Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover (25 page)

Pushing
through the woods, I searched for something familiar. The roof of a cabin was
barely visible through the trees, but there was no smoke from the chimney—no
signs of life— and a hundred doubts seemed to nag at me: What if I was wrong
and this wasn't where Macey had run? What if we were too late? So I asked one
question that scared me the least, "What if it isn't the right
house?"

As
I took another step, Bex's hand grasped my forearm, and I froze. I didn't have
to look down to know that my right foot was inches away from a thin wire that
would, no doubt, trigger a silent alarm. I didn't have to hear Bex say,
"It's the right place," to know that it was true.

Now,
normally, under ideal covert circumstances, a highly trained operative would
slow down. And survey the scene. And plan a careful route, or regroup. But
ideal covert circumstances hardly ever include Liz.

"Hey,
what are you guys…" she started, and in the next instant she was stumbling
over a rock with a cry of, "Oopsie daisy!"

She
soared headfirst over the trip wire by my foot and landed on a pile of leaves.
Bex and I lunged for her, but it was too late: gravity was taking over, and Liz
was sliding down the hill, tumbling through bushes, slicing between two
infrared motion sensors so perfectly that I'm sure we couldn't have duplicated
the precision if we'd tried.

"She's
gonna hit that—" Bex started but then couldn't finish, because instead of
tumbling into a fallen log, Liz somehow managed to change direction and plow
through a thicket of blackberry vines.

"Liz!"
I yelled, running after her until the ground was too steep, the fallen leaves
too wet with dew, and my feet flew out from under me as well. Behind me, I
heard Bex gasp as she lost her footing too.

Branches
whipped across my face. My hands fell wrist-deep into mud, and still I tumbled
forward, faster and faster. In my mind, sirens were already sounding—a S.W.A.T.
team was already on its way.

And
then, finally, the tumbling stopped. I sat on the ground, covered in mud and
decaying leaves. I felt nothing but my breath and the crush of Bex, who landed
on top of me. I managed to wipe the mud out of my eyes, as two impossibly long
legs appeared above us, and Macey McHenry said, "You're late."

The
Operatives decided, to take this rare opportunity to do a detailed
reconnaissance of the part-time homes of trained security professionals, during
which they discovered the following:

•
                 
A
box of lures, rods, and hooks that could be VERY helpful in illegal
interrogation tactics. (But upon closer inspection they appeared to be used for
actual fishing.)

•
                 
Four
plain white T-shirts

•
                 
Six
pairs of tube socks

•
                 
One
Swiss Army knife (that appeared to have been issued by the actual Swiss Army)

•
                 
Forty-seven
maps in sixteen languages

•
                 
Zero
love letters, pictures, or notebooks with doodles on the cover

•
                 
The
most comprehensive first-aid kit ever assembled by man

"Cat
food!" Liz cried as she peered into yet another cabinet. I heard her
rushing to write it down on the list, and then she said, "I wonder what
that
means?"

I
could feel Bex and Liz swarming to take in every detail of the place, marveling
over the fact that the curtains were homemade and the windows weren't
bulletproof. But I just stood by the narrow bed on the sleeping porch, staring
at the patchwork quilt, revisiting the things that Mr. Solomon had told me
there, knowing somehow that there were no answers in that little cabin. No
matter how hard Liz looked, I doubted she would find a crystal ball.

Macey
stood beside me. We watched our reflections in the glass and stared out at the
lake. I couldn't help thinking that it had taken us a long time to walk away from
the end of the pier.

Maybe
Liz was right and she'd wanted someplace safe. Maybe Mr. Solomon really did
understand that running was the only way Macey would find out if we'd run after
her. Or maybe, like me, she just wanted to disappear for a little while.

But that didn't change the fact
that we'd found her.

And we weren't the only people
looking.

The
screen door screeched as we stepped outside. It had taken less than three
months, but somehow we'd found our way back, and I had to know if Macey was
still the girl by the lake.

"Macey,"
I started, but before I could draw a breath, she read my mind.

"I know we can't stay."

There's
something inherently safe about lake houses with CIA protection and falling
leaves and contests about who can skip stones the farthest (Bex totally won, by
the way). But every spy knows that things will always change. Always. And the
van was waiting.

"We
can go back to school, or you can go be with your parents at the watch party,
but …" I felt myself looking for the words I feared.

"Was
I that easy to track?" Macey asked, still staring out at the lake as if it
were a mirror.

"No,"
I said, and for the first time she shot me a look. "We found you because
you're way too good to get tracked with one phone call."

I
sat down at the end of the pier. "Besides, you took both disguises. In
one, you can look like someone else." I thought of the glossy black wig
I'd worn. "In the other, the right someone else can look like you."

"From
there it was easy to imagine you offering some poor, unsuspecting girl a free
ride to Europe and swapping passports with her," Bex added as she and Liz
walked up behind us.

"So that explains how you
guessed—" Macey started.

"Knew,"
Liz corrected, unwilling to
accept partial credit when she'd gotten an answer right.

"Knew,"
Macey went on, "I wasn't in Switzerland. How'd you find me here?"

I
looked out over the lake and thought about a day not that long ago. "This
is where I would have come," I said, not realizing until then that it was
true.

"Me too," added Bex.

We all looked at Liz, who nodded.
"Yeah."

Macey
laughed. It was so quick and clean that I could have sworn it sent a ripple
coursing through the lake. "Are they really still searching in
Switzerland?"

"By
now they've widened the net to include half of Northern Europe," Bex said
with a grin.

"Still
think they only let you in because of who your family is?" I asked.

"Yes."
Macey's answer shocked me. I'd been in the process of getting up. The coarse
wood of the dock was pinching my hands as they supported too much of my weight,
and yet I couldn't move,

Macey
smiled. She cocked an eyebrow and said, "But that's not why they keep
me."

Of
all the tests Macey McHenry had passed in the last year, there wasn't a doubt
in my mind that that was the biggest one.

"Besides,"
she said playfully batting her eyes, "my father is potentially the second
most powerful man in the country."

"Well," Liz said
softly, "not for much longer."

"Why?" I asked, looking
at her.

"Because the polls opened
two hours ago."

Spies
are great at pretending, so we made believe that the bad part was over; we
acted as if everything was going to be okay. We rolled down the windows and
sang at the top of our lungs and tried not to think about why we had to make
unscheduled stops, and turn without signaling, and dozens of other
countersurveillance techniques that are the sign of really bad drivers and
really good spies.

But
no matter how good we were at vehicular countersurveillance, there was at least
one dangerous encounter that I knew we'd never outrun.

"We have her."

The
truck stop was loud—full of the sounds of diesel engines and the clank of
plates and silverware being cleared from greasy tables—and for a moment, I was
afraid my mother hadn't heard me. "I said, we've got—"

"Yes,
Professor Buckingham," Mom said slowly, and at first I started to correct
her. I wanted to say that she'd mistaken the sound of my voice. Badly. But then
Mom talked on. "It is
very
good to hear from you. In fact,
I've been wondering
where you are now
, Patricia?" Mom asked, and
I knew that someone was close.

"We're
on our way to you," I said, not wanting to say too much over the phone.
"Mom, I'm sorry we ran away." With every breath, the words came
faster. "We tried to tell Madame Dabney, but everyone was so busy looking
in Switzerland, but I just knew in my gut she wasn't there, and—"

"Of
course things are ready for you here. If Macey has completed her biology test
and is ready, the Secret Service should bring her here to D.C. so that she can
join her parents
as soon as possible."

I
stepped farther down the narrow hallway, away from the crowded dining room,
stretching the phone's greasy cord to its limit as I said, "They don't
know she ran away, do they?"

"Of
course not," Mom answered, the ultimate spy. "That's too much
trouble."

I
thought about Senator and Mrs. McHenry, and something made me smile.

"So how mad are they that
she isn't there?"

"I've
taken care of everything," Mom said, her voice still perfectly even and
delightful.

A
television blared live news coverage—a map of the United States, ready to be
divided state by state into red and blue. It was election day in America, but
there was one vote left that mattered, and, ironically, it was the one the
McHenrys had lost a long time ago.

"Cam!" Bex yelled,
"it's time."

"Mom,"
I said, suddenly needing to say it, "I love you."

A
long pause filled the line. For a second, I thought I might have lost her.

"I
feel exactly the same way. And Patricia." My mother's voice grew lower.
"Hurry. And
be careful."

I
might have said a hundred other things, except the pay phone wasn't secure (not
to mention sanitary), and besides, my friends—and our mission—were waiting.

The
Operatives began preparations to go undercover inside hostile territory (a.k.a.
the official Winters-McHenry presidential watch party).

Operatives
Sutton and Baxter were thrilled to learn that this would require shopping for
new clothes.

Unfortunately,
according to Operative McHenry, to fully blend in, The Operatives' new clothes
couldn't be too cute. Or comfortable.

Washington,
D.C. was the first home I'd ever really known, but that night the streets felt
foreign for the first time. Maybe it was the vehicle I was driving (Dodge
minivans with state-of-the art engines aren't exactly common, you know), or
maybe it was the fact that the most famous girl in the country was in the
backseat in a red wig, but I felt anything but invisible as we turned down
streets lined with news vans and Secret Service barricades.

As
we walked closer to the hotel, we passed correspondents reporting live for
every news outlet in the country, and I couldn't help myself—I thought about
Boston. Beside me, Macey trembled, and I knew I wasn't the only one.

I
was beginning to contemplate exactly how we were going to sweet-talk or sneak
our way inside (Macey couldn't exactly show up Secret Service-less, after
all!), when a familiar voice cut through the chaos. "Cameron!"

The
Operatives remembered that potential kidnappers aren't always as scary as
highly trained operatives-slash- mothers-slash-headmistresses who happen to
know that you're away from campus without permission.

"Cammie,"
my mother called again, hurrying to meet us.

"Mom,
I—" I started, wanting to explain or apologize, to beg forgiveness or
mercy, but I didn't get to do any of that because, in the next instant, Secret
Service agents swarmed around us. I noticed the comms unit in my mother's ear.
I realized the agents around us were all women. One of the agents winked at me,
and I wondered for a second if Aunt

Abby
wasn't the only Gallagher Girl who had taken a special assignment.

And
yet my mother didn't wink. She didn't smile. Instead, she grabbed my arm and
steered us toward the building.

Something's
happening, I thought. Something's wrong. There were a hundred questions I
wanted to ask, but I didn't have the time—much less the breath—to do so as an
emergency exit door was thrown open and my friends and I were ushered inside.