Now, normally, under ideal covert circumstances, a highly trained operative would slow down. And survey the scene. And plan a careful route, or regroup. But ideal covert circumstances hardly ever include Liz.
"Hey, what are you guys…" she started, and in the next instant she was stumbling over a rock with a cry of, "Oopsie daisy!"
She soared headfirst over the trip wire by my foot and landed on a pile of leaves. Bex and I lunged for her, but it was too late: gravity was taking over, and Liz was sliding down the hill, tumbling through bushes, slicing between two infrared motion sensors so perfectly that I'm sure we couldn't have duplicated the precision if we'd tried.
"She's gonna hit that—" Bex started but then couldn't finish, because instead of tumbling into a fallen log, Liz somehow managed to change direction and plow through a thicket of blackberry vines.
"Liz!" I yelled, running after her until the ground was too steep, the fallen leaves too wet with dew, and my feet flew out from under me as well. Behind me, I heard Bex gasp as she lost her footing too.
Branches whipped across my face. My hands fell wrist-deep into mud, and still I tumbled forward, faster and faster. In my mind, sirens were already sounding—a S.W.A.T. team was already on its way.
And then, finally, the tumbling stopped. I sat on the ground, covered in mud and decaying leaves. I felt nothing but my breath and the crush of Bex, who landed on top of me. I managed to wipe the mud out of my eyes, as two impossibly long legs appeared above us, and Macey McHenry said, "You're late."
The Operatives decided, to take this rare opportunity to do a detailed reconnaissance of the part-time homes of trained security professionals, during which they discovered the following:
• A box of lures, rods, and hooks that could be VERY helpful in illegal interrogation tactics. (But upon closer inspection they appeared to be used for actual fishing.)
• Four plain white T-shirts
• Six pairs of tube socks
• One Swiss Army knife (that appeared to have been issued by the actual Swiss Army)
• Forty-seven maps in sixteen languages
• Zero love letters, pictures, or notebooks with doodles on the cover
• The most comprehensive first-aid kit ever assembled by man
"Cat food!" Liz cried as she peered into yet another cabinet. I heard her rushing to write it down on the list, and then she said, "I wonder what that means?"
I could feel Bex and Liz swarming to take in every detail of the place, marveling over the fact that the curtains were homemade and the windows weren't bulletproof. But I just stood by the narrow bed on the sleeping porch, staring at the patchwork quilt, revisiting the things that Mr. Solomon had told me there, knowing somehow that there were no answers in that little cabin. No matter how hard Liz looked, I doubted she would find a crystal ball.
Macey stood beside me. We watched our reflections in the glass and stared out at the lake. I couldn't help thinking that it had taken us a long time to walk away from the end of the pier.
Maybe Liz was right and she'd wanted someplace safe. Maybe Mr. Solomon really did understand that running was the only way Macey would find out if we'd run after her. Or maybe, like me, she just wanted to disappear for a little while.
But that didn't change the fact that we'd found her.
And we weren't the only people looking.
The screen door screeched as we stepped outside. It had taken less than three months, but somehow we'd found our way back, and I had to know if Macey was still the girl by the lake.
"Macey," I started, but before I could draw a breath, she read my mind.
"I know we can't stay."
There's something inherently safe about lake houses with CIA protection and falling leaves and contests about who can skip stones the farthest (Bex totally won, by the way). But every spy knows that things will always change. Always. And the van was waiting.
"We can go back to school, or you can go be with your parents at the watch party, but …" I felt myself looking for the words I feared.
"Was I that easy to track?" Macey asked, still staring out at the lake as if it were a mirror.
"No," I said, and for the first time she shot me a look. "We found you because you're way too good to get tracked with one phone call."
I sat down at the end of the pier. "Besides, you took both disguises. In one, you can look like someone else." I thought of the glossy black wig I'd worn. "In the other, the right someone else can look like you."
"From there it was easy to imagine you offering some poor, unsuspecting girl a free ride to Europe and swapping passports with her," Bex added as she and Liz walked up behind us.