Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover (17 page)

Mr.
Solomon's warning kept coming back to me as I surveyed the crowd, remembering
that the bad guys could be anyone, that they could be anywhere—that they knew
who we were. And they just had to get lucky…once.

Maybe
it was my spy training; maybe it was a crazy, hyperactive imagination, but it
seemed like everywhere I looked, people seemed suspicious.

There
was a man with a red bow tie who bumped into me not once, not twice, but three
times and was a little…handsy. My first instinct was to call out for Macey on
the comms to see if he was flirting, but then I remembered that the one
Gallagher Girl who was certain to have an answer to that question was the one
Gallagher Girl I couldn't ask.

"Chameleon,"
Bex's voice rang in my ear. "Cammie, are you—"

"I'm here," I said.

"What's wrong?" her
accent was heavy again.

"Nothing.
I mean—" I was spinning, being about as uncovert as I could possibly be,
but something was … wrong.

"Eyes,"
I said, citing an operative's ultimate resource— her instincts. "I feel
eyes. Someone's…watching."

"Yeah,"
Bex said, her voice thick with a resounding
duh.
"You
look hot."

Well,
that explained one thing, because covert I'm good at. Invisible I'm good at.
Hot I am totally not good at.

I
pushed through the crowds again, knowing that it was getting later and later,
and I couldn't help worrying more and more. Flashes of Boston went through my
mind. I closed my eyes and shuddered, saw an almost identical crowd, felt that
almost identical feeling.

"Bookworm,
Duchess," I started, but then I stopped because I didn't have a clue how
that sentence was supposed to end.

"Any sign of them?" I
asked instead.

"No
buses," Liz told me from her vantage point by the window.

"No
sign at the east entrance. Wait," Bex said, stopping short.

The
feeling of the crowd was changing. An energy so palpable was coursing through
the old historic station that I looked out the massive windows at the cloudy
sky, half expecting lightning.

"Oh my gosh," Liz
exclaimed, echoing Bex's surprise.

"What?"
I said out loud, not caring if anyone noticed. I spun, looking at the station's
main entrance, but then I felt the crowd shift behind me. I turned slowly and
realized there was no bus. There was no convoy.

Instead,
a long, ancient-looking train with old-fashioned red, white, and blue bunting
hanging from the caboose was slowly moving into the station.

In
the next instant it didn't matter how great our comms units were, because the
cry that came up from five hundred rabid voters was enough to drown out even
the sound of my best friends' voices in my ear.

Governor
Winters and Macey's dad stepped out onto the stage behind the caboose, and then
their wives. Macey and Preston were one step behind them.

I
waited for the fear in my stomach to subside. I told myself I was crazy. After
all, Macey was smiling. She was waving. She was the perfect operative with the
perfect cover. Aunt Abby was beside her. She was fine.

For
a second a wave of relief like nothing I'd ever known swept over me. But then
the crowd shifted, and for a split second my gaze fell on a man,

A man with crazy white hair and
wild eyebrows.

A man I had seen before.

In Boston.

It
didn't mean it was something. Odds were, it was probably nothing. After all,
there were probably a lot of people who went to political conventions
and
political
rallies. And the Secret Service was there—the Secret Service was
good.

Still,
I didn't know what was scarier, that I'd seen a man in the crowd who I'd
literally bumped into on the very day my roommate had been attacked, or
that—just that quickly—the familiar face had vanished.

"Duchess!"
I practically shouted, but the crowd was too loud, the race too close, and the
people who wanted the Winters-McHenry ticket to win on Election Day were too
fired up as I called through our comms units for my friends. "Duchess,
there was a guy … in a suit …" I climbed the main staircase to better scan
the platform, and that's where I realized that I'd just described half of the
clapping crowd. "A dark suit," I added. "Crazy-looking white hair.

Wild
eyebrows. Mustache," I rattled off identifying characteristics as quickly
as I could think of them.

The Operative realized that
incredibly high heels made it very hard to pursue people quickly across very
slick floors!

The
band played. People drank. And where the train stood at the end of the
platform, I saw the face again. I recognized something in the way he moved,
and my mind flashed back to the hotel lobby in Boston while the Texas
delegation sang.

And
then I glanced at the train and saw Aunt Abby standing in the wings, ten feet
from Macey and exactly where she was supposed to be. And the white-haired man
moved closer.

I
didn't know how to describe him, and that was maybe the most notable thing of
all. He was just moving through the crowd as if there were someplace else he
had to be. Call me crazy, but I couldn't shake the feeling that no one pays
$20,000 to leave in the middle of the main event.

I
hurried through the crowd as quickly as I dared without A) falling down, and
B) attracting attention. And I was doing pretty well at both, until a waiter
picked that moment to lose his grip on a tray of champagne. As the glasses
fell, I sidestepped and spun.

And ran right in to Preston
Winters.

"Oh,
I'm so sorry!" he exclaimed, gripping me by the shoulders as if I were
about to fall down. (Which I wasn't, but he probably didn't need to know that
I've had entire sections of Protection and Enforcement class dedicated to
helping an operative keep her balance.) "Are you okay? Can I get you some…punch
… or something?"

"I'm
fine, thank you, though," I said as I ran through the mental checklist of
things that were going wrong at that moment, forgetting the most troublesome
thing of all.

"Have
we met before?" Preston asked, looking at me in a way that said that,
despite the long black wig and tight black dress, there was something way too
familiar about me.

"No,
I don't believe we have," I said in my best Southern accent. I tried to
pull away. The man was easing down the length of the train and into the stone
tunnel from which it had emerged, and I just stood there thinking about my
options.

The
Operative regretted not packing Dr. Fibs's new Band- Aid-style Napotine
patches. She also regretted not packing some regular Band-Aids, because her
shoes really did hurt her feet.

Preston's
father stood on a makeshift stage behind the caboose of the old-fashioned
train—a physical homage to better times—and told the crowd, "We're going
to get America
back on track!"
The crowd cheered, but I was too
busy listening to two voices. One belonged to the boy in front of me, who was
asking, "I know, you were at the Atlanta rally, weren't you?" The
other buzzed in my ear as

Bex
cried, "You guys are
never
going to believe who's here!
Eyes," she said again. "I have eyes on—"

But
then there was nothing but static as my roommate's voice faded away. My first
thought was to bring my hand to my ear and scream like a total amateur, but I
didn't.

"Now,
I just know we've met before," Preston went on, oblivious to the panic I
was feeling. "Come on. Help me out." I could have lied. I could have
fought. But desperate times call for desperate measures, so I took a chance and
called upon a Gallagher Girl's weapon of last resort. I flirted.

"I'm
sorry," I said, batting my false eyelashes. "I just get a little
tongue-tied anytime I'm around such a handsome man."

"Um…"
Preston swallowed hard. "Handsome?" Instantly, I felt the tables
turn.

"Yes,"
I replied, reaching to grip his bicep. "I swear, you are even stronger
than you look on TV."

He
swallowed again and somehow managed to mutter, "You know I lift…
things."

"Oh,
I can tell." In my ear, Bex's voice was drowning in static, but my mission
at that moment was to get away from Preston Winters without him realizing that
the girl in the black dress was also the girl on the roof. "You know, this
is my favorite of your suits. I also like the navy pinstripe, of course, but
you were wearing that one in Boston, weren't you? So now
this
is my
favorite. …" I started to chatter on about which of Preston's ties went
better with his eyes, but before I could say a word, Preston was already
pointing to his parents across the room.

"Wait.
Oh, you know, I think they need me for … stuff."

"Oh, but—" I said as he
started to walk away.

"Thank you for your
vote," he called, turning back.

But I was already gone.

"Duchess,"
I tried as I inched closer to the train tunnel. "Duchess," I tried
again, with one glance back at the party, at Macey and Aunt Abby, and I knew I
had two choices. One, I could wave down my aunt, which would result in
reinforcements and the possibility that she would tell my mother what I was
doing. Or two, I could follow a person of interest in a kidnapping attempt into
a dark tunnel, without backup, without help.

So
I did the second one because, at the time, it was the least scary of my
options.

As
I stepped inside the dim space, the sound of the crowd faded behind me while,
in my ear, my comms unit began to crack and buzz.

I
strolled down the darkened tunnel, my (totally uncomfortable) shoes as quiet
as a whisper against the cold concrete. But that was before a hand clasped over
my mouth, an arm gripped me tightly around my waist, and someone pulled me out
of my shoes.

"Hey,
Chameleon, how's it going?" Bex's voice sounded strong in my ear.

My
first thought was to struggle against the arms that were holding me. My second
was, Hey, how can Bex be talking in my ear if my comms unit is out?

But
then the arms released me and I spun to face my best friend. "What are you
doing in here?" I asked.

She
smiled. "Guess who else made the drive up from Roseville?" she asked,
her eyes twinkling.

"Bex,
it's Saturday. I'd really rather not take a quiz if I can help it."

Then
she gripped my shoulders and turned me around. "Look."

The
first time I ever saw Joe Solomon, he was strolling into the Grand Hall during
the welcome-back dinner of my sophmore year. None of us knew where he'd come
from or why he was there. Standing in the shadows, it wasn't hard to remember
how that had felt.

"He's
hot in a tuxedo," Bex said, and I started to snap because…well … it kind
of went without saying, and also we had other things to worry about. Some
seriously important other things. Because just then Mr. Solomon wasn't alone
anymore.

"Ooh,
he has a hot tuxedoed friend," Bex teased. But I knew better—I'd seen that
man and his wild white hair and crazy eyebrows before. I'd
seen
him. In
Boston.

The
two men spoke for a moment, then Mr. Solomon turned and started to walk away,
varying his pace in order to hear the footsteps of anyone who might be
following in the dark tunnel, a textbook countersurveillance procedure if ever
there was one. Bex winked at me, more than up for the challenge, then slipped
into the tunnel a safe distance behind our teacher. But I just kept staring at

the guy left in Joe Solomon's
wake.

Someone Mr. Solomon knew.

Someone Mr. Solomon seemed to
respect.

Someone
who had a knack for being where Macey—and I—happened to be.

Maybe
it was some inherent hotness that Bex had seen and I'd missed. Maybe it was the
way the man with the white hair had straightened in the dark tunnel and moved
with grace that didn't belong with the rest of his body. But for some reason, I
thought back to the way Mr. Solomon had stood in "Art's" uniform and
told us how the art of deception and disguise isn't complex—it's simple: just
give the eyes something new to look at so that the mind doesn't truly
see.

My
mind flew from Boston and back again, the deja vu growing stronger, the pieces
of a puzzle falling into place. I closed my eyes and saw eyes and not eyebrows,
a mouth and not a mustache. I stripped away the cover piece by piece until I
stood in the dark, finally seeing.