Only the Good Spy Young (Gallagher Girls) (5 page)

“D
r. Fibs’s filing cabinets?” I heard myself mutter five minutes later—still a little shocked, if you want to know the truth. But what else is a girl supposed to feel after riding in an underwater elevator, going through six more scans (two retinal, three voice, and one full-body), and then climbing fifty feet up a rickety staircase that looked older than the school itself?

So, yeah, shock probably covers it. But that didn’t stop me from examining the hidden door through which we’d just emerged. “I never knew there was a passageway behind Dr. Fibs’s filing cabinets!”

“Which is the sole reason it’s still functioning.”

Bex and I spun around to see Professor Buckingham behind us, standing in the doorway of the dim room with her arms crossed, looking like the most intimidating barrier of all.

“Cameron, Rebecca, come with me.”

There are three things it’s important to know about Patricia Buckingham. 1) She’s our oldest faculty member. 2) She is an absolute legend at MI6. And 3) She walks faster than should be humanly possible with a bad hip. At least it seemed that way as Bex and I dragged our heavy bags up the stairs, trying to keep pace.

“I hope your break was nice, ladies.” She glanced back at us. “Or as nice as can be expected under the circumstances.”

“Professor!” Mr. Mosckowitz called from stairs above us. “I need the—”

“My office. Second shelf,” she called back without missing a beat. “I have been asked to convey three very important facts to you both. The first is to remind you that what happened in London is highly classified. Anything you might have seen . . .” She stopped and stared at us over the top of her glasses. “Any
conversations
you might have had are not to be repeated to anyone—especially your classmates. These are stories you will not share on school grounds.”

Bex shot me a quick glance, and knew she’d heard the loophole too. That’s probably why Professor Buckingham didn’t waste a second before adding, “The second thing is that there will be no more trips off school grounds.” She turned to climb again. “Extracurricular or otherwise.”

Climbing up the stairs, I watched my teacher turn back to me. “I’m sure we’ve missed some, Cameron. And if we did . . . well . . . I do hope you’ll tell us.”

Before I could ask exactly
what
they might have missed, I stopped midstride and studied the wall, staring at a piece of molding used to twist and open into a passageway to the barn where we had Protection & Enforcement. The entrance was covered now—a solid wall of stone blocking it forever.

In the first-floor corridor, we passed the place where a grandfather clock used to stand, concealing a trapdoor to the mansion’s original ventilation system. . . .

Near the library, I looked for the bookcase that used to swing open to reveal a rope ladder that ran from the mansion’s basement to its roof. . . .

But it was gone. They were all gone.

Professor Buckingham must have read my mind, because she stopped at the top of the Grand Staircase and studied me.

“I think, Cameron, that you’ll find a lot of things are different.”

Armed guards stood in the foyer below us, scanning the fingerprints of my classmates, rifling through their luggage. The stained-glass windows I loved so much were covered with bulletproof glass. The Gallagher mansion had endured hundreds of years of storms and termites and overzealous seventh graders, but in that moment I knew my school was wounded, and all I could do was stand there, staring at its scars.

“They did all this for me?” I wasn’t sure how it was supposed to make me feel—flattered or safe or just really, really guilty.

The hallways were quiet. The Hall of History was dark. Below us, the last of our classmates were being cleared to come home, but nothing of the place around me felt like the home I’d left.

Well—that is, until I heard the screaming.

* * *

“You’re late!”

There was no mistaking Liz’s voice. Her accent was stronger, like it always was after a break. And yet as I turned and looked at the incredibly tiny blonde who stood in the mouth of the Hall of History, hands on hips, I was totally
not
expecting what I saw, because Elizabeth Sutton, supergenius and amazing friend, was
angry
.

Not the kind of angry that she gets when she oversleeps and wakes up to study at 6:05 a.m. and not at six sharp—not like how she gets when Bex teases her about her patented study system of color-coded flash cards. Not even the kind of angry that comes with hearing that a teacher won’t be offering assignments for extra credit.

Liz was angrier than I’d ever seen her as she looked between the two of us, then threw out her arms. “I have been so worried!” She shot toward us like an eighty-five-pound bullet, grabbing us both, squeezing with more strength than I thought humanly possible (well . . . when Liz is the human in question). I would have felt pretty lame, except Bex was totally thrown too.

“Hey there, Lizzie,” Bex said with what little breath she could draw. “Have a nice holiday?”

But I doubt Liz even heard.

“Why didn’t you two call me? Why didn’t you e-mail or write or . . .” She pulled back, then looked from me to Bex. “I told myself that you were probably busy and having fun and . . . were fine. And then I got back and I saw all the new security measures and I was
so worried
!”

Before I could say a thing, we were back in a dual headlock, and Liz was breathing deeply. And then, just as quickly, she jerked away.

“So what happened? Where’d you go? What’d you see?”

“Liz, we—”

“I’m afraid that’s classified.” Buckingham shot me a look as she spoke.

“All of it?” Liz asked.

“All of it,” Bex and I answered.

“Patricia!” Mr. Smith was running up the stairs. “We’re ready to start the—”

“Coming!” Buckingham called without even a glance. She was too busy looking at me.

“Three things,” I told her. “You said there were three things.”

“Yes, Cameron, I’ve been asked to tell you that your mother has been temporarily detained.”

“But—”

“She’s fine—I can assure you. Just a little delay. But she’s not back quite yet.”

“Patricia, Harvey seems to think we’ll only have one shot at this so . . .” Our Countries of the World teacher motioned as if to say
let’s hurry this along
. And, with that, Professor Buckingham made a move toward the stairs.

“The Welcome Back Dinner will begin shortly,” she told us. “You girls go on.”

“But . . .” I started, but then forgot what I was about to say. Because, in the foyer below us, Madame Dabney was helping a senior explain to the guards why she had a fifteenth-century saber in her duffel bag. At the end of the hall, Dr. Fibs was complaining that the entrance to the seventh-grade labs had been moved and he couldn’t find it. The Gallagher Academy was stronger than it had ever been—technically. Physically. And yet, in a way, I could almost feel it crumbling around me.

“And, Cameron,” Professor Buckingham said from the top of the stairs. “Welcome home.”

Climbing the stairs to our room, I tried not to count the secret passageways that we should have passed, but didn’t (4); or the underclassmen who suddenly stopped whispering as soon as they saw me (6); or even the number of fingerprint-sensitive doors we had to pass through to reach our suite (9).

I tried to concentrate on how cute Liz’s hair looked (because, unlike me, she can totally pull off a bob). I focused on my jetlagged body and my growling stomach (because while MI6 safe houses might be incredibly safe, they do not come particularly well stocked foodwise, let me tell you).

“So I came back a day early to show the formula for my new truth serum to Dr. Fibs,” Liz said, eyes shining. “It’s ten times more effective than Sodium Pentothal . . . and it makes your teeth whiter . . . and—”

“Wait,” I said, stopping in the door to the suite that we’d shared since seventh grade, knowing—sensing—that . . .

“Something’s different,” Bex said, easing past me into the room.

The beds were made. The curtains were open. Everything was exactly as it was supposed to be, except . . . it wasn’t. There were shoe prints on the freshly vacuumed rug, the faint smell of coffee and strong cologne.

I was stepping toward the dark bathroom, reaching for the light, when Bex yelled, “Wait!”

But it was too late. A strong hand grabbed my wrist. I saw the shadow in the bathroom mirror, looming in the dark. And I didn’t hesitate: I stepped back and grabbed the arm that grabbed at me, spinning, using my attacker’s own momentum to fling him through the open bathroom door and to the other side of our room.

He smashed into a dresser and sent a lamp crashing to the floor. Then Bex was there, lunging forward with a textbook kick. The man moved quickly, avoiding her foot by inches.

He held out his hands and opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say a word, a Louis Vuitton suitcase came flying into our room, struck the man squarely on his face, and dropped him to the floor like a stone.

“Hey, Macey,” I somehow managed to mumble through Bex’s hair as my best friend pressed me into the corner of our suite. “That was a nice—”

“Don’t move,” Macey warned. I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or the man who lay at her feet with blood pouring from his swelling nose. Macey McHenry is one of the most gorgeous girls in the world, but the expression on her face wasn’t beautiful in that moment. It was terrifying.

And yet, the man at her feet didn’t tremble. Didn’t fight.

He just shook his head and said, “Now, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

I followed his gaze to the corner of the room, where Liz was trying to decide whether or not to punch a big red button on the wall marked
PANIC BUTTON: TO BE USED IN EMERGENCIES ONLY.
I’d never seen it before, but I was fairly certain that pushing it would bring the full force of the Gallagher Academy down upon our suite.

“A strange man is in our room, Liz. Push it!” Bex ordered (sounding a tad irritated that she hadn’t been the one to hit him with a suitcase).

“No,” I blurted. I looked past the blood and swelling nose and focused on the blue eyes that I’d last seen staring at me across a cold, metal table.

“That’s right.” The man almost smiled as he stared up the four of us and said, “I’m not a stranger. Am I, Ms. Morgan?”

S
o okay, technically I
had
seen him once before, but he was still a total stranger. After all, he hadn’t given me his name in London—no rank, no serial number. I knew he had high enough clearance to be in a top secret MI6 facility and an equally top secret school. But if I didn’t know Joe Solomon, then I didn’t know any man. Especially not that man.

Unfortunately, knowing something and convincing Liz of something are two totally different things.

“But why was
he
doing the security check of our room?” she pleaded after we’d changed into our uniforms and started downstairs. “Is he on the security staff?”

“I’m not sure, Liz,” I admitted. “He’s just an agent I met in London.”

Liz was practically jogging to keep pace beside me, her hand on the banister. “So he was on your protection detail?”

I looked at Bex and shrugged. “Not exactly.”

“Did
you
meet him?” Liz asked, whirling on Bex.

“No,” Bex said truthfully. “I didn’t.”

“You left her alone?”

I’d almost forgotten that Macey was there, to tell you the truth. She’d been so quiet, walking ahead of us, but now she was standing at the bottom of the staircase, glaring up at Bex.

“I thought we agreed . . .” Macey started, then stopped suddenly.

“Agreed to what?” I asked, but got nothing. “What?” I asked again. “Did you guys get together before break and agree to never let me go someplace by myself? Or was it more like an agreement to monitor my mood and behavior so you could warn someone if I was about to crack up and do something stupid?”

My three best friends in the world looked at each other as if they’d all forgotten how to speak English. Finally, Bex said, “Both.”

The big double doors of the Grand Hall were standing open. I smelled fresh bread and heard the voices of a hundred girls talking, laughing. I was home. After weeks of running and hiding, I was finally home; but looking at my roommates, I remembered that being a Gallagher Girl isn’t about a building. It’s about a sisterhood.

I remembered that I’d never really left.

“She didn’t leave me, Macey,” I said. “They hauled me in for questioning one day, and he’s the one who did it.” I stepped toward the Grand Hall, with one last smile back at my friends. “She didn’t leave me.”

* * *

Four things came to mind as I took my regular seat at the junior table. 1) Being on the run in a foreign country is enough to make a girl seriously miss our chef’s awesome cooking. 2) The windows of the Grand Hall had been upgraded to a substance that could probably survive a direct hit from a missile. 3) The packets of sweetener on the table now bore the words “The contents of this packet have been certified psychoactive-free.”

But it was the fourth thing that I hadn’t really been expecting: silence. As soon as I sat down, it felt like the entire table—the entire hall—stopped talking.

Only Bex seemed to be immune to the silence as she threw one long leg over the bench and took her place next to Macey. “Everyone have a good holiday?” She reached for the pitcher of water at the center of the table and filled her glass. And still, the silence drew longer.

“I said,” Bex repeated slowly, “
did everyone have a nice holiday
?”

“Yes.”

“Sure.”

“Uh-huh,” everyone hurried to say, but the eyes of my classmates . . . the eyes still stayed on me: Cameron Ann Morgan, Chameleon no more.

And then, just as quickly, their gazes passed to Tina Walters.

“So, um . . . Cammie,” Tina started, “how was
your
break?”

“Our holiday was lovely, Tina,” Bex answered for me. “Thank you for asking.”

Her back was perfectly straight as she said this. She gently shook out a linen napkin and laid it across her lap. Madame Dabney would have been so very proud, but of course Madame Dabney wasn’t there—none of our teachers were—so maybe that’s why Tina felt safe putting her elbows on the table and leaning closer.

“But did they...you know...catch them?” she asked, maybe because she’s the daughter of both a spy and a gossip columnist and she wasn’t going to rest until she heard the full story. Or maybe she was just hoping for a
different
story from the one that should have been obvious to every girl in the (recently reinforced) Grand Hall.

“No, Tina,” I said carefully, “they didn’t. Not yet.”

“But they have a lot of good leads, don’t they?” Eva Alvarez asked.

“Of course they do.” Bex’s gaze found mine, the unspoken words coursing between us:
And his name is Joseph Solomon
.

“Yeah. I bet your mom and Mr. Solomon are going to find something any day now,” Anna Fetterman said, and I glanced around the Grand Hall, processing, thinking, realizing that no one had heard a rumor. Not a single one of my classmates had overheard their moms and dads whispering about rogue operatives and sleeper agents in the middle of the night.

“Yeah,” Anna said again. “Mr. Solomon will catch them.”

She nodded and smiled and sounded so sure.

I nodded and smiled and wanted to cry.

To them, Mr. Solomon wasn’t a sixteen-year-old boy who had joined the Circle. He was still the man who had walked through the double doors at the back of that very room a year and a half before.

I turned and looked at the doors and almost jumped out of my skin when they swung open—as if I’d willed it to happen, traveled back in time. I half expected to see Joe Solomon among the long line of teachers making their formal entrance down the center aisle. I felt the room around me changing as, one by one, my classmates counted heads, scanned the line, and realized someone was missing.

I was staring down at the table, unable to look, as Tina asked, “Hey, where’s Headmistress Morgan?”

Buckingham had said she wasn’t back yet. That she was detained . . . delayed. And delayed meant running late. Delayed meant “back in a flash.”

Buckingham hadn’t said
gone
.

“She’s got to be here,” I said flatly, certain Tina had missed her. “My mom
has
to be back by now,” I said, despite the fact that Professor Buckingham was moving to my mother’s place behind the podium at the front of the room.

I was standing, desperate for a better look, when Buckingham asked, “Women of the Gallagher Academy, who comes here?” and every girl in the room stood too.

The hall echoed. “We are the sisters of Gillian.”

“Why do you come?”

“To learn her skills. Honor her sword. And keep her secrets,” my classmates replied, but I didn’t say the words. I was too busy staring at Professor Buckingham, who was standing proudly behind the Gallagher Academy crest as if that were her place—her job.

“Welcome back, ladies. I have a few announcements,” she said with no more emotion than when we’d stood in the Hall of History and she’d told me my mother had been detained.

“Headmistress Morgan is not able to be with us tonight, so it’s my duty to inform you that Joe Solomon will not be teaching our Covert Operations courses this semester.”

She said it just like that—no excuses, no explanations—as a gasp went through the room.

“Fortunately, the Gallagher Academy has a long list of alumni and friends from which it can choose its faculty. Therefore, I am pleased to welcome an operative who has excelled on many continents, working in some of the most challenging circumstances that one can experience in the clandestine services.”

I knew what she was going to say, of course. A part of me had known it as soon as I had felt the hand on my arm and heard the voice—long before Liz asked her questions. When I turned, I saw those blue eyes staring back at me. I heard Professor Buckingham say, “Please join me in welcoming Agent Edward Townsend.”

Watching the man from London make his way down the center aisle, a hundred thoughts rushed through my mind: Who is this guy, really? What does he want with us? Can a suitcase really do that much damage? But Liz was the one who asked what my roommates and I were all thinking.

“We don’t like him, do we?”

“No,” Bex answered for me as our new CoveOps teacher made his way to the front of the room. “I don’t think we do.”

He looked directly at me as he passed, but he didn’t wink—didn’t smile. (Of course, technically, he probably just didn’t want to turn his back on Macey.)

“This is probably a good thing, Cam.” I could feel Liz staring at me. “The only way your mom and Mr. Solomon would miss the start of school is if they’re really close to finding something big. They’ll find it and then they’ll be back.”

“I bet Mr. Solomon is this close to catching the Circle.” She looked at me. “Right?”

I know this is going to sound crazy, but when you’re a spy, your life isn’t defined by the lies you tell, but by the truths. A lie wouldn’t change anything. I sat there, numb, knowing that the truth . . . the truth could set me free.

And that was how I found the strength to whisper, “Mr. Solomon
is
the Circle.”