"Percentages." Macey gave an exasperated sigh. "You know I don't do math."
Well, I have personally seen Macey McHenry do linear algebra without a calculator (after mastering our roommate Liz's system, of course), but the girl in front of me wasn't the Macey I knew from school. She wasn't the girl on the suite's TV either, smiling and waving and holding hands with her father on the national news. Instead she was the other kind of Gallagher Girl—the kind the agent had been expecting: the snobby kind, the spoiled kind, the kind who had crawled out of her parents' limousine and into our school nearly a year before with combat boots and a diamond nose stud.
"This was the scene this morning as Senator James McHenry and his family arrived here in Boston to join Governor Winters and officially accept the vice presidential nomination," the TV anchor was saying. But I doubt that Macey or her mother were even listening as they stared daggers at each other.
"You will do this, Macey," her mother said. "You will—"
But then my escort cleared his throat, and Mrs. McHenry turned. I expected her to gush like she had on the phone when Macey had called to invite me to join them, but instead she waved in my direction and said, "There, your little friend is here."
Something in the way her mother spoke about me made Macey draw a breath. I was relieved that no one else noticed how my roommate's fists clenched tighter for just a moment before she spun around and snapped, "We're going for a walk."
"Don't forget the rehearsal!" her mother called, but Macey was already pulling me through the double doors.
I caught the agent's eye one final time as he tried to figure out what I could possibly have in common with the girl who was pulling me along. On the TV, someone said, "Cynthia McHenry is a well-known businesswoman and philanthropist. The couple has one daughter, Macey, a student at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, in Roseville, Virginia."
Our school.
National television.
A thousand thoughts raced through my mind before Macey slammed the doors behind us, as if trapping my worries on the other side. She smiled a mischievous smile, and for the first time that day I recognized my friend in the girl who stood before me. "So, how do you like my cover?"
Chapter Two
Spies have covers for every occasion: aliases and phony passports, pocket litter and fake IDs. A great operative can become someone else at the drop of a hat (and sometimes, actual hats are involved), but I'd rarely seen someone as deeply undercover as Macey McHenry was then.
"Peacock is moving," one of the agents whispered into his cuff as I followed Macey through the Winters-McHenry temporary headquarters, past rows of laptop computers and screaming interns wearing business suits and campaign buttons and looking like they hadn't had a good night's sleep since New Hampshire. In fact, I actually heard one guy say, "I haven't had a good night's sleep since New Hampshire."
But Macey's black hair was as glossy as ever, her blue eyes perfectly clear. "Jeez, Chameleon, do you have any idea how hard you are to track down?" She walked on, seemingly unaware that she was like a princess, and the room was full of commoners who were there to make sure her father claimed his throne. "I mean, first I tried the school, but have you ever tried to get anything out of Professor Buckingham?" My roommate calmly rattled on as if her face weren't being broadcast into every home in America at that very moment. "Anyway, then I asked the Secret Service, and—"
"Wait," I interrupted. "The Secret Service gave you my grandparents' telephone number?"
"Well," Macey admitted, "I asked the Secret Service for the number, but I ended up getting it from more covert sources."
I lowered my voice when I asked, "The agency?"
"Liz," she whispered back, and I couldn't help smile as I thought about our tiniest/smartest roommate. "So, have a good summer?" Macey asked as we left the war room and started down another long hall.
"Yeah," I said, almost out of breath. Two months at my grandparents' ranch in Nebraska hadn't made me completely out of shape, but life moved at a different pace there, so it still felt like a struggle to keep up with Macey. "It was good. Just…"
I thought about our classmates, who seemed to scatter to the far corners of the world whenever school wasn't in session. I thought about my mother, who had put me on a plane the first day of summer break and hadn't sent so much as a postcard since. And finally, I thought about two boys: one who I hadn't seen in months and one who I seemed to be imagining everywhere, but whom I knew I might never see again.
"Fine," I said finally. "My summer was fine."
Macey knew me pretty well by then, so she just smiled and said, "Mine too."
Our footsteps were whisper-soft against the carpeting as we entered the tunnel that passed under the street between the convention center and the hotel.
Secret Service agents flanked the doors, and I heard one whisper into his sleeve, "Peacock is arriving on the scene."
"So can I call you Peacock?" I teased.
"That depends: do you want to feel safe while you sleep at…" Macey started, but then two elderly women wearing the biggest sunflowers I have ever seen passed us, and Macey smiled at them—yes, actual smileage—and said, "Well, doesn't the Kansas delegation look festive!"
The shift in her had been effortless, as if her thousand- watt smile was attached to a switch that the fates kept flipping off and on. Sure, I might have been the CIA legacy, but right then it was obvious that Macey knew as much about secret identities, hidden agendas, and covert alliances as anyone I'd ever known.
"So," I started, "what's new with you?"
She pulled a neatly typed piece of paper from her pocket. "Six a.m.: appear on national morning shows. Nine a.m.: get fitted for navy suits." Macey leaned closer and added in a whisper, "Evidently, red makes me look trampy." She resumed her usual posture and walked faster, the sloping ramp leading us closer and closer to a pair of metal doors at the end of the tunnel. "Eleven a.m.," she continued, "fun, family bonding with Mom and Dad."