“Wow,” Zach said. He pressed up against the window, which fogged with his breath.
Sometime years before, I had dragged an old bean bag chair to that place. I watched Zach sink onto it, and then he pulled me down to lean against him. I felt his arms go around me, holding me tight.
I was safe.
I was warm.
I was home.
Chapter Twelve
PROS AND CONS OF THE WEEK THAT FOLLOWED:
PRO: Nothing helps take your mind off of stumbling into (and almost messing up) a live CIA operation like makeup work.
CON: We had to do a lot of makeup work.
PRO: We no longer had to wonder whether or not Zach’s mom was going to come after Preston at the embassy.
CON: We had no idea where Preston was.
PRO: Zach was back.
CON: I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was just a matter of time until we all had to go away again.
I could tell you that the week that followed was a pretty typical week at the Gallagher Academy. I could tell you that, but I’d be lying. After all, my roommates and I were not just the girls who had missed the first few days of classes of the spring semester—we were also the girls who had been there when Ambassador Winters was taken into custody, which in teenage-spy-girl terms didn’t make us famous. It made us infamous. And let me tell you, that is a really big distinction.
“So, Cam,” Tina Walters said, slipping her arm through mine as we walked into the Grand Hall, “I heard that Winters is locked in an underwater facility off the coast of Greenland. What do you know about that?”
“Nothing, Tina,” I said.
“But the cover story is bogus, right? I mean, I know they’ve told the press that he was extracted based on intel that he was going to be the target of a terror plot, but that’s not true, is it?”
Tina leaned a little closer, studying me so intently I thought my skin might catch fire. I was sure she didn’t actually know the truth. Very few people did. That’s the thing about spies. Most of the secrets we keep are from each other.
I liked Tina.
I even trusted Tina.
But I couldn’t tell Tina the truth. Not because she was the school gossip (even though she was), but because, from that point forward, almost everything about my life was on a need-to-know basis and, right then, Tina didn’t. No matter how much she probably thought otherwise.
“So…” Tina asked slowly. “What’s the deal?”
“I don’t have a clue, Tina.” I shook my head, and thought about the look the ambassador had given me as he sat in the back of the van, defiant. Had that look been a threat? A warning? Or maybe just a good-bye. I shook my head again and said, “I really don’t know,” realizing it wasn’t even a lie.
“What I want to know,” Courtney started, leaning into the conversation as we sat down at the senior table, “is what is the deal with Preston Winters…?”
“He’s cute,” Anna Fetterman said, then blushed.
“Yeah,” Tina agreed. “I’m sure he was really cute when they led him away in handcuffs.”
Anna gasped. “They didn’t?”
Tina nodded slowly. “They did. To tell you the truth, I always got the feeling he might be kind of evil. It’s the dimples,” she hurried to add. “I, for one, never trust a boy with dimples.”
Macey bristled but didn’t say a word. After that, the Grand Hall fell quiet. Or as quiet as the Grand Hall ever is. I wanted to grab Macey and pull her away, tell her that it was all going to be fine. That Tina and the CIA and MI6 and that man from Interpol were all wrong—that Preston wasn’t like his father.
But just then, from across the table, Bex caught my eye, and I could tell she was thinking it too: What if he is?