Not if I Save You First

by Ally Carter

  He was aware, faintly, of Mr. Manchester shifting, saying “Maddie” like it was some kind of warning. “Logan’s parents just asked if he could come here for a bit,” her dad finished.

  Logan wondered how much Maddie’s dad knew. It was clear Maddie knew nothing. Not about Logan repeatedly slipping his detail or Charlie getting fired. Not about the poker club he’d been busted for running out of the Lincoln Bedroom last February, or how he’d gotten really good at forging his father’s signature and had sold ten thousand dollars’ worth of stuff on eBay before someone at the State Department figured out what he was doing and shut him down.

  Logan had started six different social media accounts in the names of former presidential pets, and three were still operational. But if the sixteen followers of @SocksTheCat were wondering why Socks suddenly had so many … well … socks (and jackets, and an old copy of The Call of the Wild) no one was saying so.

  No. Maddie didn’t know about any of that. Maddie only knew that they used to be friends, and she looked like maybe that was a decision she might have come to regret.

  Logan turned back to Mr. Manchester. “I’m glad to see you looking so well, sir.”

  Maddie’s dad laughed and slapped him on the back. “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

  Logan smiled, but Maddie’s voice was cold. “That’s not funny.”

  And Logan remembered.

  Blood. Cold tile and the way the shots were quieter than they should have been, and yet the sound seemed to reverberate forever.

  “Mad, it’s okay,” her dad said, but Logan got the feeling that it wasn’t—that it really wasn’t okay at all.

  “How have you been, Mad Dog?” Logan asked, but Maddie just glared at him.

  “Awesome!” she said, but Logan was 98 percent certain she was being facetious. It quickly became 100 percent when Mr. Manchester said “Mad” and she spun on him.

  “I’d ask if I could go to my room, but I don’t have one.”

  Then she turned and headed toward the house.

  But it wasn’t a house. Not really. From where they stood, Logan could see a wooden porch and a steep roof over rough wooden walls made from logs that looked as big around as boulders.

  Mr. Manchester’s hand was firm as it landed on Logan’s back. “Come on in. Let’s get you settled.”

  Another helicopter was dropping to the ground just then and silt and gravel whirled, spinning in the air. Mr. Manchester had to shout over the noise.

  “You go on!” Two agents were hopping out of the helicopter. “I’ll get these guys set up.”

  Mr. Manchester shoved Logan’s bags into his arms and pushed him toward the cabin. And Maddie.

  Logan could hear men shouting. A crew was already unloading huge crates, and someone was setting up a tent. Soon there’d be cameras in the trees and a secure satellite signal trained on this location. But only two agents were staying behind. Logan’s dad had been adamant about that.

  There would be no chef. No housekeeper. No butler or driver or even someone to wash his sheets. Logan wasn’t on vacation. He would have a two-agent detail because that was the minimum, but other than that, his parents would have been just as happy to drop him off in the middle of nowhere and forget about him until the country had a new president.

  A pair of small boots sat beside the door of the cabin, so Logan stopped on the porch and took his off as well. When he knocked, the door swung open, and he couldn’t help but ease inside.

  Logan wasn’t really sure what he’d expected. Maybe a moose’s head over a roaring fire, a bear-skin rug and steaming mugs of hot chocolate. But it wasn’t like that.

  There was something like a kitchen in what could have been a small hallway, with a stove and a curtain on a rod. Instead of a fireplace, he saw a black stove with a big pile of wood stacked not far away. There were shelves covered with books. A few small, dirty windows and floor lamps provided the only light. There were two doors. Through one, he saw a bed and a dresser. The other went out the back through the kitchen.

  “It’s not much, but it’s home.”

  Maddie didn’t sound ashamed. She just sounded … different. Angrier and more serious somehow. She was supposed to be rolling her eyes at him, teasing him about how big he’d gotten or how silly he was to have come all the way to Alaska and not have brought her a single piece of official White House chocolate.

  Maddie was supposed to be smiling. But the girl in front of him looked like maybe she couldn’t quite remember how.

  “Where’s your room?” he asked because he had no idea what else to say.

  “Above you.”

  That’s when Logan saw the little ladder beside the door, the loft that sat above the main room, a bright quilt over a small bed.

  “That’s cool,” he said.

  “Whatever.”

  “No. I mean it,” Logan said. He’d been living at the most famous house in the world for seven years, and in its own way this small cabin was nicer and happier than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would ever be. “This is nice, Mad Dog. It’s … warm.”

  “That’s because Mad’s got a good fire going!”

  Only then did Logan realize they were no longer alone. Her father was pulling a stack of books from one of the chairs at the table. When Logan turned, he saw a cabinet with sparkly dresses that were two sizes too small for the girl he’d just met. There were old copies of teen magazines and a bottle of fingernail polish by the window. Right beside a hatchet that appeared to have sequins and rhinestones all around the handle.

  “Maddie.” Logan practically exhaled the word, finally seeing something of the girl he used to know in the angry young woman with the utterly fascinating mouth.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I—”

  Logan knew he was supposed to say something. Pay her a compliment. Maybe grovel. His father always said that women expected a great deal of groveling, but Logan didn’t know what to say. And, luckily, at that moment a totally different noise filled the air.

  Ringing.

  When you live in the White House, your whole world is one nonstop chorus of ringing phones, but something about the sound didn’t belong in that small cabin.

  There were no power lines. No phone lines. No water lines or gas lines. Maddie’s world was pretty much line-free. Confused, Logan stole a glance at his best friend, but she wouldn’t look at him.

  Which meant she probably wasn’t his best friend anymore.

  The phone rang again, and all Logan could do was watch as something passed between Maddie and her father, a don’t-pretend-you’re-capable-of-ignoring-that look.

  “I’ll call them back,” Mr. Manchester said. “Now, Logan. Are you hungry? I make a pretty mean pot of chili and Maddie’s got some—”

  “Base to Ridge Center. Ridge Center, do you read? Ridge Center, this is Base.” The voice that filled the air was scratchy, and it took Logan a moment to see the old-fashioned radio that sat on a cluttered desk. “Ridge Center, do you read me?”

  “Go ahead,” Maddie told her father. “It must be important.”

  “Sorry, guys,” Maddie’s dad said as he sat on an old metal office chair and spun, reached for the microphone and answered. “Hello, Base, you’ve got Ridge Center. Go.”

  “Hey … Center. We’ve got a storm … in.” The woman’s words were spiked with static, coming in fits and starts.

  Maddie’s dad just laughed a little and pressed the button on the microphone. “It’s Alaska, Base. Storms are always moving in.”

  It took a moment for the woman to answer. “This one’s not so normal.”

  Maybe it was the tone of the woman’s voice or the eerie, crackling static that filled the cabin, but Logan thought he could actually feel the air change when Maddie’s father looked back at his daughter.

  He pressed the button on the microphone. “How not normal?”

  After a beat the woman answered, “We need you to … a run tomorrow morning before … hits.�
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  Logan watched Maddie’s face. It wasn’t disappointment. She didn’t roll her eyes. But it was like a string ran between her and her father, something pulled too tight for too long. He was afraid that it might snap.

  “No can do, Base,” her dad said. “I just got home.”

  Home. This place in the middle of nowhere, this building that was something between a cabin and a shack. This was home. And Logan wondered if Maddie felt the same.

  “I’m sorry, Mike. I wouldn’t ask if … emergency. We’ve got a group of scientists that were supposed to … resupplied in three days, but if this thing is half as bad as … won’t make it then, and … needs medication. This thing might be bad enough that we can’t make it in after, and—”

  “I read you, Base.” Maddie’s dad’s gaze never left his daughter’s. “I’ll leave at first light.”

  Logan heard a door close, but more than anything he felt Maddie’s absence. In a way, he realized, he’d been feeling it for years.

  “I’m sorry,” Logan said, and he meant it. He really did. He was sorry that he’d ditched Charlie. Sorry Charlie had been fired. Sorry that he’d come here and upset whatever fragile ecosystem Maddie and her father had made for themselves.

  But most of all Logan was sorry that Maddie no longer smiled when she looked at him. He was sorry that the girl he used to know was gone.

  Dear Logan,

  I haven’t been eaten by a bear yet. That’s the good news. But I think a bear might have eaten your letters.

  That’s the bad.

  Maddie

  Maddie didn’t turn the light on. Maybe because days were always short in winter, and even though she knew the solar panels would still get some sun and the wind never would stop blowing, she didn’t want to drain their batteries just the same. Maybe it was because she knew she should be trying to sleep because at least eight hours was absolutely essential for good skin and clear eyes. All the beauty magazines said so.

  Or maybe Maddie just didn’t want anyone to see the light that she would shine beneath the curtain of her “room.”

  That’s why she lay, unmoving, for what felt like hours in the little nest her father had built during their first winter in Alaska. It was always warmer up where she slept and safe away from any animals that might come calling in the middle of the night. But Maddie liked it mostly because she could pull the curtain and have some privacy, even if it was the kind of privacy one couldn’t stand in fully upright and enjoy.

  But that night Maddie stayed perfectly still, staring through the darkness until she couldn’t take it anymore. Then she couldn’t stop herself from reaching down between the mattress and the wall and wiggling her fingers until she found it.

  The picture was folded into quarters, and thick lines creased the image. She knew each and every inch of it by heart … and still she reached for her emergency flashlight, risked a little light in order to look at it again.

  Maddie still had that dress. Or parts of it. Their second winter in Alaska, Maddie had read every book the Juneau library had on learning how to sew, and over the years she’d turned all of her old clothes into new clothes. She’d saved the shiny white dress with the silver sequined sash for last. Now it was a jacket that might still fit, but Maddie had never, ever worn it except when she wanted to feel pretty sometimes in the darkest parts of winter.

  It was hard to believe that it had once been such a pretty dress. Or that she’d been that happy girl. She wanted to believe that she’d forgotten Logan’s face, but she hadn’t. She knew him as soon as she saw him. Even though he now looked like a version of Logan that had been stretched and pulled and maybe dosed with some kind of magic potion to make him approximately three times his original size.

  But in the picture—in her mind—they were the same height, and he had deep dimples and a mischievous grin and he kept his arm around her, the two of them ready for whatever adventures lay ahead.

  As long as they could face them together.

  Maddie’s cheeks were wet then, and she reminded herself for the millionth time that she was never going to cry over Logan. Never, ever again. Then she took the photo and held it at the creases. It was time, she knew—time to tear it right down the center, rip it into a million pieces and throw them on the fire.

  But she slipped it back between the wall and the mattress instead, back where it wouldn’t hurt her anymore.

  She closed her eyes and rolled over in her bed. She was going to sleep, she told herself. And when she woke up, maybe it would all just be a dream.

  But that’s when Maddie heard it.

  There’s a certain kind of noise that people make when they’re trying not to make any noise at all, and right then the cabin was full of it.

  Feet scraping and banging against chair legs, cabinet doors opening and closing in the dark. Maddie eased down her ladder and flipped on the floor lamp by the desk, but her father didn’t whirl. He wasn’t surprised. He’d made a career out of never, ever being surprised.

  “How’s the weather?” Maddie asked.

  Her father shook the match in his hand, forcing it out, and Maddie saw the kindling in the stove catch. Soon the cabin would be filled with the smell of wood smoke and coffee.

  “It’s holding,” her dad said with a glance out the window, as if it might have changed in the twenty seconds since he’d last looked. “Go back to bed, Mad.”

  It wasn’t that early. Days are just short in Alaska at the beginning of winter. And the truth was, Maddie was the kind of tired that sleep couldn’t really fix.

  “When will you be back?” she asked.

  “Tonight. If the weather holds.”

  She heard what he wasn’t saying—that this was a big storm. It had to be to scare people who had lived in extreme weather most of their lives. But she also knew that nothing would keep her father from her. Absolutely nothing. And sometimes that was the scariest thing of all.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “I’ll be okay. So don’t take any chances. Please. If it’s bad, don’t risk it. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Sounds like you’re the one who’s worried.”

  “You’re about to fly a plane the size of a large car over mountains and glaciers and through what might possibly be the storm of the year. In Alaska. So I’m allowed some trepidation.”

  “Well, I’m leaving my teenage daughter alone with a boy, so I’m allowed some, too.”

  Maddie couldn’t help it—she glanced at the closed door to her father’s room. Logan was in there on a small cot the Secret Service guys must have brought with them when they set up their little base camp near the trees.

  Logan.

  “You going to be okay without me?” her father asked. Maddie forced herself to look away from the door.

  “It’s been six years, Dad. If I weren’t okay without you here, I’d be dead by now.”

  “That’s not what I mean, Mad. And I think you know it.”

  Maddie turned away from the door and the boy who had turned away from her. “Whatever.”

  “Mad—”

  “I’m not going to kill the president’s son.” No matter how much I might want to, she silently added.

  “That’s not what I’m asking.” Her father eased a little closer. Outside, the sun was coming up, and the cabin was the color of glowing coals. “Are you okay?” he tried again.

  “I’m fine.”

  Her father filled a thermos with coffee, took it to his pack, then added his satellite phone and his wallet. “I thought you’d be happier to see him. You two were always so close.”

  “Yeah.” Maddie filled a cup of coffee. “We were.”

  The cabin was bright enough that her father could see her face, read her eyes.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t go.”

  “No. You have to go. You know you do. We’re fine.”

  “There are two agents in the tents outside. They’re in charge of security, but Logan … Logan’s supposed to be roughing it.”


  “Oh, I’m sure he’s in the lap of luxury.”

  “I mean it, Maddie. Make him haul wood. And tote water. And clean fish and fix the roof and whatever else you were going to do. His parents want him to carry his weight. I didn’t mean to put this on you but …”

  “I’m okay,” she said. “We’ll be okay.”

  “If you’re sure,” her dad said.

  Maddie forced a smile. “Of course.”

  How many times had Maddie watched her father fly away? Too many to count, that was for sure. In the beginning, he took her with him. Her first taste of Alaska came at six thousand feet, soaring over glaciers, skirting above mountains, touching down on lakes so clear and cold that you could practically skip across them on bits of glacier ice, live like the seals that lay sunning themselves on the cold, wet land.

  And then Maddie got older and was allowed to stay on her own for an hour. A day. A night. Her father was never, ever gone more than forty-eight hours, though. That was a rule that neither of them ever said aloud. He’d also never left her Not Alone before. And Maddie wasn’t at all sure how to take it.

  She crept to the closed door of her father’s room. There was no light. No movement. It was almost like it was empty, just like always. But it wasn’t, and that was a fact that Maddie could never, ever let herself forget.

  She started the day’s work by drawing the curtain over the kitchen door and heating the water. If the storm was bad, then this might be her last chance for a while, and she felt like she needed her armor for what was coming.

  To Maddie, armor meant nail polish. And lip gloss. Really, lip gloss was essential to a girl’s self-defense, she was certain. And clean hair. Oh, have mercy, did she ever need clean hair.

  She worked as quickly and quietly as she could, and soon she was sinking into a tub full of hot sudsy bubbles, leaning her head back and letting the warm water wash over her.

  She was never really warm in Alaska. Sure, sometimes she was hot. And sometimes she was freezing. But a nice, comfortable warm was something she only found in the bath, and so Maddie let herself close her eyes and sink lower and …

  “Hey, Mad. I— Sorry!” the voice came from behind her, and Maddie found herself bolting upright and then sliding down beneath a thick blanket of bubbles.