All Fall Down (Embassy Row 1)

She’s like a little camo-clad machine gun as she talks. A little camo-clad machine gun who has a point.

“Okay,” I say.

“Good.” Megan nods. “Let’s go.”

Darkness looks different in Adria than in anyplace else on earth. The flickering yellow of the streetlight mixes with the too-bright white of the moon. I look up and watch it bounce off the tile roofs of the narrow houses that stand side by side at attention. There are iron balconies and window boxes filled with white flowers. It’s like something from a postcard — from a dream.

All but one house in the row.

It keeps its shutters pulled tight even on the prettiest of days. Its locks have been upgraded and the owner never, ever sits on the stoop and talks and laughs like the other people on the block. This man comes and goes at irregular hours, and no one ever gets asked inside.

It looks like a row house.

It feels like a fortress.

At 11:00 p.m., the buildings appear dark gray against an inky-blue sky. The colors are too rich, though. Almost like watching a cartoon. But it’s no drawing — certainly not the dark figure that dashes across the rooftops, swooping and jumping like a low-flying bird. When it does a full twist mid-jump, I know the bird is just showing off.

“Focus, Rosie,” I say, forgetting that she can hear me.

“I need to concentrate here, Grace,” she replies, and I startle. There are always too many voices in my head. I really didn’t need three more. But Megan insisted we wear the little earbuds that she smuggled out of the security center of the embassy. I’ve been back less than two weeks, and already I’ve turned the sweetest girl on Embassy Row into a thief and a conspiracy theorist. Even for me, it is an impressively quick act of corruption.

“Okay, guys.” Rosie sounds slightly out of breath but more alive than I’ve ever heard her. “I’m at our entry point. Waiting for your go.”

And now I’m certain of two things.

1. We might actually try this ridiculous thing.

2. We all watch entirely too many movies.

Megan picks up a small tablet that shows a closed-circuit feed of the prime minister’s office. Standing at attention not far from the PM’s side is the Scarred Man.

“Are we clear?” Rosie asks again.

“Go. Go. Go,” Megan says.

Noah and I look at each other, then both reach for the doors of the van. In a flash, we’re out and crossing the street.

Megan has explained the basics. The rest I know from my dad.

Breaching a secure location isn’t about speed. It’s about efficiency. Going fast won’t do you any good if you spend half your time turning over floor lamps and setting off alarms.

So I know what to do. I know how to do it. After all, we’ve gone over it a dozen times. I’ve seen it in my sleep a dozen more. But it feels like someone else is inside my body — like I am watching from afar — as Noah, Megan, and I walk across the street.

On the off-chance the neighbors are watching, we walk and do not run. I laugh like a normal girl would (but not too loudly) and talk to my friends (but not too excitedly) and, most of all, I watch the small window in the door of the house that is almost always dark. When the top of a tiny head appears there, I’m ready.

The door swings open.

“What took you so long?” Rosie says with a wink.

The light on the security system is blinking red. A beeping sound is counting down. But Megan already has a tiny device out and is doing something to the keypad on the wall by the door. I see numbers spiraling across the screen, running through a sequence one by one, pecking out the code.

And still the chime keeps beeping.

“Megan …” Noah warns.

“Just a —” Another beep comes, longer, louder. Then it stops. “Got it.” Megan practically exhales the words, then leans against the wall and takes a deep breath. For the first time, she looks as terrified as Noah.

“Nice system.” Rosie sounds impressed.

Noah turns, taking in the first floor. “Not a nice place.”

He has a point. For all the security the Scarred Man has, you would think he’d be protecting art. Jewels. At the very least some high-end electronics. But the narrow room in which we stand has a fireplace and one very worn chair. There are no books on the shelves. We walk on and find very little food in the kitchen.

“It’s like a safe house,” Megan says.

“But it’s his house,” Noah adds. It’s easy to forget that, according to public records, the Scarred Man has lived here for ten years.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s split up and do this. I want us out of here fast.”

No one complains. No one asks any questions. Megan goes to work on the computer, and Rosie climbs onto Noah’s shoulders and starts installing cameras in the light fixtures and smoke detectors.

“What should I do?” I ask Megan.

“Don’t break anything,” she tells me.

I wish I had a job — something to do — but the truth is, I would be useless at it. Megan isn’t just smart about computers. She knows this about me, too. I am in the Scarred Man’s house, and all I can do is look at the bed, thinking, The man who killed my mother sleeps here. In the bathroom, I look into the mirror and imagine his face staring back at me. The face that I saw through the smoke and the fire. The face that has haunted me for years.

Carefully, I run my fingers across the top of the dresser. A little loose change lies on the table by the bed. In his walk-in closet there are five dark suits, identical in cut, and seven white shirts all fresh from the dry cleaner and still in their plastic bags. It looks more like a hotel room than a home. Like he fully expects to pack everything up and be gone at a moment’s notice. Like he knows that someday the ghosts will catch up to him.

He just doesn’t know today is that day.

I don’t feel any pain as my fingernails dig into my palms. There is no blood, just a steady, constant throbbing to tell me that I am still alive. I am alive but my mother is dead. And I’m in the home of the man who killed her.

“Oh no.”

Megan’s voice isn’t quite a shout, and that is why it’s scary.

“What is it?” Noah asks.

“We’ve got to go. We’ve got to go now.”

“Where’s Grace?” someone says.

I hear the question in my ear, but I can’t take my eyes off of the leather jacket that hangs in the back of the closet. It’s a deep, worn brown. The sleeves are so soft that I know that it used to be his favorite. The position in the closet tells me that it isn’t anymore.