“He wasn’t saved! We were too late,” I shouted. “We were there to take him into custody. And then he started rambling on and on about how he had left the Inner Circle because they were planning some big, huge, terrible thing. He said it had already started.”
“What was it?” Liz asked, but Bex just shook her head.
“Before he could tell us…he died.”
“No,” I said, and I felt myself growing cold and angry. “Before he could tell us, Zach’s mother murdered him.”
Down the hall, music was blaring. Girls rushed past, looking for lost suitcases and misplaced uniform skirts; but in our suite, the real world was taking over. It was already long past graduation.
“So you didn’t even try to save Preston?” Macey’s blue eyes turned to ice.
“Preston Winters is not a soft target, Macey,” Bex snapped. They weren’t the comforting words of a friend. They were the analysis of an operative, and that was exactly what Macey needed then. “His father knows that Catherine is hunting down members of the Inner Circle, and he’s no doubt taking precautions. He’s also a US ambassador in a major post, which means embassy protection. Which means anti-terror roadblocks and biohazard detectors, bulletproof limousines and marines. It means marines, Macey. So Preston isn’t out there on his own. He lives in a fortress with a whole lot of people whose job it is to step between him and a bullet, so pull yourself together. Preston is fine. And if he’s not our mission at the moment, then he’s not our mission. Do you get that?”
It took her a moment, but eventually Macey nodded. She walked to her closet and threw open the doors, pulled out a plaid skirt, and started getting undressed.
“What are you doing?” Bex asked.
Macey looked at her like she was an idiot. “Welcome Back Dinner,” she said, not only as though the fight was over but like it had never happened at all.
“So you’re…” I started slowly, carefully choosing my words, “okay?”
“Sure. Fine. Let’s just go to dinner,” Macey said, but none of us moved.
“Oh, you guys,” Liz exclaimed after a moment, and then she started to cry.
“Liz, what’s—” I started, but her wails cut me off.
“It’s our last Welcome Back Dinner!”
Bex tried to comfort her. (But Bex is really better at inflicting pain than softening it.) I wanted to say something. But all I could do was remember that of all of Liz’s many, many skills, pretty-crying definitely isn’t one of them.
Bex looked at me, a silent thought coursing between us. It was going to be a very long semester.
Chapter Five
Walking down the stairs that night, most of the senior class around me, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been forever since I’d been to a Welcome Back Dinner. Then I stopped cold, one hand on the banister of the Grand Stairs, realizing it hadn’t been forever. It had been a year. (And let’s face it, a year is pretty much forever in teenage girl time.)
“What is it, Cam?” Bex asked. The rest of the group was walking on toward the doors like conquering heroes.
Like seniors.
But I was still frozen where I stood.
“Cam,” Bex said again, “what’s wrong?”
What was I supposed to say? That Liz was right, and the whole night was a little too symbolic-slash-scary? That Macey was right, and marine protection or not, Preston wasn’t going to be safe until he was far away from his father? Or that Bex herself was right—that we were operatives, and we just had to keep our eyes on our mission?
So I didn’t say anything.
“Don’t freak,” Bex said, almost like she’d read my mind.
“I’m not freaking,” I said.
“Because you look like you’re freaking.”
I turned my gaze to her and let my guard down. “I haven’t done one of these in a while,” I said.
“I know. But I don’t think that’s the problem.”