Chapter Seventeen
Every mission is a lesson—in school and in life. And before we even reached the doors of the 30th Street station, I learned two very important things.
1. Getting dressed with two other girls in the back of a Dodge minivan should totally be worth extra credit in P&E.
2. Even if they are your best friends, you should never ever trust another operative to pack for you.
"I cannot believe I am wearing this," I muttered as I tugged at the hem of the little black dress Bex had personally smuggled out of Sub level Two. But it didn't feel like a dress. It felt like…torture. Torture with a very low back and very high shoes.
Stretch limousines were lined up outside the main stairs. Secret Service agents stood guard at every possible exit, but still Bex whispered, "The key to deception and disguise is to break with tendencies and norms."
And right then I knew that having genius friends who are really good at memorizing textbooks can sometimes be a very bad thing, because Bex was right: nothing about that dress was norm.
Still, I couldn't help saying, "Then you should be wearing it." But Bex just shrugged.
"I'd love to," she said. "And that's the problem."
Here's the thing you need to know about disguise: it's not about being unseen. It's not about being unnoticed. It's about being unrecognized—shedding your own skin. And right then I wasn't worried about the Secret Service or five hundred influential party donors. Right then our only concern was Aunt Abby: fooling her meant leaving our own identities in the van.
I glanced at Liz, whose long blond hair was hidden beneath a dark brown wig. Bex was wearing a wig too, plus glasses and a padded bodysuit that changed the natural silhouette of her athletic frame. We had used every trick in the Gallagher Academy closet, and as we passed the darkened windows of the station, I caught a glimpse of three strangers before realizing that, amazingly, they were us. I didn't even recognize myself under the wig, colored contacts, and fake nose that changed my forgettable face into one that…wasn't.
"Okay, gang," I said, "according to blueprints, there's an elevator access panel on the east side of the building. We may get a little dirty, but—"
"I thought we'd just go through the doors," Liz said, flashing three beautifully engraved invitations and some wonderfully authentic fake IDs.
The tickets were $20,000 each. The Secret Service had been vetting the guest list for weeks, so Bex and I stopped beneath a streetlamp and studied Liz.
"Do I even want to know where you got those?" I asked.
Liz seemed to ponder it, and then she said, "No."
And just like that I remembered that Liz was probably the most dangerous one of us all.
Stepping inside the station was like stepping inside another world. Beautiful carvings covered a ceiling that was at least fifty feet tall. A string quartet played from the second-story balcony, their music echoing off the stone floors, while five hundred men and women ate and drank and talked about the road to the White House.
I didn't want to think about the kind of favors someone had had to call in to close down the entire station for the night (and come to think of it, an actual act of Congress might have been involved), so I just stood at the top of the steps with my best friends and a great statue of the angel Michael, who held a fallen soldier in his arms, his wings poised to take flight. Somehow, it felt like all four of us were on the lookout for Macey.
"Any sign?" I asked twenty minutes later as I walked through the crowd.
"Negative," Bex replied.
"Wow, did you guys know the Pennsylvania train system dates back to—"
"Liz!" Bex and I snapped in unison.
"It's Bookworm," Liz corrected, and I couldn't really complain.
"Bookworm, what did the official agenda say again?" I asked, needing to hear it.
"It said Macey will be making one public appearance today. She'll be arriving at seven thirty via the Back on Track Express—whatever that is."
"What time is it?" I said.
"You know what time it is," Bex reminded me, but I was hoping I was wrong, because the candidates and their families were…late.
Late meant mistakes.
Mistakes meant problems.