"Emergency extraction vehicles," I said, turning to Macey, who was too busy staring at my feet to marvel at any of the totally cool surveillance things going on around us.
"I'll give you five hundred dollars if you trade me shoes," Macey said. I looked down at the pumps her mother had no doubt forced her into, and I totally knew she wasn't joking. But you can't put a price on comfort (as all pavement artists know), so I pretended like I didn't hear her, which wasn't all that hard considering that I absolutely had other things on my mind!
Zach had come to the rally! To see me?
"Macey, you're never going to believe who I just—"
"Hey," a voice cut me off. "I know you!"
I recognized the voice, but more than that I recognized the look on Macey's face as Preston came into view.
"Don't you have a baby to kiss?" Macey said with a sigh.
"Cammie, right?" Preston asked. "Macey didn't tell me you were coming."
"Yeah. It's a great chance to see the political process up close and—"
"Seriously," Macey snapped. "Go. Kiss. A baby."
"Can you believe her?" Preston asked, cocking his head toward Macey. "Every time she sees me, all she does is call me baby and talk about kissing."
Macey looked like she kind of wanted to kill him. But I kind of wanted to laugh.
Maybe it was just that I had boys on the brain. Maybe it was the relief of knowing, for the time being, that Macey was okay. But at that moment Preston seemed kind of…Hot?
No. No way, I told myself. And then I looked at Macey, who hated being in uncomfortable shoes and at her parents' disposal, and I thought that maybe Preston Winters was the one person who might hate all those things as much as she did. And as every spy knows, common enemies are how allies always begin.
"So hey," Preston said softly.
A gospel choir was singing in the distance. The Secret Service was getting ready for the long walk back to the busses. But Preston didn't seem to notice; he didn't seem to care. He seemed totally immune to those prying eyes and listening ears as he leaned closer and said, "I'm really glad I saw you."
Oh my gosh, I thought. Is it possible that two boys are flirting with me within ten minutes of each other?
But it wasn't flirting.
It was worse.
Totally, infinitely, utterly worse, because while the gospel band stopped singing and some military planes flew overhead, Preston looked at me as if he were really seeing
me and said, "I wanted to thank you … for Boston."
The girl in me started to exhale just as the spy in me studied the change in his breathing pattern and the dilatation of his eyes. I was seriously beginning to panic as he said, "That was really…awesome of you."
"Oh, it was nothing!" I blurted.
"Cammie's always doing stuff like that," Macey said, hearing my unease. "She's a total Girl Scout."
"Well, whatever she is," he said, turning to Macey, "it looked like you were one too."
As Macey glanced at me, I knew that neither of us wanted to imagine what might happen if the potential first son thought too hard or too long about what he'd seen on that rooftop.
"I was so freaked out," Preston said. "But you two, you were…rational."
"So, Macey," I said loudly, "I really enjoyed your speech."
"I mean"—Preston went on as if I wasn't even standing there … as if he wasn't standing there. Instead he stared into space as if the movie of what had happened in Boston was playing in his mind—"there were, what? Ten guys after us?"
"Two men. One woman," Macey and I corrected him at exactly the same time.