“Of course you aren’t. You can’t risk telling Langley. The Circle has way too many moles at the CIA. And the more people who know, the more likely you are to have a repeat of what happened at the cabin, so you aren’t telling anyone, and you aren’t taking any backup. We’re alone now. We are all alone.”
“I wouldn’t say that, girls,” Abby said. “I’ll have some backup.”
“You’re not taking enough,” Bex countered. She sounded very much like Abby’s equal. “If we were underclassmen, sure. Maybe. We would have argued, but we would have been wrong. But now we’re a semester and a half away from being field-qualified, and we’ve already seen more real-world ops than most new graduates see in five years.”
“You need backup,” Macey said, stepping forward. “We can be backup. Don’t make us stay here like we’re…helpless.” Her voice cracked, and right then I knew that I might have been the one who’d gotten a concussion last summer, but I wasn’t the only one who’d gotten hurt.
“Girls.” Mom shook her head. “What about Liz?”
“I’ll stay.” Liz was standing in the doorway in her frilliest, pinkest nightgown, looking exactly like Doris Day in a very old movie. “Bex and Macey should go, but I can stay and help with ground support and research and…Bex and Macey should go.” She took a deep breath, and then Elizabeth Sutton, the smartest girl at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, looked at our headmistress and said, “The odds of bringing her back alive increase by twenty-seven percent if Bex and Macey go.”
I don’t know if it’s a spy thing or a sister thing, but sometimes my mom and Aunt Abby can have whole conversations without saying a single word. Looks pass between them, thoughts move through the air like some kind of encrypted transmission. I watched them having one of those talks then. And still I had no idea what the verdict would be until Abby wheeled on Bex and Macey.
“Fine,” she said. “You two can come.”
“Awesome,” Bex said. She turned and started to run down the hall. “I’ll get Zach and—”
“Not Zach.”
Bex stopped and spun at the sound of my mother’s voice. Mom looked at Abby, then added, “Cammie isn’t the only person the Circle would like back. Zach stays here.”
“Don’t worry, Squirt,” Aunt Abby said. “We have you covered.”
I looked at Bex and Macey and then back to my aunt Abby, unable to hide the skepticism in my voice. “Who exactly is we?”
“That would be me, young lady.”
A tall, broad figure appeared in the shadows of the hall behind Aunt Abby, and I knew the British accent and mildly condescending tone as soon as I heard them. Agent Townsend smiled and picked up the heavy bag that sat at my aunt’s feet, then threw it over his shoulder as if it weighed nothing at all.
“Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-one
PROS AND CONS OF INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL AS A SEMI-FUGITIVE:
(A list by Cameron Morgan with help from Rebecca Baxter and Macey McHenry)
PRO: Macey McHenry was right—private jets are awesome.
CON: Leaving in the middle of the night to make sure no one sees you can seriously disrupt a girl’s sleep cycles.
PRO: Two words: no customs.
CON: Madame Dabney had promised to begin Wednesday’s lecture with the story of how she once infiltrated an Irish Republican Army stronghold using nothing but dental floss and a batch of homemade scones.
CON: Packing at one a.m. pretty much guarantees a person will end up with socks that don’t match, a pair of jeans that don’t fit, and the sweatshirt with the big bleach stain on the elbow.
CON: Watching the stone walls of your school fade into the distance, your mother behind them.
PRO: Hoping that answers might lie beyond.
CON: Being a semi-fugitive means guards. And sometimes the guards include Agent Townsend.
PRO: Realizing that Agent Townsend is seriously not a match for Abigail Cameron.
“Cam, don’t sit there,” my aunt told me an hour later, pointing at the window seat I was already halfway into.
“Stay where you are, Ms. Morgan,” Agent Townsend ordered. “I don’t think there are a lot of snipers at thirty thousand feet over the Atlantic.”