“Liz?” Macey asked, but Liz shook her head. “No go,” she said. “He’s still got a signal.”
“What if it’s in him?” Macey asked.
“Then we cut it out,” I said, pressing Preston to the floor of the moving truck.
“I don’t like the sound of this!” Preston shouted, his voice way more high-pitched than any eighteen-year-old guy ever wants his voice to be, but I didn’t have time to care. I was looking at his body, examining every inch for scars.
“Have you had any shots, Preston? Any implants in the last six months?”
“What?” he shouted.
“Focus,” Macey said. I thought she was going to slap him.
“I…I had to go to the dentist!” he shouted.
I didn’t ask for an invitation. I pried open his mouth like Grandpa Morgan trying to buy a horse.
“Retainer,” I told Macey.
“Give it to us, Preston,” she told him.
“No.” He scooted farther back, pressing against the side of the truck.
“Give it to us,” I told him. “Or I borrow Bex’s knife.”
And that must have done it, because he handed me the slimy piece of plastic and metal. I hurled it out the back of the van.
And we waited.
Seconds stretched out for what seemed like hours before Liz finally gave the longest sigh I’d ever heard.
“That does it,” she said. “He’s clean.”
Only then did Macey and I drop to the floor of the truck. Breathing hard. Hearts pounding. I laid my head against a basket full of croissants, resting there, staring at Preston, who sat in his boxer shorts, arms crossed self-consciously across his chest.
“Are you going to explain?” Preston was trying to keep his voice steady and failing. “What is going on?”
I wanted to tell him everything—about his father and Zach’s mother and all the ways his life was getting ready to change, but I couldn’t say a word because Bex was already yelling, “Hang on!”
Rebecca Baxter may possibly be the greatest spy I’ll ever know. She’s also probably the most aggressive driver. So when she gripped the wheel and took a corner far faster than any bread truck is ever supposed to move, we all held on for dear life while the truck jumped the curb and burst through a newsstand.
Preston looked like he might throw up, and I couldn’t really blame him.
Liz turned around and handed a bundle of clothes between the seats. “Here you go,” she said.
“You brought clothes?” Preston asked. “You knew you were going to make me jump out of a window. And strip. And throw a perfectly good retainer away?”
Bex glanced back. “I was just hoping about the stripping part. Nice abs, by the way.” Then she went back to driving.
“Look, Preston,” Macey started. “We can explain. And we will. Soon. But right now we have to get you someplace safe.”
“I was someplace safe! And then you made me jump out a window and blew up my school!”
“You weren’t someplace safe,” Macey told him just as I heard the roar.
“And, technically, we didn’t blow up the school,” Liz qualified. “It was a very small and highly controlled explosion.”
Through the dirty windows at the back of the truck, I saw motorcycles come racing up behind us. I felt Bex jerk the wheel, and the truck skidded onto a main street, going the wrong direction.
Cars honked. Pedestrians yelled as Bex swerved onto the sidewalk. But still she didn’t slow down.
Preston’s breath was coming harder than it should have as he asked, “What is going on?”
Before I could explain Bex said, “Guys, we have—”
But she never got to finish. The crash came too fast—too hard. One second we were careening along the Roman streets, and the next there was nothing but the screech of tires and the crunch of metal. I felt myself falling, tumbling in the back of the truck as it flipped onto its side. Sparks and scraping metal. Something was pushing us across the street.
And then we were falling, tumbling over and over like clothes in a dryer, until there was a splash and then nothing but cold and fear.
The river was freezing. Bread floated all around us as the water cascaded through the back of the truck and the broken windows, taking us lower. Deeper into the cold.
“Preston!” Macey was yelling, but she sounded too far away. “Preston!” she called again.
Slowly, water filled the back of the truck, and as my eyes adjusted to the black, my head swirled. Blood ran down my face. I wanted to be sick or maybe just close my eyes and sleep, but then I thought about what I’d told Bex just days before: what I really wanted to be was alive.
So I kicked and clawed and swam toward the broken doors at the back of the truck, and that was when I saw him. Preston’s eyes were closed and his lips were turning blue. A bump was growing on his head, and I knew it wasn’t just the cold water that was sending him into shock.
“Preston! Cam!” Macey yelled again, and I realized it was coming through my earpiece.
“I’ve got him,” I yelled. “Swim!” I ordered, and put my head down, pulling Preston out of the truck as quickly as I could. My friends must have done as I said, because when I surfaced they were gone.
Air bubbled up from the sinking truck.
“Cammie!” Liz yelled. She sounded afraid, but I couldn’t see her. It was like I was in an echo chamber. The whole world had had the volume turned down.
“Cammie, are you okay?” Liz said just as a bullet pierced the water, slicing into the murky darkness. Splash. And then another. And another.
So I just put my head down and kept on swimming, dragging Preston toward the shore.
The current must have carried us farther away from the wreckage than I realized, because when Preston and I came up for air, I gasped and looked around—waiting—but no shots came.
In the distance, there was shouting.
“Cammie?” Preston said, his voice groggy. “What happened? Where am I?”
“We went for a little swim, Pres. And now we’ve got to go for a run.”
“I don’t feel so good.”
“I know, but you can do it. Come on. I’ll help you.”
Running down the streets of Rome, I didn’t dare stop to think about what we must have looked like. A tiny line of blood was smeared across Preston’s face. My wet hair was tangled and filled with broken glass. Blood ran into my eyes, and the sweatshirt we’d packed for Preston was two sizes too big and hung off him like a wet blanket.