Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

by Ally Carter

  One floor below us, girls were gathering for Saturday morning breakfast; up in the suites, half the junior class was probably sleeping in. The news about Macey hadn't spread yet, but it would…and I knew it was up to the people in my mother's office to make sure it didn't spread too far; so maybe that's why Joe Solomon looked at me as if we were the only two people in the room—the school. His world wasn't falling apart. He was going to hold it together—I could hold it together. I just had to…

  "Tell me everything, Ms. Morgan."

  "The last time I saw her was last night."

  "Everything."

  "At eight forty-seven p.m. last night we were in town…at the football game," I admitted, expecting him to shout or at least look confused, but Joe Solomon isn't one of the best covert operatives in the world for nothing, so he just nodded and told me to go on. "And we saw Zach."

  Maybe it was my overactive imagination, but I could have sworn that that made Mr. Solomon blink. I thought about the way he and Zach had rendezvoused in the train tunnel in Philadelphia. A dozen questions sprung to mind, but as badly as I wanted answers, I wanted Macey back more. So I said, "Do you want it verbatim?"

  He seemed to appreciate the offer but shook his head. "Not now."

  "Zach and I were talking about the Circle of Cavan—I figured it out, you know. From the ring and the sword?"

  He smiled. "I knew you would. Go on."

  "Macey overheard us. She didn't know she was related to Gilly. She wanted to know if that was why she was admitted here. She didn't know about any of it until then, and so she…ran. It was loud and crowded and I lost her." I couldn't look at him. "I'm supposed to be a pavement artist, and I lost her."

  "It's what she does, Ms. Morgan." Mr. Solomon's eyes found mine, but there was a change in him somehow. "Running," he added. "Of course, technically, her pattern is to do something to get kicked out, but that's not an option now, so she's taken matters into her own hands. Do you know what I'm saying, Ms. Morgan?"

  But sadly, I didn't.

  "Sometimes people run… to see if you'll come after them."

  I've seen Joe Solomon every school day for more than a year, but I don't think I'll ever really know him. There are times when he's one of the strongest people I've ever known, and then there are moments—like that one—when I think he might be broken, deep down, in a place that will never mend.

  And then just like that, he became my teacher again. "Is anything missing from your room?"

  I stopped for a second, closed my eyes, and visualized the space. "Her passport."

  "No clothes? No money?"

  "She has fourteen different credit cards and knows all the numbers by heart."

  Mr. Solomon looked as if he wanted to smile, as if he wanted to laugh. "She also has the most famous face in the country right now, Ms. Morgan," he told me, not a hint of worry in his voice. "I think we can track her down." But then he read my expression, and the smile slid from his lips. "What?"

  "Well," I said slowly, "remember how we had that disguise class?"

  There wasn't time for yelling. It wasn't the place for mother-daughter lessons in regret. As our teachers huddled around us, I gave them details of the items Macey had taken with her. When I finished, my mother shook her head and started for the phone. Unfortunately, Aunt Abby wasn't as easily distracted.

  "I know what I did," I said before my aunt could utter a word.

  "Do you?" There was something deeper in her eyes. She wasn't just Aunt Abby then; she was more than Macey's protector; for a split second she was the woman on the train, but then—just as quickly—that woman was gone. "You went into town alone and…and now, come Tuesday, we are going to have to produce Macey McHenry, and if we can't, every agent in the Secret Service and half the FBI is going to descend upon this mansion, Cameron, and I don't know if even your mother can keep them out. They're going to pull back carpets and knock down doors until they track Macey's every step, and in the process, they might take my head for good measure. And meanwhile, she's—" Abby placed a hand on her hip, and for the first time, I saw a holster. Like smoke and fire, I knew that somewhere there was a gun. "She's out there. She's goodness only knows—"

  "New York!" Buckingham shouted and banged down a phone. "A young woman matching Macey's description purchased a bus ticket to New York last night. And someone using one of Macey's mother's business accounts reserved a private jet to Switzerland."

  Abby looked at me. "Her family has a house there," I said. "It fits."

  Mom turned to Buckingham. "We have alumni in Switzerland?"

  "Of course," was Buckingham's reply.

  "Have them sit on her until we can get a grab team in place." Professor Buckingham turned to go, but Mom called after her. "And Patricia, tell them she's a hard target. Tell them she's one of us."

  I would have given anything for Macey to have heard that. Maybe then she would have believed me. Maybe then she wouldn't have run away. Maybe then things would have been very different. But Macey didn't hear, and that was the problem. She was half a world away. On her own. And one look at my mother's worried eyes told me that we probably weren't the only ones looking for her.

  As Abby bolted for the door, Bex, Liz, and I rushed after

  her.

  "When do we leave?" Bex said.

  "We aren't going anywhere," Abby snapped. Through the windows I could see that a chopper was already spinning its blades, waiting for her. She rushed toward the staircase, but then stopped short. "She'll be okay, you know." For a second, Abby was her old self as she cocked a hip. "Trust me."

  I know, scientifically speaking, that all days have twenty-four hours. One thousand four hundred and forty minutes. Eighty- six thousand, four hundred seconds. But even Liz admitted that the days that followed seemed longer, as we stared out every window we passed, expecting the gates to swing open, to see Aunt Abby and Macey coming down the lane.

  But the gates stayed closed. The lane stayed empty. And Macey stayed gone.

  By Monday night, a feeling was resurfacing inside of me like a virus that had been dormant for years, as I thought about when my parents would go away for days or weeks on end; before the days when I knew my father wasn't coming back at all. Walking downstairs for supper, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'm really great at disappearing, but Macey might have been a whole different kind of gone.

  "Oops, sorry," someone said, just as I looked up to see Tina Walters running up the stairs. The sign above the Grand Hall told me we were going to be conversing that night in Portuguese; the aromas that filled the foyer told me we were having lasagna. But something in the way Tina looked at me told me that none of the junior class was feeling very hungry.

  "You okay, Cam?" she asked, and I nodded, but for some reason I couldn't move out of her way.

  "Tina, have you …" I started, then paused because I honestly couldn't quite believe what I was about to ask. "Have your sources heard anything?"

  I wanted her to tell me that Macey was okay. I would have settled for a crazy story about a girl matching Macey's description who had been staking out an ex-KGB hitman in Bucharest. I needed anything but the sight of Tina shaking her head and saying, "Not a word."

  She smiled sympathetically. "But no news can be good news, right?" she asked. "Everyone's looking for her."

  But as I looked up into the Hall of History, all I could do was stare at the sword that still stood gleaming inside its case, a sharp blade cutting through time, and whisper, "That's what I'm afraid of."

  I'm an expert on hiding. Not to brag, but it's true, and as I sat staring at my plate that night, something about Macey's disappearance didn't make sense.

  "Both disguises," I said.

  "What?" Bex asked, leaning closer.

  "Both disguises were gone when we went back—the one she wore and the one I wore."

  Then Bex grinned at me. "You thinking what I'm thinking?" she asked, and in a flash we were running up the stairs, Liz trailing along behind us.

&n
bsp; The Hall of History was dim. My mother's office door was closed, but I didn't slow down until Madame Dabney appeared out of nowhere, firmly blocking my path.

  "I need to see my mom," I blurted.

  "Oh, Cammie dear, I'm afraid your mother isn't here."

  "But I need to see her!"

  "Well, I don't doubt that, but given recent circumstances, the headmistress has gone to see Senator and Mrs. McHenry to explain why their daughter might be…delayed … in attending the campaign's watch party tomorrow night. That is, if we get her back from Switzerland in time at all,"

  Madame Dabney added just as Bex and I lurched forward.

  "But Macey's not in Switzerland!" we blurted at the exact same time.

  Madame Dabney stopped. She turned. "Why do you say this? What do you know?"

  "Well…" Bex and Liz and I glanced at each other. "It's just that she took both disguises. And you've been looking for her in Switzerland for three days. I think the reason no one has found her is because she isn't there."

  "Cameron, dear, I understand your concern, but a girl fitting Macey's description took a private plane to Switzerland—"

  "But—" I started, but Madame Dabney didn't let me finish.

  "Her passport was booked through. She's there, ladies." Madame Dabney patted my arm. "She's there. And I don't want you to worry. We'll find her."

  Walking upstairs to our suite, I couldn't help but think that either Macey deserved to be called a Gallagher Girl or she didn't; that she was either good enough or she wasn't. We couldn't have it both ways, no matter what our faculty seemed to think.

  I closed the door behind us and looked at Bex. "If you're Macey, what do you do?" I asked.

  "I stay off the grid, for starters," Bex said, and I nodded. "Credit cards and passports are amateur hour. I don't care what grade she's technically in, Macey's no amateur."

  Bex gestured as if to say it was my turn. "If I had the most recognizable face in the country and two disguises in my possession, no way I'd travel all the way to Europe without using one of them."

  Bex nodded and I looked at Liz, who shrugged.

  "I'm a nerd," she admitted. "I don't know CoveOps."

  "You know Macey," Bex whispered, and it was maybe the truest thing any one of us had said in a very long time.

  Liz settled back on her bed. I could see her flipping through the giant database that is her mind, but the answer wasn't in there—it was in her heart. So finally she took a deep breath and said, "I guess I'd just want to go someplace safe."

  The mansion was quiet. I leaned against a drafty window, watching the pieces of the puzzle float through my mind until I knew they didn't quite fit. I thought about Liz's words, and the pale, ghostly look on Macey's face as we'd stood in the too-bright light of a chilly football field. Cool air washed over my arms—I saw our roommate shiver in the wind. And then … I knew.

  "Get the keys to the Dodge, Liz," I said as I stood and started for my closet.

  Bex was already gearing up—for what, it didn't matter. But Liz studied me.

  "Where are we going?"

  "To bring our sister home."

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I don't think any girl in the history of the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women had ever run away from school before that weekend, but by Tuesday morning, the total had climbed to four.

  While Liz slept and Bex drove, I sat in the passenger seat of the Dodge, worrying that we might not find it. After all, at the end of summer, the forest had been thick with green foliage, weeds, and tall grasses lining the narrow roads. But by November, the fields were fallow, the trees were bare, and in the pale light of dawn, the whole world seemed like a mirage, or maybe just like a very good cover, and I couldn't help but think that, spy skills or not, I had been a girl with a concussion the last time I'd been there.

  Bex drove slowly down a blacktop road until, finally, I saw a gravel lane no more substantial than a trail, and said, "Turn here."

  "What is this, some kind of safe house?" Bex asked as we

  both squinted through the pale light and dense woods, and I thought about what our CoveOps teacher had said.

  "It had better be," I said as Bex came to a stop. "Mr. Solomon owns it."

  Covert Operations Report

  Operatives Morgan, Baxter, and Sutton decided to proceed on foot, considering the property's owner was a highly trained security professional (in addition to being really, really hot).

  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.