Chapter Twenty-nine
I kept the journal on my lap for the next five hours.
Townsend was behind the wheel of a car with tinted windows. Abby followed us on a motorcycle, looping in front for a while, then falling behind, a constant circle of surveillance. Zach and Bex were in the tail car, and I only registered enough to be grateful that Zach was driving (a person can’t go through Driver’s Ed with Rebecca Baxter without being at least a little bit traumatized by the experience).
But I didn’t ask where the cars came from.
I didn’t wonder where we were going.
I didn’t mention the men who had chased me from the bank.
To do that would have meant 1) wondering if I’d walked into that very trap last July; and 2) admitting that we’d gone to all that trouble to get a journal that I’d had six months before.
Summer, it seemed, had happened for nothing.
“Cam?” Macey’s voice was soft. The car stopped. “Cam,” she said, and I felt a touch on my shoulder, a light shake. “We’re here.”
Here, it turned out, was another safe house, this one an abandoned villa on a small lake north of Rome.
“We’ll rest tonight,” Townsend said from the driver’s seat while Zach pulled open my door.
“Come on, Gallagher Girl,” he said. “Try to get some sleep.”
I took his hand and stepped from the car. We were far enough north that the air was significantly cooler, and the breeze felt like a slap, waking me from my daze.
“I don’t need sleep, Zach. I need answers.”
“Cammie, we already know so much,” Bex said, and I wheeled on her.
“We don’t know anything. We don’t have anything except this.” I held up my father’s journal. “Which, by the way, we had last semester. We don’t know where I went or what they did to me.” I heard my voice crack. “We don’t know where I messed up.”
Suddenly, it all became too much, so I took the journal I treasured above everything else and hurled it against the car.
“Cammie!” Abby sank to her knees on the dusty driveway, and I don’t know what was more surprising, the shocked pain of my aunt’s expression or the small envelope that leaped from between the pages and fluttered to the ground at her feet.
“What is it?” Bex asked, reaching for the letter that must have been tucked inside the book I hadn’t even bothered to open. “Is it from you, Cam?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head and looking at my father’s handwriting—at the words For my girls. “It’s for me.”
There was cheese and stale bread in the kitchen. Macey scavenged for bottles of olives and a few mismatched plates, while Zach built a fire and Townsend and Bex checked our perimeter. But Abby and I just sat staring at the letter that lay in the center of the old kitchen table, like it was too precious or dangerous to touch.
I’d seen my father’s handwriting before, of course. I’d read his entire journal, memorized every word. But something about that letter felt different, as if he were calling to me from beyond the grave.
After a while, the others took their seats at the table, but no one reached for the food. We just sat, watching, until the silence became too much.
“Read it,” I told Aunt Abby, pushing the letter toward her; but she shook her head no.
“We’ll take it to Rachel. She can—”
I pulled the envelope away and handed it to Bex. “You do it.”
“Cam.. .”
“I need to know,” I said, and she didn’t argue. She just picked it up and started to read.
“‘Dear Rachel and Cammie, If you are reading this, then I am probably gone. Well, that or Joe finally found the hole in his cabin wall where I’ve been stashing things for years. Or both. In all likelihood, it’s both.’”
I know Bex’s voice almost better than I know my own, but as she spoke, the words shifted and faded. I heard my father as my best friend read.