That, if you drive all night and only stop for essential, the Blackthorne Institute for Boys is only ten hours away from the Gallagher Academy.
Somehow it had always felt much farther.
_____________
"Are you still mad at me?" Zach whispered as we crossed the Pennsylvania border. His leg was pressing against mine, but I didn't think about how if felt, because my mother (who is a spy) was riding shotgun in the front seat, and my roommates (who are future spies) were surrounding us in the van. And besides, it doesn't take a lot of training to know that leg-pressing can seriously divert a girl from little things. Like trying not die.
So I didn't say a word.
"Ohh," Zach whispered. "The silent treatment."
"I'm not talking to you, Zach," I whispered, whirling on him, "because I know you're not going to really say anything anyway. Should I be asking you more questions you refuse to answer?"
As I turned and faced forward again, watched the yellow lines of the highway flying by, I expected more excuses. More lies. But instead, Zach just leaned across me and whispered to Liz, "She's cute when she's silent."
I didn't utter a single word.
Not when he ate the last of the M&M's.
Not when he put his head only shoulder and tried to take a nap.
Not when he and Liz thumb wrestled (despite that fact that I was sitting between them) for better part of the state of Pennsylvania.
Not when Liz and Macey finally fell asleep and he leaned close to me and whispered,
"Are you sure you wanna do this, Gallagher Girl?"\par
Nope. Not even then. I didn't have anything else to say.
At dusk, the silence broke as I heard my mother say, "Pull over here."
Bex pulled into the parking lot of an old gas station by the side of a narrow two-lane highway. Weeds grew up between abandoned pumps. Rusty machines bore the ancient logos of Coke and Pepsi.
We felt utterly alone, but in a split second, all that changed.
A dark car was approaching from the south, traveling way too fast. Tires screeched as it slid sideways into the gravel lot, coming to a stop three feet the bumper of Liz's van.
"Mom!" I shouted, bolting upright, blood pounding in my ears. But before I could fully process the worst-case scenario that was playing through my mind, my best friend sat up straighter too and yelled, "Mom?" a second later, Bex was throwing open the van door and running to her mother, who was climbing out of the other car.
"Hello, darling," Mrs. Baxter said, throwing her arms around her daughter. But I noticed her gaze never left my mother's eyes.
"Anything, Grace?" Mom asked, climbing out of the van.
Bex's mother shook her head. "Nothing. You're clear."
At that moment a white pickup appeared on the deserted road, this time traveling from the north. It pulled into the abandoned station, and somehow I wasn't surprised at all to see Bex's father behind the wheel.
He hoped out of the truck. "All clear on my end, Rachel. You're free."
"Thanks, Abe." She sounded relieved, and to tell you the truth, id didn't like it. Because for there to relief, there had to have been fear. And fear . . . well . . . I didn't want to think about that.
Liz poked me. "These are Bex's parents!"
I looked at my mother, who shrugged. "You didn't expect me not to recruit at least a little grown-up back up, did you?"
Macey stood on my other side and exclaimed, "We're going on a mission with Bex's parents!" as if wondering whether or not we were ready for Baxters to the power of three.
But my mother was shaking her head. "Actually, girls, for unsanctioned ops, it's best to minimize the exposure of official agents."
It's rule as old as espionage itself: Don't do yourself what you can get someone else to do for you. There are a million harmless reasons why a bunch of Gallagher Girls might break into Blackthorne (jokes, dares, pranks, etc.). For a bunch of grown-ups, not so much.
Bex knew all this - I know she did - and yet she was looking from my mother hers and then back again. "So why are you . . ." she started, then trailed off.
"They're not here to help us." My voice was flat against the wind. "They're here to guard me." A look passed across my roommates' faces as if no time at all had passed since November - as if we were still standing on a dark street in D.C.
"Do you have the journal?" Grace asked.
"No." Mom shook her head, then pointed to my roommates and me. "They beat me to it."
And that was when things got really weird.
I mean, my mom had broken into Sublevel Two!
My mom had been after my dad's journal.
My mom had been person hot on our heels, creeping through the darkness in the depths of our school, which meant, I guess, that Agent Townsend hadn't been.
I was still shaking my head, trying to wrap my mind around that - around everything -
when another car appeared on the highway, and Macey cried, "Abby?"
It almost sounded like a question, and with one glance at my aunt I saw why. Her glossy hair had lost its shine. And when she walked towards us, the bounce that I had come to know in her step was gone.
"Hey, Squirt," she said, but it sounded forced. "Playing hooky, I see."
I shrugged. "Maybe this is a CoveOps field exercise?"
She raised an eyebrow. "I know Agent Townsend, Cams."
"Oh," Bex said.
""Which is why I am more than willing to take part in this little extracurricular assignment." She looked at her sister. "Well . . . one of the reasons."
My mom turned to Mr. Baxter. "What are our friends at Six saying, Abe?"