Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover (Gallagher Girls 3)

"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.

"Knew," Liz corrected, unwilling to accept partial credit when she'd gotten an answer right.

"Knew," Macey went on, "I wasn't in Switzerland. How'd you find me here?"

I looked out over the lake and thought about a day not that long ago. "This is where I would have come," I said, not realizing until then that it was true.

"Me too," added Bex.

We all looked at Liz, who nodded. "Yeah."

Macey laughed. It was so quick and clean that I could have sworn it sent a ripple coursing through the lake. "Are they really still searching in Switzerland?"

"By now they've widened the net to include half of Northern Europe," Bex said with a grin.

"Still think they only let you in because of who your family is?" I asked.

"Yes." Macey's answer shocked me. I'd been in the process of getting up. The coarse wood of the dock was pinching my hands as they supported too much of my weight, and yet I couldn't move,

Macey smiled. She cocked an eyebrow and said, "But that's not why they keep me."

Of all the tests Macey McHenry had passed in the last year, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that that was the biggest one.

"Besides," she said playfully batting her eyes, "my father is potentially the second most powerful man in the country."

"Well," Liz said softly, "not for much longer."

"Why?" I asked, looking at her.

"Because the polls opened two hours ago."

Spies are great at pretending, so we made believe that the bad part was over; we acted as if everything was going to be okay. We rolled down the windows and sang at the top of our lungs and tried not to think about why we had to make unscheduled stops, and turn without signaling, and dozens of other countersurveillance techniques that are the sign of really bad drivers and really good spies.

But no matter how good we were at vehicular countersurveillance, there was at least one dangerous encounter that I knew we'd never outrun.

"We have her."

The truck stop was loud—full of the sounds of diesel engines and the clank of plates and silverware being cleared from greasy tables—and for a moment, I was afraid my mother hadn't heard me. "I said, we've got—"

"Yes, Professor Buckingham," Mom said slowly, and at first I started to correct her. I wanted to say that she'd mistaken the sound of my voice. Badly. But then Mom talked on. "It is very good to hear from you. In fact, I've been wondering where you are now, Patricia?" Mom asked, and I knew that someone was close.

"We're on our way to you," I said, not wanting to say too much over the phone. "Mom, I'm sorry we ran away." With every breath, the words came faster. "We tried to tell Madame Dabney, but everyone was so busy looking in Switzerland, but I just knew in my gut she wasn't there, and—"

"Of course things are ready for you here. If Macey has completed her biology test and is ready, the Secret Service should bring her here to D.C. so that she can join her parents as soon as possible."