Joe Solomon would have been extremely proud.
As I talked, Agent Townsend listened, but he didn't take a single note - he didn't say a single word.
"And then I jumped," I told him finally. I looked down at my bruised body. "I guess . . . I guess you know the rest."
He nodded slowly. "Yes. I suppose I might even know a bit more than you." He placed his elbows on his knees and leaned closer.
"They've pulled three bodies from the wreckage so far, and they are still digging. Your roommates are completely unharmed. Although probably more than a little irate that they're being kept from you," he added, as if the drama of teenage girls was seriously starting to weigh on him.
Then he leaned closer, his voice low as he added, "And something else."
He walked to the door and came back with a wheelchair. A minute later Agent Townsend was pushing me into a dim room that was larger than my own. Machines beeped. Nurses and doctors moved with noiseless steps. And in the center of it all, a man lay on a bed, broken and burned, one eye swollen completely shut.
"A young man brought him here late last night. He has no ID. No name." As Townsend pushed me closer, I felt myself stop breathing. The man on the bed was bandaged almost from head to toe, and yet when the wheelchair stopped, I saw a face I'd first seen at the back of the Grand Hall a year and a half before.
"So perhaps we'll just call him . . . Mr. S."
I wanted to take his hand, but I didn't want to touch him and risk finding out it was a dream.
"Now, if you'll excuse me, Ms. Morgan," Townsend said. "I'm afraid I really must be leaving. MI6 has a lot of questions, as you might imagine, and I -"
"But -"
"My job here was to find Joe Solomon, young lady." He looked at me for a long time.
"And Joe Solomon is dead. Witnesses saw him die in an explosion just last night." Tears swelled in my eyes, but I didn't try to stop him. I didn't say thank you or I'm sorry or any of a dozen other things that Agent Townsend probably had no desire to hear.
Instead, I watched him look at the man in the bed - the man who'd come closer to destroying the Circle than anyone alive. I saw him nod at Mr. Solomon and heard him whisper, "There's no need for anyone to chase him anymore."
Townsend was halfway to the door when he stopped.
"Oh yes," he said, turning. "You were clutching this last night." He pulled the small-bound notebook from his pocket and handed it to me. I almost didn't recognize it without its plastic wrapping. "Interesting choice of books you have there, Ms. Morgan." He turned slowly around. "Most interesting indeed."
"How long have you been chasing the Circle, Agent Townsend?" I called suddenly, stopping, stopping him at the door.
"A long time," he said.
"Do you think my father is with them? Do you think he's alive?"
His voice was flat as he said, "No."
Then he turned and walked away.
Chapter Forty-Four
"Hey, kiddo," my mother said form behind me. But instead of turning, I stayed seated, staring at Mr. Solomon, wondering, not for the first time, if I was looking at a ghost.
"Is he . . . Is he going to make it?" I asked.
"It's too soon to say, sweetheart," Mom admitted. She moved closer. "How are you?"
But I didn't answer. Instead, I turned and asked, "Where's Zach? He's the one who brought Mr. Solomon back, isn't he? Is he here? Is he -"
"He's fine, kiddo. A little burned. A little bruised. But he'll be fine. And yes, he's here."
She inched closer. "In fact, I've been on the phone with the trustees all morning, getting their permission for him to finish the semester with us." She took a deep breath. "There's no place safe for him to go."
As she talked, her hands went almost involuntarily to Mr. Solomon - straightening his blanket, smoothing his bandages - and I knew that, unlike me, she couldn't stop touching him. She would heal him with her bare hands if she could.
"Dad's alive."
And just like that, my mother pulled her hand away.
"He's alive, Mom," I said, cursing the wheelchair, needing to face my mother and the world head-on and not like an invalid, like a child. "He's alive. She . . . Zach's mother said so."
Mom sank to her knees and looked into my eyes. "Listen to me, Cammie. Listen. They will say anything - they will do anything to get what they want. And what they want right now is you."
"Why?" I asked, the question burning inside of me. "They came to Blackthorne because Mr. Solomon told them Dad's journal was there. They'd go anywhere to find me. What do they want?"
Mom smoothed my hair. "We don't know, kiddo. I think your father was probably getting close to something. I think that's why they killed him."
"She said he's alive!"
"Don't let yourself be fooled, Cammie!" my mother snapped, then dropped her voice to a whisper. "Don't let yourself . . . hope."
I know too well how dangerous hope can be, how it grows and sometimes dies, taking its host with it. It's most powerful than anything Dr. Fibs keeps in his labs, more precious than all the secrets in Sublevel Two.
"Maybe she wasn't lying," I said. "Right? Tell me she might not be lying."
"We don't know." She said each word slowly, carefully, as if they were as much for her as for me. "But I've spent years looking for your father and I think - in my professional opinion - he probably isn't . . . alive."
Operatives who always lie make the worst spies, their intel is discounted, their mission are abandoned. There always has to be some truth among the scrap. Covert Operations call it chicken feed. But in that room on that day, my mother simply called it hope.