“I’m not helping you.”
“It’s not for me,” he said, and I didn’t move again. “As you know, when possible, we’ve been taking Circle members into custody. A few of the lower-level assets have been somewhat cooperative. But Mr. Winters…he is refusing to speak to anyone.”
“What did you expect?” I laughed a little at his naïveté.
“I’m sorry.” He smiled a condescending smile. “What I meant to say is that he refuses to speak to anyone…but you.”
And at last I was surprised. For all of his experience and training, Agent Edwards and his task force needed me.
“As I told you earlier, Agent Edwards,” Mom began, “my daughter does not have to go anywhere with you. She doesn’t have to help you. She will not—”
“I’ll do it.”
“Cammie,” my mother said, “you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to go and you do not have to help. It could be dangerous,” she added, the last part a warning.
“That’s true, Cammie,” Agent Edwards said, walking toward me. “Your mother is right. So what do you say?”
“Yes,” I told him. “I’ll do it. I’ll—”
But I never got to finish, because in the next second a syringe was in Agent Edwards’s hand, and the needle was in my arm, and just that quickly my mother’s office began to spin, the whole world spiraling quickly into black.
Chapter Thirteen
The room was black around me. A pounding, throbbing ache filled my head. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but they didn’t. Instead, I was swallowed by the hollow emptiness, uncertain how to break free.
I shivered and realized I was freezing cold. My uniform felt familiar against my skin, and I knew that no one had bothered to change my clothes in the time that I’d been unconscious. But how long had that been? A few hours? A few days? The last time I’d woken up in a strange place, I’d just lost months of my life, and that memory came pounding back then. My head hurt. My arms and legs ached. I felt something churning in my stomach, and I couldn’t help myself, I was sick—vomit covered the floor, and I started to cry. I started to scream. I wanted out. I needed out. So I stood and pressed my hands against the walls.
I felt cold steel. Metal. Something man-made and foreign. And I knew that even though I was no longer being held by the Circle in Austria, I most certainly wasn’t in the Gallagher Academy anymore, either.
Slowly, I eased down the wall, feeling my way as I went, forcing myself to breathe deeply, steadily.
“I’m okay,” I said aloud to no one but myself. “I’m not lost. I’m not lost. I’m not—”
And then I found the lever. And then I turned it and felt the door shift against my hands. Light poured in, and I shut my eyes as I stumbled forward, out of the back of a van and into a massive, empty hangar. Bright fluorescent lights hung above; but inside there was nothing but the plain, unmarked van…and me.
“Hello, Cammie.” I jerked my head upward and saw Max Edwards standing on the catwalk that ran across the top of the room. “Welcome back.”
“Where are we?” I asked, my voice groggier than it should have been. My head pounded and swirled.
Agent Edwards was coming down the stairs, strolling easily toward me.
“I’m sorry you had to wake up alone like that, Cammie. I thought you’d sleep for at least another hour. Good thing I came to check on you.”
I rubbed my aching head. “My grandma says I have a high metabolism. Besides, I’m really, really good at being knocked unconscious. I have a lot of experience with that.”
Agent Edwards chuckled like he thought I was making a joke. I wasn’t.
“You’re not going to tell me where we are, are you?”
“No, Cammie. I’m not.”
“Or when we are?”
“No again. A smart girl like you can use time to calculate distance, Cammie, and you know I can’t let you do that. That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“Because this is need-to-know, and I don’t?” I asked.
He smiled and shook his head. “Because you wouldn’t believe me.”