"Same story, different accent. No one has a bloody clue where they've taken him. No one seems to bloody care."
"I care."
Zach stood on the side of the dusty road, hands in his pockets. When Mrs. Baxter saw him, she smiled a little too wide.
"Hello, Zachary," she said. "It's very nice to meet you. Rachel has told us . . . It's very nice to meet you."
Zach mumbled something that sounded like "You too." ( I guess Blackthorne doesn't have a Madame Dabney.)
And then the time for pleasantries must have been over because Mrs. Baxter turned to my mom. "Ready?"
It seemed like at the perfect question at the time. After all, I was getting ready to break into Blackthorne. I was out of the mansion. I was getting ready to go on a mission. A real mission. With Zach.
And my mom.
Words could not describe the nerves. Or the weirdness.
It occurred to me that I should have been taking notes, savoring every moment. But there was no time.
Mrs. Baxter started for the truck, climbing in beside her husband as she tossed my mother the keys to the sedan with the dark windows. Abby was already crawling into the SUV as Liz and Macey started for Liz's van, but my mother waved them away.
"It stays here," she said with a shake of her head. "We can't take the risk that someone might trace it back to you and the school."
When my mother turned to me and asked, "Do you have everything?" she sounded like she was dropping me off at school or at a friend's house. She sounded almost like a normal mom.
When I said, "Yeah, we're ready," I sounded almost like a normal girl.
But as I watched my bodyguards pull onto the highway to monitor the perimeter of the school, normal felt completely overrated.
A moment later, my mother left us in a cloud of dust in the middle of nowhere, beside a gas station that had no gas, a van we couldn't drive, and a boy that some of the best spies in the world were hesitant to trust.
"And what are we supposed to do?" Macey asked.
Zach smiled. "We walk."
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It is a little-known fact about covert operations that you will spend a lot of time with people you can't really trust. They may be traitors and liars. We call them assets or informants. But mostly, in those days, I called him Zach.
The Operatives made contact with an asset who had firsthand knowledge of the Blackthorne Institute for Boys.
The Asset was also privy to Joe Solomon's private plans, the Circle's secrets, and some of the most awesome-smelling soap in the world.
The Operatives, therefore, tried not to trust (or smell) The Asset.
Walking across the week-covered lot of the gas station, I could feel the darkness falling.
The air was damp and chilly. I could hear Liz stumbling on the path behind me and knew without looking that Bex was bringing up the rear. I kept my eyes trained on the back of Zach's head as we walked deeper into the thick woods and closer to Blackthorne.
Twenty minutes later, I found myself asking, "How long until we get to the school?"
"Not long," Zach said, without a breaking a stride.
"How many guards will be there on patrol at our point of entry?"
He shrugged. "Don't know."
"What's the interval of the security camera sweep?"
"Hard to say."
I reached out for his arm in the dark. "What do you know, Zach?"
"You're on my home turf now, Gallagher Girl." His breath was warm on my skin. "Do you have a problem with that?"
"Guys . . ." I heard Liz's timid voice behind me.
"Maybe I do," I snapped back at Zach.
"Cam," Bex said, her voice mimicking the concern of Liz's, but I barely heard.
"Maybe I -" I started again, but before I could say another word, Bex grabbed my arm.
"Cam, listen!"
The forest was dark and still. Only the faintest hint of stars and moonlight shone through the dense canopy of trees.
I felt someone poke me, and I turned to look at Bex, who raised one finger, as if to say, listen closer. And then I heard it: a distant rumble, low and steady, drifting through the trees.
Zach started walking, and the four of us followed until the leaves overhead began to hin, and we were back under the open sky. Soon, we were staring over the side of a massive cliff, listening to a deafening roar.
" What is that? " Macey yelled, peering over the edge.
Zach didn't even glance at the river that raged beneath us, slicing through the wilderness two hundred feet below.
"That's our ride."
Anyone who's ever driven by the Gallagher Academy can see it standing safely behind its tall stone walls and strong fences. With one glance at the mountains that rose above us and the roaring river that raged below, I realized that the Blackthorne Institute had its own kind of walls. By the time we'd rappelled down the side, persuaded Liz into a flimsy black rubber boat, and pushed into the current, I'd realized that the Gallagher Academy might have the best security money can buy, but what Blackthorne had was priceless.
(Note to self: if you somehow get a real Covert Operations teacher before the end of the semester, this field op should be worth extra credit.)
"Are you sure there's no other way in?" Liz asked. Her eyes were closed, and she was holding her second-favorite laptop, wrapped in a watertight case, as if her life depended on it.
Zach laughed. "Only the ones that sane people would use."
The whitecaps were come faster. My fingers froze around my paddle, and as we crested a massive wave, Liz would have flown free had Bex and I not been there to grab her.
"And what's wrong with being sane?" Macey yelled through chattering teeth over the roar of the water.