Chapter Fourteen
“Where’s Preston?” I lunged forward and was almost off my chair before I remembered Agent Edwards’s warning. I scooted back slightly but didn’t dare let my gaze leave the ambassador’s eyes.
“I don’t know, Cammie,” Winters told me. “You’d know better than I.”
“I thought he…” I started before the truth finally settled down on me. “You wanted to see me?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.” The ambassador crossed his ankles. He looked perfectly at home there in a room exactly like mine. But he wore shackles around his hands and feet. “You’re a very intelligent young lady. Maybe I missed your company.”
“Don’t be coy with me. And don’t waste my time.”
“Fine,” he said.
“Why am I here?”
“I’m sorry about what happened, Cammie,” he said, not answering my question.
“Sorry that you tried to have me killed, or sorry that I had enough dumb luck to avoid it?”
He shook his head—a tsk, tsk, tsk gesture that made my skin crawl. “You’re very lucky, my dear. But you are anything but dumb.”
“They said you wanted to talk to me—that I was the only person you would talk to.… So, what is it? What do you want to tell me?”
Despite the handcuffs and shackles, Winters leaned closer, looked into my eyes. “How are you, Cammie?”
He sounded like the man who had welcomed me into the embassy, embraced me like a friend. And I hated him for it. I hated him so, so much.
“No,” I said. “You don’t get to ask me that. You don’t get to act like you’re one of the good guys. Don’t forget. Do not forget that I know better.”
I watched the words sink in, and for a second I could have sworn a degree of sadness crossed his face. “I know you do, Cammie. But I’m still interested in your welfare.”
I started to stand. “Good-bye, Mr. Winters. I wish I could stay and chat, but we’ve got this big test, and I’d really better be getting back to—”
“Wait, Cammie. Please.”
“Tell me why you brought me here, or I go. Now. And I never come back.”
“What do you know about the Circle, Cammie?”
He shifted then, not with his body but with his tone.
“Stop wasting my time,” I told him again.
“I’m serious,” he said. “Do you know when we were founded? By whom? Why?”
He put a special emphasis on the final word and that, at last, made me wonder.
“Cavan was a proud man,” Winters went on. He didn’t wait for me to answer. “He hated anyone who might have more power than he had.”
“Get to the point,” I snapped, and Winters talked on.
“Cavan wanted—no, needed—the Union to fail. A divided America was the only America he could stomach. And that meant he needed Lincoln to die. For the country to splinter, shatter. So the question is, Cammie, what does the Circle need now?”
For a second, I forgot he was a man who’d tried to kill me, and I looked at him like he was one of my teachers, like it was just another day back at school.
“The Circle wants power. They need profit.”
“No, Cammie.” Winters shook his head, but he didn’t scold. “I’ll admit, we allowed ourselves to stray from Cavan’s original mission. We got greedy, hungry for physical wealth, and Cavan’s original goal slipped from our minds. I do so admire the Gallagher Academy. It is still what your founder wanted it to be. Of course, Gillian Gallagher did it all without government involvement. I wonder what she would say if she saw the way the agencies have the run over your school today.”