Gallagher Girls 5 - Out of Sight, Out of Time (17 page)

I
t didn’t feel like a rescue, and it wasn’t an extraction. I studied Preston’s father—the way he gripped the steering wheel too tightly and drove too fast down incredibly narrow cobblestone streets.

“Ambassador Winters, thank you so much. I was lost and—”

“Now’s not the time for lies, Cammie,” he said, glancing frantically at the street behind us. He hunched over the wheel in a totally inappropriate posture for high-speed driving as he examined the rearview mirror. “How many are there?”

“Excuse me?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“I know why you were at that bank, Cammie!” he snapped. “It’s the same reason I helped you access it last summer. Now, how many men did the Circle send?”

“You’re not an agent,” I said. I could tell by the sweat beading at his brow, the death grip he kept on the wheel. He looked more like Grandpa Morgan than Joe Solomon. And yet the words were real:
the Circle
. “How do you know about—”

“I thought we covered this last summer, Cammie. Now, tell me how many—”

“One in the bank. Two on the street. Probably more along the perimeter.”

He breathed deeply and spun the wheel, sending the black car skidding onto a narrow street that I doubt any tourist ever saw.

“How do you know about the Circle, Ambassador?”

He gave a short, nervous laugh. “I was almost President of the United States, Cammie. There are certain things that, at certain levels, you have to know. Not to mention that for a time, a lot of very smart people thought the Circle of Cavan was after my son.” He glanced at me quickly from the corner of his eye. “I’m surprised you forgot that.”

“I’ve been forgetting a lot lately.”

I turned to the window as I said it. We were passing a bridge, and artists stood along the roadside with their canvases and paint. The skies were clear and blue. It was beautiful there.

But that was before the windshield shattered.

My head snapped, and the car spun.

I was faintly aware of the sensation of being weightless and then rolling, over and over. The crunching metal made a sickening sound. Shards of glass pierced my skin. It felt like I was running face-first through barbed wire. And yet all I could do was hope that I wouldn’t be sick, knowing I would never recover from the shame of puking all over Preston’s father.

When the car finally came to rest, the windshield was gone and the windows were shattered. There was nothing at all between me and the man who was climbing from his motorcycle and walking toward me—boots on cobblestones, broken glass crunching beneath his feet.

I shook my head and felt glass fall from my hair. Either it was luck or adrenaline, but I felt no pain or fear. Something in my training or my broken mind was taking over, and I was grabbing the ambassador’s hand and pulling.

“Ambassador, we have to move. Do you hear me? We can’t stay here.”

The shrill sound of sirens echoed in the distance. A crowd was gathering. People called out in Italian that help was on the way. But from the corner of my eye, I saw two men crawling from the van that had struck us. A motorcycle revved in my ears, and I saw a second rider coming through the crowd.

“Ambassador, can you move?”

“What…Yes.” He sounded groggy and disoriented—confused—so I gripped tighter.

“We have to run. Now.”

A hundred yards away, I saw the entrance to the market we’d visited on our first day, with its stalls and merchants and tourists, and that was where I led, pulling as hard as I could, looking back over my shoulder at the men who followed us through the crowd. I tried to ignore the stares of the tourists, the blood running down the side of my face.

“Ambassador, stay with me,” I said, talking as much about his mind as his body. “Do you have a panic button?”

“What?”

“Did your security detail give you a panic button? If so, press it
now
.”

He shook his head. “Not since the campaign. What’s that thing in your ear?” he asked. “Is it working?”

“No,” I told him. “Someone’s jamming the signal.”

“So we’re…alone?” he asked.

“Of course not,” I said, trying to reassure him. “We’re together.”

The market seemed more crowded with the ambassador’s arm around my shoulder, the two of us limping along side by side. Every few feet we had to stop for him to catch his breath or his balance.

“Cammie, you should go without me. Leave me here.”

He had a point. Maybe he was in more danger with me than without me, but something told me that the men on our trail were the types who didn’t like to leave any loose ends behind, and right then, Preston’s dad wasn’t a powerful dignitary. He was a witness.

“No luck,” I told him, taking his hand. “You’re stuck with me. Now, run.”

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“The embassy.” I thought about the walls, the gates, the marines. Rule of thumb: when in doubt, find a marine. “It’s a quarter of a mile away.”

“This is faster,” he said, pointing to a secluded alley.

“No, Ambassador. We need crowds. Crowds are good,” I said. And I meant it; but that didn’t mean it wasn’t hard trying to slip between the crush of bodies, going against the current.

“There, Cammie.” Mr. Winters pointed to a police officer walking our way.

“He’s with them,” I said.

“How do you—”

“Shoes,” I whispered, and pulled Preston’s dad behind a stall, slipping out of the fake officer’s path. “He’s wearing the wrong shoes.”

“Oh…” The ambassador’s voice was more like a whimper, and I hated myself for bringing my trouble to his doorway. “What did you mean, Cammie? When you said you were forgetting a lot lately?”

“I sort of have…amnesia.” I spat out the word and shook my head. “I don’t remember last summer.”

“Just last summer?” he asked.

“Yeah. I know it sounds crazy and all but—”

“No.” He wiped the sweat on his upper lip. Blood stained his sleeve. “Nothing really sounds crazy to me anymore.”

I’d never thought about the things a person must see when they’re a footstep away from the presidency. All good spies know that ignorance really is bliss. Mr. Winters looked like a man who knew things he truly wanted to forget.

I totally knew the feeling.

“Just a little bit farther,” I told him when we left the market. The crowds were thinner on the broad, public street. I could see the embassy up ahead. “Ambassador?” I said, studying the blood that ran down his hairline. “Ambassador, stay with me. We’re almost—”

But that was when I saw the van, big and white and coming far too fast. I should have run. I should have screamed. I should have done anything but stand there, locked in a memory of the year before, in Washington, D.C., as the Circle came for me the second time.

“Cammie,” the ambassador said, shaking me. “Cammie, this way.”

He was trying to pull me away from the van that had screeched to a halt in between us and the embassy. The door was sliding open. I wasn’t sure where reality stopped and memory began. But it wasn’t a grab team—not anymore. They didn’t need me alive.

And then I heard the music, low and steady in the back of my mind. I started to sway. To hum.

To run.

“Open the gates!” I yelled, pulling the ambassador behind me.

A man was out of the van and coming closer, so I lowered my shoulder, rammed him as hard as I could, and never broke stride.

“Open the gates!” I yelled through the crowded street.

Everyone was turning, watching. The ambassador’s arm was draped around my shoulders as I half pulled, half carried him toward the imposing building.

“The Ambassador,” I yelled to the marines at the gates. “The Ambassador has been injured!”

I don’t know whether it was my words or the sight of the man limping and bleeding, but the gates opened.

There were guards and marines, and a final, fading rev of a motorcycle engine as I dragged Preston’s father past the fences, safely onto American soil.

I
kept the journal on my lap for the next five hours.

Townsend was behind the wheel of a car with tinted windows. Abby followed us on a motorcycle, looping in front for a while, then falling behind, a constant circle of surveillance. Zach and Bex were in the tail car, and I only registered enough to be grateful that Zach was driving (a person can’t go through Driver’s Ed with Rebecca Baxter without being at least a little bit traumatized by the experience).

But I didn’t ask where the cars came from.

I didn’t wonder where we were going.

I didn’t mention the men who had chased me from the bank.

To do that would have meant 1) wondering if I’d walked into that very trap last July; and 2) admitting that we’d gone to all that trouble to get a journal that I’d had six months before.

Summer, it seemed, had happened for nothing.

“Cam?” Macey’s voice was soft. The car stopped. “Cam,” she said, and I felt a touch on my shoulder, a light shake. “We’re here.”

Here
, it turned out, was another safe house, this one an abandoned villa on a small lake north of Rome.

“We’ll rest tonight,” Townsend said from the driver’s seat while Zach pulled open my door.

“Come on, Gallagher Girl,” he said. “Try to get some sleep.”

I took his hand and stepped from the car. We were far enough north that the air was significantly cooler, and the breeze felt like a slap, waking me from my daze.

“I don’t need sleep, Zach. I need answers.”

“Cammie, we already know so much,” Bex said, and I wheeled on her.

“We don’t know anything. We don’t
have
anything except
this
.” I held up my father’s journal. “Which, by the way, we had last semester. We don’t know where I went or what they did to me.” I heard my voice crack. “We don’t know where I messed up.”

Suddenly, it all became too much, so I took the journal I treasured above everything else and hurled it against the car.

“Cammie!” Abby sank to her knees on the dusty driveway, and I don’t know what was more surprising, the shocked pain of my aunt’s expression or the small envelope that leaped from between the pages and fluttered to the ground at her feet.

“What is it?” Bex asked, reaching for the letter that must have been tucked inside the book I hadn’t even bothered to open. “Is it from you, Cam?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head and looking at my father’s handwriting—at the words
For my girls
. “It’s
for
me.”

There was cheese and stale bread in the kitchen. Macey scavenged for bottles of olives and a few mismatched plates, while Zach built a fire and Townsend and Bex checked our perimeter. But Abby and I just sat staring at the letter that lay in the center of the old kitchen table, like it was too precious or dangerous to touch.

I’d seen my father’s handwriting before, of course. I’d read his entire journal, memorized every word. But something about that letter felt different, as if he were calling to me from beyond the grave.

After a while, the others took their seats at the table, but no one reached for the food. We just sat, watching, until the silence became too much.

“Read it,” I told Aunt Abby, pushing the letter toward her; but she shook her head no.

“We’ll take it to Rachel. She can—”

I pulled the envelope away and handed it to Bex. “You do it.”

“Cam.. .”

“I need to know,” I said, and she didn’t argue. She just picked it up and started to read.

“‘Dear Rachel and Cammie, If you are reading this, then I am probably gone. Well, that or Joe finally found the hole in his cabin wall where I’ve been stashing things for years. Or both. In all likelihood, it’s both.’”

I know Bex’s voice almost better than I know my own, but as she spoke, the words shifted and faded. I heard my father as my best friend read.

“‘Please forgive me for not giving this to you myself, but as long as there’s a chance that I can go on without putting anyone else in danger, I have to take it. I think that I have the key—quite literally—to bringing the Circle down. But a key does no good without a lock, and that’s the next thing I have to find. I’ve stored the key in a bank box in Rome that only you and Cammie and I will be allowed to access.’”

“Rome,” Abby whispered. Guilt and grief filled her eyes, but there was no time to think about it, because Bex kept reading aloud.

“‘I shouldn’t say any more here, in case this note falls into the wrong hands, but once you have the key, you will understand. If I am right, then there is a way to bring the Circle to an end, a window that can lead to a happy ending. And I will find it. I promise you I will.

“‘I love you both.’” Bex laid the letter on the table, and I stared numbly at the words until my gaze came to rest on the three letters at the bottom of the page.

M.A.M.

Matthew Andrew Morgan.

“Cam,” Bex was saying. “It will be okay. We will—”

“I…I saw this.”

“Yeah, Cam,” Macey said. “You had the letter. You found it at Joe’s cabin and took it to Rome and—”

“Not in Rome.” My hands shook as they traced my father’s initials. The paper was smooth, but what I felt was rough stone and crumbling mortar.

“Cammie,” Abby said softly. “Cam!” she snapped, pulling me back.

“Aunt Abby.” I heard my voice crack. “We need to get the car.”