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

But as soon as I reached the door to my mother's office, I could see that what really set this Sunday night apart was that, this time, my mother was not alone.

"Hey, squirt. I'm crashing." My aunt winked as she pulled a grape from a bowl of fruit on the corner of my mother's desk. "Your mom and cooking," Abby said, grabbing me by the hand and spinning me around to the music, "this, I had to see."

"No one is forcing you to eat anything," Mom chided, but Abby just kept dancing, pulling me in and out until she whispered in my ear, "I've got an antidote for ninety-nine percent of the food-borne illnesses known to man in my purse, just in case."

And then I couldn't help myself. I laughed. For a second, it seemed right. For a second, it seemed safe. Everything was different…but familiar. The dancing. The music. The sounds and smells of Mom making her famous (in a bad way) goulash. It was as if I were having flashes of someone else's life. And then it hit me: it was my life. With Dad.

Dad used to listen to that music. Dad and I used to dance in our kitchen in D.C.

And suddenly I didn't feel like dancing anymore.

Mom watched me walk to the radio and turn down the volume.

"Oh, Cam," my aunt said with a sigh. "Look at you. All grown up and breaking hearts…" She raised her eyebrows. "And rules. Honestly, as an aunt, I don't know which makes me prouder."

"Abigail," Mom warned softly.

"Rachel," my aunt mimicked her sister's motherly tone.

"Perhaps the United States Secret Service should not be encouraging rule-breaking—especially at this particular school during this particular year."

"Perhaps the headmistress of the Gallagher Academy should try to remember that a spy's life is, by definition, rules-optional," my aunt lectured back.

"And while we're on the subject," Mom said, her voice rising, "perhaps the United States Secret Service should consider that it might be unwise to tell Madame Dabney's eighth graders how to make their own chloroform out of Kleenex and lemon wedges?"

"Yeah, I couldn't believe they hadn't figured out how to do that yet," Abby said, as if the standards for her sisterhood had gone down considerably.

"That technique was banned in 1982!"

"Hey, Joe said—"

"I don't care what Joe says!" Mom snapped, and this time her voice carried fire. "Abigail, rules exist for a reason. Rules exist because when people don't follow them, people get hurt." The words lingered in the air. My mom seemed to be shaking as she finished. "Or maybe you've forgotten."

I've known Aunt Abby my whole life, but I've never seen her look like she looked then. She seemed torn between tears and fury while the storm raged outside and the goulash congealed and I wondered whether any of us would ever feel like dancing again.

"Rachel, I—"

"Get her."

I don't know why I said it. One minute I was standing there watching them argue, and the next, the secret I'd carried with me all the way from Sublevel Two was breaking free.

Mom inched closer. Abby stepped away. And outside, the rain was falling against the mansion walls like the tide.

"What did you say, Cammie?" my mother asked in the manner of someone who already knows the answer to her question.

"I remembered …" I sank to the leather sofa. Mom inched closer, but behind her, Aunt Abby gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head—a warning. Be careful what you wish for. "I remembered something…about Boston. I put Preston on that window-washing thing, and they didn't really…care." Mom was easing onto the coffee table in front of me, moving slowly as if afraid to wake me from that terrible dream. "They said get her."

"Cam—" Mom started, but flashes filled my eyes again—a gray door, a black helicopter, and finally a white piece of paper fluttering to the ground.

"Preston's agenda," I whispered, but this time I didn't look at my mother—I looked at my aunt. "He was never supposed to be there, was he?"

Mom started to say something, but Aunt Abby walked past her and dropped onto the leather couch beside me. "Nope."

Some people might wonder why it mattered—we'd known for weeks that Macey was in danger. But sitting there, listening to the storm that had been a long time coming, I couldn't help but feel like it made all the difference in the world. The kidnappers weren't there for the son and daughter of two of the most powerful families in the country—they were there for only one of them.

And she was one of my best friends.

"It's true, kiddo," Mom said. "Preston Winters wasn't supposed to be there, so we can only assume that he wasn't the target."

I nodded. She smoothed my hair. But nothing could keep my heart from pounding as I asked, "Who were they?"

"More than three hundred groups have claimed credit for the attack," my aunt said, then added with a shrug, "which means at least 299 of them are lying."

"The ring," I said, closing my eyes and seeing the image that was burned into my mind. "I drew you a picture of that ring. Have you—"

"We're looking into it, kiddo," Mom said softly. I bit my lip, needing to know where at least some of the pain I was feeling was coming from.

"Why Macey?" I blurted, turning to my mother. "She's the daughter of very powerful people, Cam. They have very powerful enemies."

And then I asked the question more terrifying than anything I'd seen on the roof. "Is she going to be okay?"

My mother and aunt looked at each other, two CoveOps veterans who had seen enough to know that there was no easy answer to my question. "The Secret Service is good, Cam," my mother said. "Your aunt Abby is very good." She looked at my aunt as if no amount of sibling rivalry could ever come between them. So I sat there for a long time thinking about sisters. About our sisterhood.

And then suddenly it seemed funny. It seemed crazy. We were in the middle of the Gallagher Academy, where the people are both crazy and really, really good at being crazy about security. Of course Macey was going to be okay,

"Well, at least we already go to the safest school in the world. And it's not like Macey's going anywhere, right?" I said with a smile—totally not expecting my aunt to smile back and say, "Yeah…well…Cam, have you ever been to Cleveland?"

Chapter Eleven

Ohio has twenty electoral votes and a history of high voter turnout. It has a governor from one party and two senators from the other. In September, it also had a lot of women who were unsure about who to vote for but who were certain about one thing: Macey McHenry was a brave, brave girl for surviving what happened to her in Boston.

Macey McHenry was going to be worth a lot of votes.

And so she was going there. Alone.

Well … if by alone you mean with one of the most honored Gallagher Girls in years (who, reportedly, looks a little like me when I wear my hair back), a caravan of fourteen Secret Service agents of her own personal detail, and at least thirty advance team members who were tracking her father's every move. But in the most important sense she was alone. Because she was going without us.

Monday morning, Macey was up at five a.m. and together we all walked her downstairs, where the smell of cinnamon rolls wafted in from the kitchen. Outside, the sun was coming up in the distance. A hazy light fell over the horizon, and through the windows I could see the guards doing a sweep of the woods.

Liz was wearing her E=mc2 pajamas, and Bex's hair was looking particularly out of control, but still we paraded Macey through the mansion until we saw Aunt Abby.

She wore a dark gray pantsuit with a plain white blouse. A little plastic earpiece was already pinned to her collar, the wires disappearing down the inside of her jacket. She looked the part—she was the part. And then we handed Macey off to her without a word, the changing of the guard.

And then I went and took a shower.

And then I ate a cinnamon roll.

And I didn't hear a thing Mr. Smith said about ancient Rome and the catacombs, which if you know where to look, still provide pretty awesome access to the city.

All day long, it seemed like people kept saying exactly what I was thinking.

"Well, I guess she's probably there by now," Tina said after breakfast.

"Macey is going to get to see so many cool protection tactics," Eva remarked on our way to COW.

"She's with Abby," Liz said on our way down the Grand Staircase.

"And Abby rocks," Bex reminded me just as we parted ways with Liz and headed to the elevator for Sublevel Two.

From a purely intellectual standpoint I knew Macey was as well protected as she could possibly be, but Mr. Solomon had been teaching us for a year that being a spy isn't always about intellect—it's about instincts. And right then my instincts were telling me that it was going to be a very long day.

And that was before Mr. Solomon met us at the entrance to Sublevel Two with a stack of Winters-McHenry T-shirts and said, "Let's go."

I'd been in a helicopter with Mr. Solomon twice before. The first time I'd been blindfolded. The second, I'd just found out that there was another top secret spy school… for boys! But that day, boys and blindfolds seemed easy in comparison.

"Security threats come in how many forms, Ms. Alvarez?" Mr. Solomon asked.

"Five," Eva said, even though, technically, we hadn't covered that chapter yet.

"And who can tell me what they are?" our teacher went

on.

"Long range, short range, suicide, static …" Bex rattled, not to show off, but more like she had to say them—like they'd been on her mind for too long and she had to set them free.

"That's four," Mr. Solomon told us.

The blades of the chopper were spinning; the ground beneath us was roaring by—trees and hills, rivers and highways, towns full of normal schools and normal kids and people who would never ever know the answer to our teacher's questions.

"Internal," I said so softly that with the spinning blades and gushing winds I wondered for a second if anyone heard.

But we're Gallagher Girls. We hear everything.

"That's right," Mr. Solomon told us. "And that's the big one."

I told myself that he wasn't talking about Macey—that he didn't mean that what had happened in Boston had been orchestrated by someone inside, someone close. But rather he was speaking in general terms, reminding us all of what we knew too well, that traitors are the most dangerous people of all.

"You're going to see a lot of things today, ladies. Seasoned operatives working in the field with one primary objective. It's not about intel, and it's not about ops. It's about protection today, pure and simple."

In my mind I was already running through the scenarios that only a man like Joe Solomon could come up with. I was imagining what tests could possibly be waiting on the ground.

Bex must have been thinking along those same lines, because she asked, "What's our mission?"

"It's a hard one," Mr. Solomon warned, then smiled. "Just watch. Just listen. Just learn."

Gallagher Girls are asked to do hard things. All the time. But until that day I never really knew that the hardest mission of all is to do nothing.