I looked out at a sky that was so blue it was almost too bright to look at. A few fluffy white clouds floated by. Ridges of mountains surrounded me, and everywhere there was snow and rocks and big pine trees heavy with needles.
Those weren’t the Alps, I was certain. The air and the sky just felt different than they had last fall. My internal clock had reset itself somehow, and I knew the sun felt lower than it should have. I was north. Very, very north. Alaska, maybe? And I was alone, clinging to a narrow ridge, a foot from the edge of the world.
They’d come looking for me eventually, wouldn’t they? Follow my tracks? Find me? But would they reach me before night fell and the temperature dropped? Never before had my uniform skirt felt so short, my sweater so thin. I couldn’t stop shaking and telling myself that I had come too far to freeze to death on that mountain.
People would be looking for me. The gunman would get caught. I was going to be okay, but only if I kept going, so I didn’t look back. A hundred yards down the steep face of the cliff, I saw a loading bay—what I assumed was probably the main entrance to the facility. So I set one foot in front of the other and got ready to make the climb.
Chapter Sixteen
THINGS TO EXPECT AFTER A SECURITY BREACH AT MAYBE THE MOST SECURE PRISON ON THE PLANET (ALSO, AFTER CLIMBING DOWN A MOUNTAIN):
(A list by Cameron Morgan)
Hot chocolate. Seriously. The guards who find you are going to insist that you keep moving and change into warmer clothes, but the real medicine is hot chocolate. The hotter and the chocolatier the better.
Turns out, if you escape from a high-level detention facility, really big, really macho guys stop looking at you like you’re cute and start looking at you like you’re awesome.
After doing a climb like that with no gear and no help, nobody seems to think they need to drug you to get you OFF the mountain.
The trip home takes A LOT longer when you’re fully conscious.
Long trips are an excellent time to think.
You may totally not like what you’re left to think about.
“Cammie!” Mom said as soon as I walked through the school’s front doors. She rushed across the foyer and threw her arms around me. Then, just as quickly, she pushed me away—held me at arm’s length—and examined me as if trying to make sure Agent Edwards was returning me in the same condition I’d been in when I’d left.
I wasn’t. And my mother, spy that she is, could see so.
“Are you okay?” she asked, and I nodded.
“Yes. I’m fine.”
But my mother just slid her gaze onto Agent Edwards. “Did they find out how the shooter got in?” she asked.
“Uh…yes.” He spoke the word too carefully. “The gunman was a guard at the facility. He’d been turned.”
“I see,” Mom told him. “Kiddo.” Mom smoothed my hair. Her hand cupped my face. “Why don’t you go upstairs? Go to bed. You need your rest.” Then Mom turned her full attention back to the man who’d brought me home. “I need to talk to Agent Edwards.”
There was a feeling coursing between them—two veteran operatives, powerful people, neither one used to backing down. I eased away, but I don’t think Agent Edwards or my mother even noticed that I was still standing there. They were too busy staring daggers at each other.
“You have a lot of nerve bringing her back like this.”
“Would you have rather she not come back at all?” the man asked.
“Don’t be coy with me. She was supposed to be safe with you.”
“I’m very sorry your daughter had to live through that,” Agent Edwards said.
“Live being the key word, of course.” Mom leveled a glare at him.
“What do you mean, Rachel?” Agent Edwards sounded tired and impatient and ever so slightly annoyed.
“I mean my daughter was flown to the far corner of this country only to see the ambassador killed and have the gunman turn on her.”
“Former ambassador,” Max Edwards corrected. “And as the head of the interagency task force, no one regrets his death more than I. He had information we needed, Rachel. After all, that’s why your daughter was there.”
Mom sidled closer. “And as soon as he started talking, he was killed? And the girl he was talking to was targeted?”