finally, Abby hung up the phone. Only then did I notice the way that Bex and Macey were sitting, straight up on their beds. Waiting, listening.

“What’s going on?” I asked, searching their eyes for some kind of clue.

“Just checking in with your mom, Squirt.” There was no worry in Abby’s voice. No fear. It was exactly how she was supposed to sound. She gave me a quick wink and closed the door, and my only thought was
Aunt Abby is the Best Liar Ever
.

“Tell me,” I said, turning to Bex.

“Don’t be silly, Cam. For a totally unofficial mission, this thing is going way better than—”

I turned and set my sights on Macey. “What is it?”

“It’s nothing,” she said.

“So there
is
an ‘it’?” I asked.

Macey looked like I’d just kicked her in the stomach. I turned back to Bex, who shrugged and said, “It’s
probably
nothing.”

“You know who I was with, don’t you?” I asked, standing and moving toward her, but she was already up and meeting me halfway. “You know!”

“Shh. Do you want Townsend busting in here?” she asked, but I talked on.

“I’ve told you everything I know, and now the two of you are holding out on me?”

Interrogation tactics, I learned from Mr. Solomon. Guilt, I got from Grandma Morgan. It must have worked, too, because in the next moment, Macey was saying, “I trust Zach, Cam. I know his mom is evil and all, but I know evil parents. And I know you don’t have to end up like them, so I trust Zach.”

I stood there listening to the words, but they didn’t quite make sense.

“Uh…okay,” I told her. “But Zach was with Bex last summer.”

“Not
with me
with me,” Bex clarified.

“Yeah,” I said, almost ashamed of where I’d allowed my mind to go just days before. “Of course. He was with your—”

“And not all summer,” Bex said, staring down at her hands.

“Bex,” I spoke slowly, surely, “tell me everything you know.”

In the living room, Townsend and Abby were arguing again, their voices floating through the wall; but the only words that mattered were Bex’s.

“After you left and school was out, your mom was going crazy, and Mr. Solomon was…sick. So my mom said Zach should come to London—that’d he’d be safe with us.” Bex shook her head slowly. “Everything was crazy.
Everyone
was crazy.”

“Bex, I know.”

“No,” Macey snapped. “You don’t. Remember when
I
ran away? Well, multiply that by about a thousand and then
maybe
you’ll start to understand.”

She was right, but that didn’t mean I had to say so.

“What does this have to do with Zach?”

“People go crazy in different ways,” Bex said with a shrug. “Liz took up baking—almost burned her parents’ house to the ground. But Zach…well, the two of you really are a lot alike, because Zach…ran away.”

“So…” I thought about the look in the old woman’s eyes, the words echoing in my mind:
your young man
. “So he might have found me.”

I know it sounds weak and all, but the truth is, I had to lie down. Maybe it was the lingering effects of being too thin and too banged up for my own good, but it was more like the words were too heavy for me.

“What does that mean?” I stared up at Bex. “What does it mean—that he found me and then…left me? Or I left him…Or—”

“He was only gone two weeks and then he
came back
,” Bex said, almost pleading with me not to jump to terrible conclusions.

“But maybe, in the meantime, he’d found me,” I said.

“No,” Macey said. “He didn’t.”

“You don’t know that,” I told her.

“No, but I know boys.” She exhaled a half-laugh. “And I know liars. And when school started, Zach was as in the dark about where you were and where you’d been as anyone.”

“We’ve got to call Mom,” I said. “We’ve got to call her and have her
ask him
where he went.”

“We did,” Bex said. There was a strange light in her eyes when she said, “He told us he went looking for you.”

“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked, far too tired of secrets.

“Nothing,” Macey said, easing onto the mattress beside me. “There is absolutely nothing else you need to know.”

She looked totally convincing—sounded totally convincing. But I wasn’t convinced. Maybe it was the spy in me. Or maybe I just didn’t believe anything anymore.

T
hat night, even as I slept, I saw the city streets. They were emptier than I remembered, though. Too dark. Too cold. Something pulled me forward, down a path I didn’t know. And beneath it all, there was a word that kept washing over me, breaking against me like a wave.

Cammie.

Cammie.

Cammie.

It was Zach’s voice calling to me through the haze.

Cammie.

I heard it drawing closer, and so I fled, past closed doors and heavy gates. The fog grew thicker, and I ran.

“Cammie, wait!” Zach yelled, but I couldn’t trust the words. Didn’t trust my own mind. There were sirens and horns and the feel of the wind.

“Cammie, stop!” he yelled.

Another horn. The rush of air.

“Cammie!”

And then arms grabbed me, pulled me from my feet. I wanted to hit and claw and keep running, but my feet no longer struck the pavement. I tried to toss and turn—to break free—but the covers must have been tangled around me. There was no escape.

“No,” I said to myself, panting. “No. No. No.”

“Cammie!” Zach’s voice was stronger. I began to shake. “Gallagher Girl, wake up!”

“No, no,” I said, certain I could stop the dream. Change it. I was so sure there were answers at the end of that dark walk, and I had to stay there—stay sleeping to find them.

“Cammie!”

My back slammed into a wall, and only then did I bolt awake.

A car horn screamed out. The wind I felt was the rushing air of the passing traffic as Zach held me on a narrow sidewalk.

“Cammie, are you okay?” he asked, searching my eyes. “Cammie, wake up,” he shouted, shaking me again. “Tell me you’re okay. Tell me—”

“Where am I?” I asked, but then the last day came rushing back to me. I knew where I was, and most of all, who I was supposed to be with. “Zach?”

“Cammie, are you hurt?”

“Why are
you
here, Zach? Why aren’t you at school? Why are you…” I remembered Abby’s hushed conversation behind closed doors, the look that had passed between Macey and Bex when I’d asked why my mom couldn’t just
ask
Zach where he’d gone last summer.

“You ran away.” I wasn’t sure if I was talking about now or about last summer. It didn’t really matter.

“I was worried about you.” He glanced up and down at the dark street. “Looks like I was right to.”

“So you just…left?”

Zach huffed. “All the cool kids are doing it.”

When he reached for me, I pulled away, started to go back the way I’d come. Then I realized I had no idea which way that was. I was wearing Macey’s shoes and Bex’s jeans and a T-shirt with a tear on the sleeve. My hair was blowing all around my face. Sleep clung to the corners of my eyes, and I had no idea how far I’d wandered through the night.

“Cammie, what are you doing—”

“I don’t know, okay?” My voice echoed down the street, and I hated those words almost as much as I hated the Circle.

“Come on.” Zach gripped my hand. “We’ve got to get you back to Abby before she—”

“Were you here with me, Zach?” I couldn’t look at him when I said it. “Last summer…”

“What are you talking about, Gallagher Girl?”

“I know you left the Baxters’. I know you ran away. And…I know I was in Rome. And I wasn’t alone.”

“Someone else was with you?” The first look that filled his face was shock, as if he’d heard me wrong. And then the expression shifted into a simmering rage. “Someone was
with you
?”

“Tell me, Zach.” I don’t know if it was the wind or the adrenaline, but I shivered. “And don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying!” he snapped, then took a deep breath. “Last summer, I
did
go looking for you. And when I couldn’t find you, I went looking for
my mom
. And that’s not exactly something I’m proud of.”

When I shivered again, Zach took off his coat and tried to slip it around my shoulders, but I pushed his arm away.

“Don’t,” I said.

“Listen to me.” He grabbed my arms, holding me there. “I couldn’t find you. And I will never forgive myself for that. Ever.”

Another car passed, and a new fear filled Zach’s eyes. The sun was coming up. Light crept over the horizon, and I didn’t want to think about the people who might be trying to find me—both the good guys and the bad. Zach must have thought it too, because he grabbed my hand.

“We’re getting you out of here.” He started to pull, but when we passed the opening of a narrow alley, I had to stop.

“This way,” I said, pointing down the dark path.

“No, Cam, you’re turned around. I followed you for six blocks, and I was the one who was conscious. Trust me, the safe house is—”

“I have to go this way,” I said and pulled harder, breaking free.

I don’t know how to describe it. I wasn’t in a trance, and I wasn’t afraid, but my feet were finding their own path as if pulled by some invisible string.

“Two. One. Nine,” I said, the words drifting through my mind.

“I don’t like this position, Gallagher Girl,” Zach said with a glance around the narrow space.

“Four. Seven. Six,” I went on.

“Come on. We’ve got to get you back to the safe house.”

“Two.”
The word was barely more than a breath.

Zach reached for me, but my hand was already moving, reaching out for the wall on my left, fingers grazing over the mortar until I found a small steel door painted the same color as the stone. I pressed, and the tiny door popped open, revealing a key pad that was hidden inside.

I eased forward, needing to touch the pad, tap out a code I hadn’t realized I knew.

“Two-one-nine-four-seven-six-two,” I said again, and two feet away, a solid metal door opened like an entrance into another world.

I had to go inside. The door was like a magnet, pulling me close. But before I could cross the threshold, the whole world went upside down. Literally.

I was dangling over Zach’s shoulder, and he was bolting down the alley, cursing under his breath and warning me he wasn’t in the mood to fight.

“But Zach, I—”

“I don’t care,” he snapped.

He didn’t slow down when I yelled, “Zach, let me go!”

In fact, he didn’t stop at all until a tall figure appeared in the alley in front of us, and a voice said, “Cammie? Is that you?”