I stepped farther down the narrow hallway, away from the crowded dining room, stretching the phone's greasy cord to its limit as I said, "They don't know she ran away, do they?"
"Of course not," Mom answered, the ultimate spy. "That's too much trouble."
I thought about Senator and Mrs. McHenry, and something made me smile.
"So how mad are they that she isn't there?"
"I've taken care of everything," Mom said, her voice still perfectly even and delightful.
A television blared live news coverage—a map of the United States, ready to be divided state by state into red and blue. It was election day in America, but there was one vote left that mattered, and, ironically, it was the one the McHenrys had lost a long time ago.
"Cam!" Bex yelled, "it's time."
"Mom," I said, suddenly needing to say it, "I love you."
A long pause filled the line. For a second, I thought I might have lost her.
"I feel exactly the same way. And Patricia." My mother's voice grew lower. "Hurry. And be careful."
I might have said a hundred other things, except the pay phone wasn't secure (not to mention sanitary), and besides, my friends—and our mission—were waiting.
The Operatives began preparations to go undercover inside hostile territory (a.k.a. the official Winters-McHenry presidential watch party).
Operatives Sutton and Baxter were thrilled to learn that this would require shopping for new clothes.
Unfortunately, according to Operative McHenry, to fully blend in, The Operatives' new clothes couldn't be too cute. Or comfortable.
Washington, D.C. was the first home I'd ever really known, but that night the streets felt foreign for the first time. Maybe it was the vehicle I was driving (Dodge minivans with state-of-the art engines aren't exactly common, you know), or maybe it was the fact that the most famous girl in the country was in the backseat in a red wig, but I felt anything but invisible as we turned down streets lined with news vans and Secret Service barricades.
As we walked closer to the hotel, we passed correspondents reporting live for every news outlet in the country, and I couldn't help myself—I thought about Boston. Beside me, Macey trembled, and I knew I wasn't the only one.
I was beginning to contemplate exactly how we were going to sweet-talk or sneak our way inside (Macey couldn't exactly show up Secret Service-less, after all!), when a familiar voice cut through the chaos. "Cameron!"
The Operatives remembered that potential kidnappers aren't always as scary as highly trained operatives-slash- mothers-slash-headmistresses who happen to know that you're away from campus without permission.
"Cammie," my mother called again, hurrying to meet us.
"Mom, I—" I started, wanting to explain or apologize, to beg forgiveness or mercy, but I didn't get to do any of that because, in the next instant, Secret Service agents swarmed around us. I noticed the comms unit in my mother's ear. I realized the agents around us were all women. One of the agents winked at me, and I wondered for a second if Aunt
Abby wasn't the only Gallagher Girl who had taken a special assignment.
And yet my mother didn't wink. She didn't smile. Instead, she grabbed my arm and steered us toward the building.
Something's happening, I thought. Something's wrong. There were a hundred questions I wanted to ask, but I didn't have the time—much less the breath—to do so as an emergency exit door was thrown open and my friends and I were ushered inside.
Walking through the narrow hallway, the sense of deja vu was strong as we passed stacks of Winters-McHenry signs and catering carts—the backstage of the party—until finally we broke free into a space with gilded mirrors and silk- covered walls. It reminded me of Madame Dabney's tearoom and I realized that, in a way, our school had been preparing us for that moment for the past four and a half years.
A normal girl might have looked at the ornate ceilings and wondered if anything bad could ever happen in a place that beautiful. But we're Gallagher Girls. We know better.
"Macey," Mom said to my roommate, not even looking at me. "Go with these agents. Your parents are expecting you."
But Macey didn't move, and I remembered that this was the world Macey had been born into. The world she'd chosen was a shack by a lake.
"Go on, sweetheart," Mom urged.
Governor Winters himself passed by just then—and I knew we were in the middle of one of the most secure places in the country, and yet something hung in the air as my mother said, "I need to talk to Cammie a—"
I'm not sure what my mother would have said—what she would have told me—but she never had a chance to finish, because in the next instant a cry of "There you are" went through the room. The polls were closed, so maybe that's why Cynthia McHenry didn't hesitate to snap at her daughter. "What are you wearing?"
Macey reached up as if she'd forgotten all about the red
wig.
"Protocol, ma'am," one of the agents at Macey's side replied. "We thought it best to keep your daughter disguised as we moved her from the school."
"Well, she's in a secure area now," Macey's mother said, then started through the ballroom, which was becoming fuller by the second. "Well, are you coming or not?" she asked, wheeling on us all. Macey looked at us as if asking for backup, but we knew that she had to go on alone.
She took a step away, but I was so busy trying to decipher the worry in my mother's eyes that I barely saw my friend move.