Irony is a funny thing. Maybe the room was bugged and someone heard the cocky, condescending tone of his voice. Or maybe it was just fate that made the sniper pick that moment to fire. But I guess we’ll never know.
Suddenly, glass shattered, showering the room in glistening, falling shards. Bex and I dove behind the desk just as the rifle fired again. I heard the hiss of the bullet, saw the dark spot that grew on Sir Walter’s chest, and watched him fall hard onto his knees.
He was still upright, though, as I scrambled toward him.
“Sir Walter!” I yelled. He was one of the people who had sent a hit man on my trail, wished me and the list inside my head out of existence. But I didn’t feel any peace. Whatever ghosts had followed me to that room, they wouldn’t be satisfied just to watch him die.
“Sir Walter!” I yelled again. A drop of blood ran from his lips. As the life drained out of him, he toppled over onto the floor, never to defy us—or anyone—again.
“Cam!” I heard Bex call my name. She had a death grip on my arm and was dragging me to my feet. But I couldn’t move. I was frozen, staring through the shattered window at the woman who stood atop the building across the lawn, picking up a grenade launcher and pointing it in our direction.
“Catherine,” I said.
And then my boyfriend’s mother took aim at our window again. And fired.
Glass crunched beneath my feet.
Blood ran into my eyes.
The grenade must have struck a gas line, because smoke swirled all around me and I could feel the heat of the explosion at my back. But Bex’s hand was still in mine, and the two of us stayed low, crouching beneath the black air, running down the hall, away from the body and the flames.
When we reached the end of the hall, I looked out the window and saw Zach’s mother running across the lawn. She must have sensed me there, because she stopped and turned, raised her hand and waved, almost like she’d been expecting me, hoping to see me.
And then she was running again, and I knew I had to find her, make her pay—that as long as she was out there, a part of me would never, ever heal.
“Cam!” Bex yelled as sirens started to sound.
Classes might not have been in session, but it was still one of the most prestigious places in all of England. There were smoke detectors and glass-break detectors, and someone was going to come looking for whoever had done this thing, and we needed to be far away when they did.
“Cam, come on!”
“She’s here!” I yelled, trying to break free.
Bex held tightly to my hand—didn’t let me go. “She’s gone.”
Chapter Three
I’ve been to Bex’s home before. She is my best friend, after all. But when your best friend is the daughter of two superspies, then that pretty much means your best friend moves. A lot. So walking inside the Baxter flat, I couldn’t help myself. I looked around. New rooms. New walls. Same feeling.
Even though every spy I knew (which was a lot of spies) had spent the past few weeks telling me I was safe—that as soon as I remembered the names on the list, there was no reason for the Circle to try to silence me—it was still kind of weird to walk inside the Baxters’ flat and have no one clear the rooms and pull the draperies tight over the windows. Instead, Bex’s mother hugged me. Her father kissed my cheek. They asked my mom about Sir Walter Knight and told us everything everyone at MI6 was saying about the explosion at one of the most famous universities in the world.
But no one was worried about me. Or…well…no one was worried until I asked, “So what do we do next?”
“Now, girls,” Mr. Baxter started, “I thought you knew that today was an exception.”
“Knight is dead,” Bex said. “Crane is dead. Dubois is missing. Along with her two kids,” Bex added pointedly. “So I think Cam has a good point: What do we do next?”
“We go back to school,” my mom said, taking over. “We go back and leave it to—”
“To who?” Bex asked.
“Rebecca!” her mother snapped.
“Sorry.” Bex shrugged. “To whom,” she corrected herself, even though I highly doubted that had been her mother’s point.
“You didn’t hear Knight.” I shook my head. “He wasn’t just spooked. And it wasn’t just Catherine. Whatever the Inner Circle is planning, it’s so big and awful that even he was terrified of it. And this coming from a man who has been a member of the Circle most of his life.”
That was when I pulled the crumpled piece of paper from my pocket. It was in Liz’s handwriting. Tiny pieces of paper clung to the left-hand side of the sheet from where she’d ripped it out of a spiral-bound notebook just a few weeks before. I’d folded it in quarters and put it in my pocket, and it had stayed there ever since, never leaving my side, always within reach.