I thought about Bex’s blood, her fitful dreams. And, finally, I thought about how easily we all could have died on that mountain.
“I won’t use this number again, and you should destroy your phone too. We have the dead drop. Use it if you need it. But, sweetheart, just promise you’ll be careful. You’re doing the right thing,” Mom said again.
“And, kiddo. Happy birthday.”
Birthday. I had forgotten my own birthday. Sometime in the past week I’d turned eighteen, and I hadn’t even realized it. I looked down at the phone in my hand. I knew I was supposed to destroy it immediately, but I couldn’t. Instead, I listened to the message again and again and again.
“You’re doing the right thing.”
I listened until the words lost all meaning, until I became numb to even my mother’s voice. I listened until I didn’t even hear the words anymore.
You’re doing the right thing.
Zach was in the kitchen. He wore old jeans and had bare feet, and I thought that maybe bacon-frying was a pretty dangerous thing to do without a shirt on, but I didn’t say so.
“Gallagher Girl?” He looked at the burner phone I carried in one hand, the SIM card I held in the other.
“It was my mom,” I told him.
“What did she say?”
“She’s fine,” I said, then hurried to add, “They’re fine. They’re closing in on Delauhunt and… It was just a message, Zach. She didn’t tell me what to do. She just said that I was doing the right thing.”
“You are.”
“I couldn’t tell her about Bex or Preston. I couldn’t tell her—”
“Hey.” He reached me in one long stride, arms going around me, so strong and sure, and I pressed my cheek against his chest. He smelled like soap and bacon. “Tell me what she said.”
So I did. I told him every word, not that any of them mattered. Even Rachel Morgan didn’t know what we were supposed to do next.
“I forgot my own birthday, Zach. I’m eighteen now,” I said, but I didn’t feel like an adult. I felt like a little girl, alone and afraid and desperate for my mother.
“It’s going to be okay. Hey.” He wiped my tears away. “We’re going to be okay.”
Here’s the thing about being a spy: sometimes all you have are your lies. They protect your cover and keep your secrets, and right then I needed to believe that it was true even when all the facts said otherwise.
“What’s going on?” Macey said from the bedroom door. At the sound, Liz stirred and bolted upright.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” Liz asked. She yawned and looked down at the laptop in front of her. Two seconds later, her face went whiter than I’d ever seen it. Her lips trembled, and her fingers froze on the laptop’s keys. She looked away, but it was too late. Even without her photographic memory, Liz could never un-see what the computer said.
“This is it.” Liz pushed her favorite laptop away with so much strength it would have fallen off the table if Zach hadn’t been there to stop it. “It’s happening now.”
I looked at the screen and read the words aloud for no one’s benefit but my own. “‘Exiled King Najeeb of Caspia to address protesters outside the United Nations.’”
As much as I wanted to deny what was happening in the world outside our little cabin, I knew there was no use trying to hide. The facts will always find you. And the scarier they are, the faster they travel.
Liz was up and moving across the room. She’s always had this habit of bringing her right hand to her mouth, resting her fingertips against her lips while she talks to herself, almost as if learning to read her lips by touch. She was doing it then. She spoke so quickly and so softly that I could barely make out the words.
“This is it. This is happening.” Then she seemed to doubt herself. “Is this it?”
Liz was walking, but it wasn’t with the panic-ridden steps of a caged animal. It was the careful, cautious pacing of a genius who needed time and space to think.
I risked a glance at Zach, but he was quiet, like he didn’t want to break whatever trance Liz was in, like he too knew she was our single best chance at stopping the Circle.
Liz paced and talked like it was just another test. Another challenge. She was looking at it like an exercise in probability—cause and effect. It’s the physics of human nature, and to truly understand it, one has to be objective and cool. Two things every operative is supposed to be. Two things I was becoming less and less acquainted with all the time.
“Tension,” Liz said at last. She was still pacing, though, and I knew the word was meant only for her. “That region is filled with conflict, but the Circle will need to ratchet up the tension. It will have to be something big. And public. Something that is symbolic and practical at the same time.”